Page 9 of 10 FirstFirst ... 78910 LastLast
Results 121 to 135 of 138

Thread: Meditation

  1. #121
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    Continued from previous post

    A 2014 meta-review of 21 neuroimaging studies and about 300 meditation practitioners found eight brain regions that consistently displayed effects, including areas that support meta-awareness, introspection, body awareness, memory, self-regulation, and emotional regulation, as well as improved communication between hemispheres of the brain. According to the authors, these findings line up with others being reported across the field, including other brain studies, clinical/behavioral research, and anecdotal reports on individual experiences.
    What we’re learning so far also makes sense, given the focus on honing our awareness and attention in mindfulness meditation. Several brain regions in which we’ve seen consistent changes are part of the frontal parietal network, which belongs to a complex attention network that “allows you to continuously monitor body sensations and flexibly switch between internal thinking and processing of the external world,” says Vago, who is also a research associate at the Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory at Harvard Medical School’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
    One of the regions in that network is the frontopolar cortex, which, according to Vago, evidence suggests is the most highly evolved part of the brain and is thought to be responsible for supporting meta-awareness. Meta-awareness, Vago says, is “the ability for you to be aware of where your mind is at any time, whether it’s focusing internally on your narrative thoughts or what’s happening around you.” And, of course, at the core of mindfulness meditation is awareness of what your mind is doing in that moment.

    This increase in activity seems to both strengthen these areas and may protect them from the natural degeneration of gray matter that occurs as we age. A 2015 neuroimaging study of 100 meditators (which is actually a relatively large sample size for this kind of study) concluded, “these findings seem to suggest less age-related gray matter atrophy in long-term meditation practitioners.” And a 2014 review of 12 studies found preliminary evidence that “a variety of meditation techniques may be able to offset age-related cognitive decline and perhaps even increase cognitive capabilities in older adults.” This kind of research, Vago explains, indicates that “[t]hese parts of our brain, which are basically being worked out through [the] mental training of mindfulness just like you work out with your muscles in a gym [...] are protected from the age-related decline or atrophy that happens normally across [our] lifespan.”
    Meditation also appears to decrease activity in certain areas of the brain, including the amygdala, which is involved in stress and fear responses as well as anxiety. Another is the posterior cingulate cortex, which Vago says is thought to play a critical role in self-reflection and rumination. By the way, whether or not you have depression, you probably do way too much of this kind of thinking. A frequently cited 2010 study by Harvard University researchers shows that people spend roughly half of their waking hours letting their minds wander. But meditation appears to decrease activity in this network, Vago says.
    It’s important to remember that brain imaging studies are just one in tool in a scientific investigation; many of these studies are on small numbers of people, and the results can be really interesting but not decisive. They show us where something is happening, but that’s about it. That leaves scientists to theorize about the what, the why, and the how using previous knowledge and other methods. As Smalley explains, neuroimaging studies tell us, “Here are brain regions likely influenced by meditation practice.” But exactly how meditation leads to these changes hasn’t been determined.

    Ultimately, you could argue that the details about how meditation works is less important than the fact that it works at all.
    Take blood pressure, for example: Research suggests that mindfulness meditation seems as effective at reducing blood pressure as monitoring your blood pressure with a cuff—and that it’s better than doing nothing at all to monitor blood pressure. It could be that mindfulness meditation helps reduce stress, which in turn lowers blood pressure. But Desbordes says there are other possible explanations: “For example, maybe people start exercising more when they become more mindful, and that is responsible for the decrease in blood pressure”—meaning the improvements cannot specifically, directly be attributed to the meditation practice.
    But this doesn’t change the fact that in this context meditation can, directly or indirectly, lead to a positive change in health. And, there are potential additional benefits to meditation that a blood pressure cuff can’t achieve. “Mindfulness meditation can probably affect a lot of other things that the blood pressure cuff wouldn’t, such as how you relate to your own thoughts and feelings,” Smalley explains. “And in that regard, it can be viewed as a helpful tool for overall emotional and physical wellbeing.”

    Despite all of the research done so far, experts caution against taking at face value grandiose claims that meditation is a wonder drug.
    “It’s not a panacea. We know that,” says Vago. And even the proof in the best-studied areas has been overhyped at times. “Yes, there is evidence for improved outcomes in health, mental health specifically, [and] some preliminary evidence for cardiovascular disease and inflammation,” he says, “but we need to be cautiously optimistic.” Hasenkamp agrees: “There isn't any finding or effect that's been replicated enough to be totally reliable.”

    And it’s already clear that meditation isn’t guaranteed to improve even the conditions with the most convincing evidence, like depression and anxiety. It really depends on the person. “We can't generalize all these findings to everybody [because] it may not work for everybody,” Vago says. “In fact, we're finding out a lot of people don't respond.”

    Also, quantifying the results of meditation is, in a way, antithetical to its nature.
    How do you capture the full picture of any one person’s meditative experience with brain scans and numbers measuring very specific outcomes? “The biggest challenge I see is that people see mindfulness meditation as very goal-directed, while part of meditation in general is to experience things ‘as they are,’” Smalley says. “There is a tendency to push too hard for some specific outcomes.” This fixation on particular results means we could be missing big pieces of the puzzle we’re not even looking for yet.

    One of the most thrilling insights we’ve gleaned from meditation studies isn’t about any single outcome: It’s about a person’s ability to transform oneself. “The brain is incredibly ‘plastic’—meaning it can change itself based on experience—much more than we previously thought,” Hasenkamp explains. “Investigations around meditation and other forms of mental training have really advanced our understanding of how much the brain can change in a relatively short time—both in the way it functions and also in its structure. This is exciting because it shifts the way we think about human capacity for change,” she adds. “We don't have to be stuck in our current state or set of habit patterns—with intention and a good deal of effort and practice, we can change the way we're wired up.”

    It’s also possible that some of the most profound influences of meditation won’t be about any one person’s health, but how we connect to each other and the world. “Perhaps the benefits of mindfulness meditation are more in how it impacts our relationships of self to self, others, and the universe at large, an area that has yet to receive much scientific investigation,” Smalley says.

    Hasenkamp agrees: “These kinds of interpersonal effects are just beginning to be studied, and may be one of the most impactful outcomes that meditation could offer for society.”

    So, even if your meditation practice isn't as evidence-based as you might have thought, it doesn't necessarily need to be in order to play a very positive and real role in your life.
    The reality is that it’s probably not a huge deal if your home meditation practice doesn’t fully resemble what occurs in clinical trials.

    Try thinking about meditation in the same way as other things that make you feel good: taking an early morning walk through the park, relaxing with a good book or glass of wine in a bath, or sipping on your wellness elixir of choice throughout the day. We don’t necessarily have concrete scientific evidence for why these practices can help improve our mental health or well-being in some small way. And while they make us feel good sometimes, on other days, they might not. We understand that they’re not a magic pill, and we know that they’re not the right choice for everyone.

    But we do these practices because they are generally positive additions to our daily lives. “Mindfulness meditation and meditation in general are really helpful tools for people as we look for ways to de-stress, learn more about ourselves, and lean toward well-being,” Smalley says.

    “In the end,” Desbordes says, “it’s really an individual choice. If people find some benefits for themselves, then they should do it.”
    The original article has a lot of reference hyperlinks.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  2. #122
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    Calm meditation app from American Airlines

    So many confuse meditation with relaxation.

    Delayed flight? American Airlines offers meditation app 'Calm' to stressed-out passengers
    American Airlines will start offering Calm, a mindfulness and relaxation app, on all domestic and international flights starting Oct. 8.
    Calm created three exclusive sessions geared toward the specific stressors that can accompany air travel.
    Calm competitor Headspace started working with Virgin Atlantic in 2011 and now offers its in-flight mindfulness exercises on 11 eleven airlines, including United Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
    Angelica LaVito | Leslie Josephs
    Published 22 Hours Ago Updated 20 Hours Ago
    CNBC.com


    Source: American Airlines
    Delayed flight? Stuck in the middle seat? American Airlines wants you to relax.

    The world's biggest airline will start showing nature videos and offering passengers access to material through the Calm meditation app aboard most flights starting Oct. 8 to help keep travelers relaxed — even as they jostle for overhead bin space and the arm rest.

    The airline will play nature videos during boarding and offer Calm's guided meditations and other content on the plane's seat back screens for passengers during flights.

    Travelers may also have free access to the material through their personal electronic devices. Calm is an app that includes guided meditations, bedtime stories, relaxing music as well as photos and sounds from nature.

    The Calm channel will include some of the features that come with its traditional app, including what it calls Sleep Stories, delivered in calm tones and accompanied by waterfall and other soothing sounds.

    Calm also created three exclusive audio sessions geared toward the specific stresses that often occur during air travel.

    One includes a breathing exercise. Another, called Relax and Release, encourages people to focus on the sensations in their hands or feet to distract them from their thoughts and relieve anxiety. Another exercise guides passengers through a meditation technique that focuses attention on relaxing specific parts of the body to help relieve stress and tension.

    American is Calm's first airline partner. Its competitor, Headspace, started working with Virgin Atlantic in 2011 and now offers its in-flight mindfulness exercises on 11 airlines, including United Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  3. #123
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    Banning forced meditation

    How about we just call it 'prayer'?

    CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS WANT TO STOP KIDS MEDITATING AT SCHOOL
    BY KATHERINE HIGNETT ON 12/15/18 AT 8:52 AM

    Conservative Christian watchdog group The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) has launched a petition to stop “forced Buddhist meditation” in schools.

    The group claims children in public schools across the U.S. are being “indoctrinated” by “Buddhist-based mindfulness methods in an “outright unconstitutional” practice. But companies behind the programs say their techniques can help improve self-awareness and self-control.

    “We’re launching a multifaceted legal campaign including representing parents of these students, sending demand letters, state FOIA requests, and if necessary, litigation,” the petition reads.

    Launched Wednesday, it has garnered almost 50,000 signatures on the evangelical group’s website as of 7.30 a.m. ET Saturday.

    The group accuses schools in at least 12 states of "forcing" students to listen to mindfulness audio tapes, including those produced by Inner Explorer, Mind Up, and Dialectic Behavior Therapy.

    Inner Exploration says its secular curriculum is designed to provide students with skills like self-awareness, resilience and self-control, for example.

    Although meditation is linked to Buddhism spiritual practices, the programs provided by schools are secular. “Mindfulness is not a religion,” Inner Exploration’s website states. “It is a set of simple attention practices that promote full awareness of the present moment. These attention practices allow students to develop the capacity to sustain focus.”

    Psychologists have used mindfulness techniques since the 1970s, but its popularity has soared in recent years with the rise of commercial meditation programs.

    Mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques were developed by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Used to help students improve their focus and concentration, their wider benefits are the subject of ongoing clinical investigation.

    But ACLJ view the mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques used in some schools as a danger to children. The organization condemned audio recordings it claims say, “ We’re all connected through nature. And we’re all connected through the universe.”


    View image on Twitter

    ACLJ

    @ACLJ
    Students in several #US states are forced to participate in #Buddhist-based meditation. If a child refuses, he or she is moved to the hall as if being punished. These schools are indoctrinating kids. This cannot stand. We’re demanding this end. Sign today. https://aclj.us/2S0vtlG

    114
    12:00 PM - Dec 12, 2018
    112 people are talking about this
    Twitter Ads info and privacy
    Jay Sekulow, chief counsel at ACLJ and personal attorney to President Donald Trump recently criticized the use of mindfulness in schools on his radio program, Jay Sekulow Live, Buddhist website Lion’s Roar reported.

    “We’ve got millions of people listening to this broadcast,” said Sekulow, per Lion’s Roar. “Find out what’s going on in your kids’ schools… We will contact the school board on your behalf, dispatch lawyers as necessary.”

    The church faced fierce criticism from instructors and even Christians who practiced yoga. Local teachers said Lindell’s teachings had hindered their ability to make a living.


    A sign on a door announces a meditation class in session at a financial company on September 21, 2017 in New York.
    CATHERINE TRIOMPHE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  4. #124
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    Meditation

    The top 2019 fitness trends — and how to incorporate them into your workouts
    Fitness professionals say these are the exercise trends to watch this year. Here's how to use them to your advantage.
    Watch for sports with smartwatch. Jogging training for marathon.


    Wearable technology is seeing a resurgence, taking the first place for 2019 fitness trends (after dropping to 3rd place in 2018).Lifemoment / Getty

    Jan. 2, 2019 / 5:50 AM PST
    By Stephanie Mansour

    Each year, the worldwide survey of fitness trends is sent to over 30,000 fitness professionals to rank exercise trends for the next year. These trends aren't "trendy" or fads — almost all of the most popular fitness trends predicted for 2019 have earned a spot on the list in previous years.

    The trends that have staying power (such as HIIT training and group workouts) are ones that are easily accessible in everyday life. and deliver results, fast. Wearable technology is seeing a resurgence, taking the first place for 2019 (after dropping to 3rd place in 2018). Here are some of the top 2019 fitness trends along with their health pitch or claim, plus a takeaway for how you can integrate them into your current fitness plan.

    STREAMING WORKOUTS
    The Trend: Streaming workouts allow you to have the convenience of an instructor-led workout accessible no matter where you are. If you travel a lot and are stuck in hotel rooms, or if you’re unmotivated to get to the gym and go to an in-person class, these streaming workouts are for you.

    The Verdict: As with all exercise, consistency is key. I’d recommend trying a streaming workout for a month, and track how often you use it. Then take the amount you paid for the subscription for the streaming workouts, and divide it out into how many workouts you actually did. Then decide if it's financially worth it to you. Celebrity trainer Joey Thurman (creator of the Joey Thurman fit app) warns that with streaming workouts, you don’t have a professional checking your form and prescribing the right exercises for your body, so you could risk injuring yourself or enforcing bad habits. So it may be worth scheduling a session or two with a personal trainer in person first to get instruction on proper technique. “All in all,” he says, “If it’s a reputable source, trainer, coach and company, you should be fine.”

    The Takeaway: If you have an erratic schedule or travel often, the convenience of having workouts ready to play wherever you are can help you stick with a routine. What’s the difference between buying a subscription to streaming workouts and searching for workouts on YouTube, you ask? Good question. If you’re financially invested in a workout program, you’re more likely to stick to it. So while the free workouts may be tempting, the financial commitment may help keep yourself accountable.

    HIIT WORKOUTS
    The Trend: Traditionally, the benefit of HIIT workouts (high intensity interval training) is that you can get a big bang for your exercise buck. By pushing yourself through interval training, and alternating between high intensity and lower intensity, you’re all in for a shorter workout that rarely provides breaks or time to catch your breath. HIIT is being incorporated into more and more workouts – from boutique gyms to bootcamps. They’re even starting to pop up in Pilates classes and yoga classes.

    The Verdict: According to Thurman, “This is a trend that never should go away.” He says that the point of HIIT is to, “Go hard or go home!” He has his clients do these workouts on their own one to three times a week and incorporates HIIT into his training sessions. Research shows that high intensity interval training is one of the best ways to burn fat quickly. By pushing your body full force for a shorter amount of time, you’re getting a strength training workout, cardio workout and a full-body workout all at once.

    The Takeaway: You don’t need a fancy HIIT class to incorporate this trend into your workout. You can apply the HIIT training principles to any workout that you’re already doing. If you’re the queen of cardio, you can make your cardio workout more effective by changing your speed or changing the difficulty every few minutes. Or you could add 30 second sprints every few minutes. If you’re doing a strength training workout, you can cut out breaks in between sets and add in some cardio bursts to get your heart rate up. If you’re looking to spice up your yoga or Pilates routine, move through some parts of the sequence faster and go slower through other parts.

    GROUP TRAINING CLASSES
    The Trend: If you’re motivated by a competitive spirit or can't afford one-on-one training but would like direction from a fitness instructor, group training classes are a popular trend that allows participants to use the energy of a group to push through a workout.

    The Verdict: Group training classes can serve as a good motivator to push yourself harder or faster compared to the people around you. One study found that 95 percent of those who started a weight-loss program with friends completed the program, compared to a 76 percent completion rate for those who tackled the program alone. Other studies confirm that working out with a partner significantly increases time spent exercising. Plus, with an instructor-led workout, you can bank on a good, hard workout, that doesn't take much forethought or planning on your part. However, Thurman warns, “Beware that everyone is doing the same workout, and one instructor has to watch 20 or 30 of you. Be sure to keep strict form and always speak up if something doesn’t feel right!”

    The Takeaway: Enlisting a group mentality can help when your motivation starts to wane. Consider working out with a group of friends in your living room, joining a run club for weekly jogs in the park or signing up for a group training class to help hold yourself accountable and push yourself harder.

    The Trend: Wearable trackers are definitely here to stay. They’re helping everyday people track their health on many different levels. From encouraging you during a tough workout to giving you feedback on your sleep, there’s a tracker to suit your needs.

    The Verdict: Many of my clients use trackers in addition to their other health and fitness goals. For example, one of my clients has a tracker and tries to close her “rings” everyday. She has a step goal (10,000), a water goal (she has to manually enter this), and a sleep goal (a minimum of 6 hours) to meet. This is in addition to her other goals that help with weight loss. But when she closes her rings, it gives her an extra confidence boost. So while trackers are great, I’d recommend using them as a supplement to other goals. Thurman echoes this, “Wearing a smart watch is great … if you use it correctly. It’s nice that you hit your 10,000 steps a day, but how many steps were you taking before you got the watch?”

    The Takeaway: Take the wearable technology with a grain of salt. Thurman even says, “Sometimes technology gives you a reason to slack off. They can also give you a false sense of accomplishment by overestimating your calorie burn or how hard you worked.” So use this tool to help keep you on track, but don’t rely on them fully.

    The Trend: When you’re working with a personal trainer, all you have to do is show up and let him/her do the coaching. A personal trainer not only provides a well-rounded and educated workout for you, but also ensures accountability with the appointments. Thurman (who, as a personal trainer, admits he's biased) says, “For the most part, I would say this is the best way to get you the most efficient workout and results the fastest.”

    The Verdict: As a certified personal trainer myself, I know the kind of results we can deliver. But sometimes I cringe when I see trainers in the gym staring off or checking their phones instead of checking the form of their clients. Make sure you have an attentive trainer who pushes you, but never makes you feel like it’s “all pain and no gain.” Ideally you want to feel like you’re working together with the trainer.

    The Takeaway: “Make sure the trainer knows what they’re doing, will push you safely, is certified, and will give you 95 percent of what you want and 5 percent of what you need,” says Thurman. Communicate with your trainer so that you’re both on the same page, and if one isn’t working out for you, shop around for someone with a coaching style that fits your needs. If expenses are an issue, go to one personal training session a week and ask for a written out workout routine that you can follow for a few other days during the week. It is also important to know that trainers realize it won't be a life long partnership! The goal is to help you reach your goals and equip you with the tools you need to succeed on your own. So be honest about how many sessions you can afford and what you hope to accomplish in that time.
    continued next post
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  5. #125
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    Continued from previous post

    NOT ON THE LIST BUT SHOULD BE: MEDITATION BECOMES MAINSTREAM IN FITNESS
    The Trend: Working out the mind is becoming almost as popular as working out the body. By practicing meditation and mindfulness, you’re able to be more in tune with your body and how you’re feeling. Whether you flow through a moving meditation (like in a yoga class) or set aside time each day to sit in a traditional pose and meditate, it’s becoming more and more common for people to have their own personal meditation practice.

    The Verdict: Thurman says, “Meditation has been around for thousands of years for a reason … it works! The mind is a powerful thing, and I suggest getting to know yourself.” He also says that we can utilize our own energy for good or bad, and I’ve noticed this with my clients as well. When we go through positive body-image meditations, their outlook on themselves slowly (but positively) changes. What’s more, along with the mental effects of meditation, research shows that there are also physiological effects from meditation. Pain reduction, improvement in immune system, increasing blood flow to the heart, and decreasing cortisol are just a few of the effects that are similar to the effects of exercise.

    The Takeaway: You can integrate meditation into your everyday life by using meditation apps. There are also some boutique studios that specialize in meditation, and even some mainstream gyms now offer meditation classes. The practice of mindfulness can also be brought into any workout — not just traditional meditation. Bring your awareness to a certain body part during a bootcamp session or pay attention to your breathing pattern as you run on a treadmill. Not only will you quiet your mind, but focusing specifically on certain aspects of your body may also push you to work harder and better target muscle groups.
    Meditation as a Fitness Trend. We've been saying that for centuries.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  6. #126
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    Vipassanā

    This isn't quite a Buddhists behaving badly or a Meditation post, but we don't have a Vipassana thread... yet.

    The Other Side Of Paradise: How I Left A Buddhist Retreat In Handcuffs
    Michael Holden went to a Buddhist retreat to find himself. Now he's off his meditation
    BY MICHAEL HOLDEN, ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANNA BU KLIEWER
    26/12/2018


    Anna Bu Kliewer

    ‘ALL OF HUMANITY’S PROBLEMS STEM FROM MAN’S INABILITY TO SIT QUIETLY IN A ROOM ALONE’ – BLAISE PASCAL, 1662

    The police stayed calm and the Buddhists were calmer, but by then there wasn’t much anyone could do. In the hours previously, I had come to believe, simultaneously and sequentially, that I was: dead, alive, omniscient, immortal, non-existent, gay, straight, telepathic, a flower, a pulse of pure energy and a nuclear bomb. And that was the good part, relatively speaking. By the time I was handcuffed and led to an ambulance, my troubles, or at least this episode among them, were just underway.

    It is not the conclusion one pictures to a meditation retreat: a shackled, ranting, middle-aged man being taken to hospital under police supervision. Ideas like mindfulness and meditation are sold largely by images of good-looking people and unfurrowed brows. Yet it wasn’t upbeat marketing that led me to a 10-day, silent sanctuary on the Welsh borders, but a man on fire.

    Forty years before flunking out of Buddhism in chains, I chanced upon Malcolm Browne’s 1963 photograph of Thich Quang Duc, a monk, sat, burning to death by his own hand in an act of protest at a crossroads in Saigon, South Vietnam. “As he burned he never moved a muscle,” said The New York Times journalist David Halberstam, a witness to it, “never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.”

    I was young when I found the horrific image but I saw in it, also, proof that there was another way to be beyond than the swirling, self-sustaining system of hopes and regrets already established in my restless brain.

    Decades later, a collision of life crises (marital, professional, medical and familial) and a kind of emotional insurgency — a relentless sense that there was something beyond or beneath all this — propelled me first into meditation, and then to the retreat where, if enlightenment were not forthcoming, at least I would have spent some time without my phone. What could go wrong?

    A simple, contemporary definition of meditation is “a family of self-regulation practices that focus on training attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control.” Written references date back to 600BC. Techniques and traditions vary, but the most prominent associations are with Buddhist philosophy, and there are few spiritual schools of thought or religions which do not accommodate some practice which might be described as meditative.

    Meditation’s modern offspring, “mindfulness”, has its roots (as a phrase) in the 20th century. Where one begins and the other ends is the subject of much debate. Suffice to say whether you’re sitting silently in a monastery or staring at a smartphone in your sister’s spare room, if you are taking time out to observe your thought patterns and breathe in a conscious manner, one or both terms have you covered.

    What began in antiquity abided and bloomed into a billion-dollar industry in the US alone. Be it through ashrams or apps — there are over 1,300 now, and the Headspace app has been downloaded close to 35m times — meditation has been touted as a panacea for everything from childhood trauma to palliative care. There is plenty of evidence, empirical and anecdotal, that in many of these areas it does have positive results. So, I read some books, looked online, sat, and watched what my mind did.

    From 15 minutes of sitting a day I felt subtly but tangibly changed. “Mental processes” were definitely “under greater voluntarily control”. I was no Buddha, but I was demonstrably less volatile. I had a taste for it and was soon seeking ways to do more. Much more. I booked the retreat. The perceptive among you will note this is precisely the kind of desirous behaviour pattern that meditation is often deployed to break, but Nirvana wasn’t built in a day.

    Deep in the Herefordshire countryside at the tail end of June, the retreat I attended felt and looked like the apex of serenity. The discipline chosen by me and around 150 other attendees — an idealistic mix of ages, races and gender — is known as Vipassanā which, they will tell you, means “seeing things as they really are”. We decamped cheerfully from coaches and cars, gave up our phones, agreed not to speak for a week-and-a-half and wandered off to billets on the sprawling former farm. The atmosphere prior to the commencement of silence (you can talk with the retreat leaders at allotted times, if need be) was one of warm, collective anticipation, somewhere between a school trip and a festival.

    At 4am the next day, we were awoken by a gong. And so began an 11-hour daily programme of meditation, punctuated occasionally by vegetarian food (until midday, after which it was fruit only). In the evenings, we gathered to hear the teachings of the course’s founder, Satya Narayan Goenka, an avuncular but deceased Burmese/Indian businessman and Buddhist scholar whose posthumous addresses were screened nightly. They came to provide a kind of group release; we laughed, and not just as counterpoint to the silence. Like other spiritual teachers, and some stand-ups, Goenka walked a fine line between practical philosophical insight and observational comedy.

    After several days of silence, sermons, slender rations and pre-dawn starts, something significant shifted inside me. The inner dialogue ceased, replaced by an outbreak of peace so fundamental as to transcend what I could or can still share with language. And I could see and sense, even if I couldn’t speak to the others, that this was happening among them too.

    The power of such a revelation, that everything you might have hitherto insisted you consisted of was instead an illusory construct which can, through self-examination, vanish and be replaced by something best described as love… that can take some getting used to. The implications for your “self” (by this point a minority shareholder in that which you perceive yourself to be) and society (all conflict, and thus much of history, being by these terms an avoidable mistake) are considerable. But before I could assimilate this, or perhaps because I couldn’t, the limitless love became a gruelling fear, mutating into the conviction that I, personally, could bring about the end of everything, since the macrocosm of our universe seemed so clearly and precariously contained within the microcosm of my being. Say this like you mean it, act stubbornly on your pronouncements, and they will come for you with handcuffs too.
    continued next post
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  7. #127
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    Continued from previous post

    I HAD COME TO BELIEVE, SIMULTANEOUSLY AND SEQUENTIALLY, THAT I WAS: DEAD, ALIVE, OMNISCIENT, IMMORTAL, NON-EXISTENT, GAY, STRAIGHT, TELEPATHIC, A FLOWER, A PULSE OF PURE ENERGY AND A NUCLEAR BOMB. AND THAT WAS THE GOOD PART, RELATIVELY SPEAKING

    Psychosis is, I suspect, a little like falling in or out of love: something on the cusp of the personal and the universal that each of us experiences differently. Between the ambulance ride and the oblivion of sedation, I was held in a room with two police officers at the local A&E. They looked on reasonably benignly as I did my best to convey what I was feeling which, among other stark hallucinations and a roiling, primal fear, was that I was dying and being reborn every 90 seconds or so. I can’t really describe what that is “like” since the one comparable event is largely unremembered and the other unknowable, but it felt real and it was gruelling, and, in the end, I was begging them to knock me out.

    All this was much to reflect on as I recovered (to some extent) in a psychiatric hospital over the next 48 hours. How had I fallen so hard and wide of the mark of meditation, of something so seemingly benign? Others on the retreat had become emotional, openly weeping (as I had done) but no one else had begged to stop, only to refuse to leave and then been forcibly removed.

    What I did know, was that I had been “here” before. And not in a past life. In the mid-Nineties, in my mid-twenties when I was working as a journalist in London, I took enough recreational drugs to keep me awake for nine days, at the end of which I was psychotic, sectioned, sedated and held in hospital for four months. That might sound dramatic, but I did it to myself and for all I know the treatment (including drugs since withdrawn from use) and the incarceration saved my life. Certainly, it shaped it.

    The advantage of this, insofar as it had one, was that when my mind disintegrated for the second time, I had some sense of what I was in for, and I knew I could get back. Maybe. Even naked terror takes the occasional break, and the sense in those moments that there is a way out, is in some ways all you need to carry on.

    This time I was in and out of hospital in one weekend. With a month’s worth of anti-psychotic medication, I had some decisions to make. It seemed clear to me that if I could reach such an altered state through intoxication and insomnia once, and then do it again 20 years later through silence and concentration, then that state was “real” and not a figment of my imagination or the symptom of an illness per se.

    I didn’t want to stay medicated (my previous stint had lasted a decade), and I understood that the rules of the retreat meant that as I had left before the end, I could not go back. Vipassanā makes it clear in its literature regarding “serious mental disorders” that: “Our capacity as a non-professional volunteer organisation makes it impossible to properly care for people with these backgrounds.”

    I had been screened out at the initial application because of my history and then, after going into detail, accepted, as my prior issues were so long ago. I was thrilled to be admitted and delusional when I left, but barring some emails and a follow-up phone call, early exits from Vipassanā are final. Tossed from what had seemed briefly to be heaven, I went back to my elderly folks, weaned myself off the meds, and got thoroughly depressed.

    In the weeks that followed, I began to google “meditation”, “mental illness”, “mania” (as my ex-wife pointed out, I ought really to have done this beforehand). But it was then I found that far from being alone in this, I was one of many who had learned the hard way that at a certain level, for some practitioners, something like psychosis is part of the meditative programme. And that not everyone who goes through that survives.


    Anna Bu Kliewer

    Dr Daniel Ingram is a recently retired, frontline ER physician who worked in one of America’s largest trauma centres in Huntsville, Alabama. He left trauma medicine in his late forties, he says, since, “you see some extremely bad stuff in high quantities, it starts to take its toll… it is in some ways a younger person’s game.” Ingram is also the author of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, a seminal and substantial text which, alongside a busy online forum which he moderates, has become a resource for those for whom the vogue for meditation revealed the void. One of his contentions is that despite millennia of existing wisdom about what can and will happen when you close your eyes and follow your breath for long enough, modern versions of these practices are often mis-sold.

    “This dream of peace and wellbeing, happiness and contentment, mental health and emotional clarity,” says Ingram, “[doesn’t recognise] that some reasonable proportion of people will also be catapulted into full-on, deep-end spiritual development by crossing what the Buddhist tradition I come from calls the ‘Arising and Passing Away’ stage. And then they’re off and running in this whole different end of development, which, as you now know, is quite a different thing than what most people signed up for.”

    An irony of finding Ingram’s work was that my own “madness”, the singularity of which I was both scared and perversely proud of, was made familiar, if not quite mundane. In a broad sense, he has heard it all before.

    “You crossed the ‘Arising and Passing’ and hit the standard ‘Dark Night’ stages, just as one would predict,” he explains. When I tell him about the birth-and-death cycling, which I had taken to be particularly troubling and profound, he just says, “Nice”. These challenging but navigable “stages of insight”, he explains, are as old as meditation itself. They have, however, been largely omitted from the modern conversation.

    The Vipassanā retreat I visited is part of a global, free-to-attend franchise run on the guidelines established by Goenka. The regime there, says Ingram, is, “absolutely perfect for getting people across the ‘Arising and Passing Away’, [but] not normalising the next stages.” These stages are often traumatic, known colloquially and historically as the “Dark Night”, and bear little or no phenomenological difference to the medical classification of mental illnesses, particularly bipolar disorder. According to Ingram, with the right expectations and support, the stages are temporary. Without it, “people crash out into the world a total wreck. I’ve had a hundred of these calls, more, I couldn’t possibly count them,” he says. “If you go online, the number of reports of this happening is thousands. So many I’ve lost track of them all.”

    Three months before I entered Vipassanā, Megan Vogt, a 25-year-old American woman left a near-identical centre in the US “incoherent, suicidal and in psychosis,” according to reports in the local news. Ten weeks after she left the retreat she took her own life. Unlike me, Vogt had no history of mental illness or drug use. She would not have presented any issue at the application stage or known what hit her on the retreat. Nor did her family, or, it seems, the medical professionals to whom she was referred.

    A spokesman for the Vipassanā Trust, which manages the network of retreats in the Goenka tradition, acknowledged that Vogt’s case was “horrendous, tragic and traumatic” but that such outcomes were “exceptionally rare”. He told me 1.2m new students have used their retreats since 2001, and they have accepted more than 200,000 since 2016. He also said that this case, and any other “serious incident”, was subject to an “incident review”, and that the Vipassanā Trust’s objective in these matters was to “check ourselves that everything is being done, and if not then make some changes and tighten it up”. He added that any student, regardless of how they exit or whether they finish the programme, is welcome to contact them for support or even to reapply.
    Meditation can be rigorous, especially Vipassanā.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  8. #128
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Canada!
    Posts
    23,110
    Death Meditation is difficult.
    But, it helps to constrain ones violent intentions and fear.
    There are so many varieties of meditation.
    Kung Fu is good for you.

  9. #129
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    NeuroSCIENCE

    Neuroscience shows that 50-year-olds can have the brains of 25-year-olds if they sit quietly and do nothing for 15 minutes a day
    Melanie Curtin, Inc Apr. 8, 2019, 3:49 PM


    A meditation class at Havas advertising agency in New York City. Sarah Jacobs/Business Insider

    Neuroscientist Sara Lazar found that people who practiced meditation had more gray matter in the part of the brain linked to decision-making and working memory: the frontal cortex.

    While most people see their cortexes shrink as they age, 50-year-old meditators in the study had the same amount of gray matter as those half their age.

    Participants in the study averaged about 27 minutes of the habit a day, but other studies suggest that you can see significant positive changes in just 15 minutes a day.

    Neuroscientist Sara Lazar, of Mass General and Harvard Medical School, started studying meditation by accident. She sustained running injuries training for the Boston Marathon, and her physical therapist told her to stretch. So Lazar took up yoga.

    "The yoga teacher made all sorts of claims, that yoga would increase your compassion and open your heart," said Lazar. "And I'd think, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm here to stretch.' But I started noticing that I was calmer. I was better able to handle more difficult situations. I was more compassionate and open hearted, and able to see things from others' points of view."

    Eventually, she looked up the scientific literature on mindfulness meditation (a category into which yoga can fall). She found the ever-increasing body of evidence that shows that meditation decreases stress, depression, and anxiety, reduces pain and insomnia, and increases quality of life.

    So she started doing some neuroscience research of her own.

    In her first study, she looked at long-term meditators (those with seven to nine years of experience) versus a control group. The results showed that those with a strong meditation background had increased gray matter in several areas of the brain, including the auditory and sensory cortex, as well as insula and sensory regions.

    This makes sense, since mindfulness meditation has you slow down and become aware of the present moment, including physical sensations such as your breathing and the sounds around you.

    However, the neuroscientists also found that the meditators had more gray matter in another brain region, this time linked to decision-making and working memory: the frontal cortex. In fact, while most people see their cortexes shrink as they age, 50-year-old meditators in the study had the same amount of gray matter as those half their age.

    That's remarkable.

    Lazar and her team wanted to make sure this wasn't because the long-term meditators had more gray matter to begin with, so they conducted a second study. In it, they put people with no experience with meditation into an eight-week mindfulness program.

    The results? Even just eight weeks of meditation changed people's brains for the better. There was thickening in several regions of the brain, including the left hippocampus (involved in learning, memory, and emotional regulation); the TPJ (involved in empathy and the ability to take multiple perspectives); and a part of the brainstem called the pons (where regulatory neurotransmitters are generated).

    Plus, the brains of the new meditators saw shrinkage of the amygdala, a region of the brain associated with fear, anxiety, and aggression. This reduction in size of the amygdala correlated to reduced stress levels in those participants.

    How long do you have to meditate to see such results? Well, in the study, participants were told to meditate for 40 minutes a day, but the average ended up being 27 minutes a day. Several other studies suggest that you can see significant positive changes in just 15 to 20 minutes a day.

    As for Lazar's own meditation practice, she says it's "highly variable. Some days 40 minutes. Some days five minutes. Some days, not at all. It's a lot like exercise. Exercising three times a week is great. But if all you can do is just a little bit every day, that's a good thing, too."

    Turns out meditating can give you the brain of a 25-year-old. Too bad it can't also give you the body of one.
    Cool. I'll have to meditate on that.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  10. #130
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Canada!
    Posts
    23,110
    Why do mentally deranged haters get to call themselves "conservatives" when really, they're just judgmental idiots?

    Go figure.
    Kung Fu is good for you.

  11. #131
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    Music for meditation?

    How is it that someone could write an article on music and meditation and completely overlook traditional chanting? Traditional chants have been handed down for centuries specifically for meditation. These sorts of nibbler articles are so disappointing.

    Hate Meditating? Try Turning On Music Instead
    CORY STIEG
    MAY 15, 2019, 11:40 AM


    PHOTOGRAPHED BY BIANCA VALLE.

    There's a common misconception that meditation is all about sitting in absolute silence and breathing. or loudly chanting om. While there is often a lot of sitting, breathing, and chanting involved in most mindfulness practices, some people prefer to listen to the sound of someone's voice or calming music.
    In fact, music can enhance meditation, and make it easier for newbies. Like meditation, "music has its own power to calm us down or help us tap into deeper levels of feeling or even consciousness," says Patricia Karpas, co-founder of the app Meditation Studio, which has guided meditations that include musical accompaniment. Music can bring us into the present moment, and help calm your "monkey mind," she says.
    Even when you're listening to a spoken meditation, music can help you focus on the practice, says Jeremy Siegel, a composer for Meditation Studio. For example, if there's complete silence during pauses, it can heighten anxiety, because you're so focused on when the instructor is going to talk again, he says. "On the contrary, if the music is there as a cushion to fill the space in between, people may wind up less distracted and more focused," he says.

    Choosing the music you want to meditate to is different than, say, crafting an energizing workout playlist. While Lizzo might be your go-to album for literally every other activity in life, meditation requires a different kind of vibe. Everyone's preference is different, but ahead are some Spotify playlists to turn on the next time you want to sit with your thoughts:

    Singing bowls.
    Singing bowls are believed to slow your brainwaves down to the same frequency as the sound waves, explains Ann Martin, Meditation Studio singing bowl teacher. "Music from singing bowls help calm the brain and relax the body so the stillness of the present moment can creep in; that's where you'll find pure consciousness for meditation success," she says.

    Cello.
    Karpas loves meditating to the cello, because "it has a beautiful deep tone that has the power to deeply soothe," she says. Other classical music that features several instruments at once is also great, because it allows you to focus without getting distracted by your own imagination, adds Chris Aimone, co-founder of Muse.

    Ambient music.
    Music that is simple and soothing can be calming for us, and provide a great context for settling the mind, Aimone says. Ambient music is a great example of this, because it often is wordless. "Music with words can be particularly challenging because words will stimulate storytelling and imagination within our minds," he says. "When we meditate, stepping outside of our stories is a critical part of the practice."

    RELAXING MEDITATION MUSIC FOR SLEEP & STRESS: PLAYLISTS
    GUIDE TO GREAT SLEEP • HEALTH TRENDS • HEALTHY LIFESTYLE TIPS • MIND • SPIRIT • WELLNESS • WORKOUT PLAYLISTS • YOGA
    WRITTEN BY CORY STIEG
    PHOTOGRAPHED BY BIANCA VALLE.
    THREADS
    Meditation
    Music Suggestions?
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  12. #132
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    The Ezra Klein Show podcast

    How the brains of master meditators change
    The scientist joins The Ezra Klein Show to discuss what he learned from bringing the Dalai Lama to his lab.

    By Ezra Klein@ezraklein May 30, 2019, 9:00am EDT


    Psychology professor Richard Davidson sits in front of a computer-projected image of a human brain at the Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior. Jeff Miller/University of Wisconsin

    Richie Davidson has spent a lifetime studying meditation. He’s studied it as a practitioner, sitting daily, going on retreats, and learning under masters. And he’s pioneered the study of it as a scientist, working with the Dalai Lama to bring master meditators into his lab at the University of Wisconsin and quantifying the way thousands of hours of meditation changed their brains.

    The word “meditation,” Davidson is quick to note, is akin to the word “sports”: It describes a huge range of pursuits. And what he’s found is that different types of meditation do very different things to your brain, just as different sports trigger different changes in your body.

    This is a conversation about what those brain changes are, and what they mean for the rest of us. We discuss the forms of meditation Westerners rarely hear about, the differences between meditative and psychedelic states, the Dalai Lama’s personality, why elite meditators end up warmhearted and joyous rather than cold and detached, whether there’s more value to meditating daily or going on occasional retreats, what happens when you sever meditation from the ethical frameworks it evolved in, and much more.

    Listen to the full interview and subscribe to The Ezra Klein Show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts:


    I haven't listened to this all the way through but I like Ezra Klein and our Q&M subforum always needs a little extra luv of late.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  13. #133
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    Belly Breathing during yoga or meditation

    What Is Belly Breathing and Why Is It Important for Exercise?
    Say it with us: deep breaths.
    By Mallory Creveling August 23, 2019


    FIZKES/GETTY IMAGES

    Take a deep breath. Do you feel your chest rise and fall or does more movement come from your stomach?

    The answer should be the latter—and not only when you're focusing on deep breathing during yoga or meditation. You should also practice belly breathing during exercise. News to you? Here's what you need to know about making your inhales and exhales come from your gut.

    What Is Belly Breathing?

    Yes, it literally means breathing deeply into your stomach. It's also known as diaphragmatic breathing because it allows the diaphragm—the muscle that runs horizontally across the belly, kind of looks like a parachute, and is the primary muscle used in respiration—to expand and contract.

    While belly breathing is our body's natural way to inhale and exhale, it's more common for adults to breath ineffectively, AKA through the chest, says Judi Bar, a 500-hour certified yoga instructor and yoga program manager at the Cleveland Clinic. Many people tend to resort to chest breathing when they're stressed because the tension makes you tighten your belly, explains Bar. This ultimately makes it harder to breathe efficiently. "It becomes a habit and because it's a more shallow breath, it actually feeds the sympathetic response—the fight or flight response—making you more stressed," she says. Thus, you get a circle of anxious reactions just from chest breathing. (Related: 3 Breathing Exercises for Dealing with Stress)

    How to Belly Breathe Properly

    In order to try belly breathing, "you first need to understand how to relax enough so there's space in the belly for the diaphragm and your breath to move," says Bar. "When you're tense and hold the belly in, you're not allowing the breath to move."

    For proof, try this little test from Bar: Pull your belly in toward your spine and try to take deep breathes. Notice how hard it is? Now relax your midsection and see how much easier it is to fill your stomach with air. That's the looseness you want to feel when you're belly breathing—and a good indication of whether it's all coming from the chest.

    The practice of belly breathing itself is pretty simple: Lie down on your back and place your hands on your belly, says Pete McCall, C.S.C.S., a personal trainer in San Diego and host of the All About Fitness podcast. Take a nice big inhale, and when you do, you should feel your belly lift and expand. As you exhale, your hands should lower. Think of your stomach like a balloon filling with air, and then slowly releasing.

    If taking deep inhales and exhales feels tough or unnatural to you, Bar suggests practicing it once or twice a day for just two or three minutes. You can place your hands on your belly to make sure you're doing it right, or just watch to make sure your stomach moves up and down. Try doing it while you're tackling an everyday task, too, says Bar, like while you're taking a shower, washing dishes, or right before you go to sleep. (Because there's nothing like a little breathing exercise to calm the mind for bedtime!)

    After you've been practicing for a while, start paying a little more attention to your breath during exercise, says Bar. Do you notice if your belly is moving? Does it change when you're squatting or running? Are you feeling energized by your breath? Take all these questions into consideration when you're doing your workout to check in with how you're breathing. (These running-specific breathing techniques can also help make miles feel easier.)

    You can belly breathe during most forms of exercise, spin class to heavy lifting. In fact, you might have seen a technique used among the heavy lifting crowd called core bracing. "Core bracing can help stabilize the spine for heavy lifts; that is a form of belly breathing because of the controlled exhalation," says McCall. To do it correctly, practice the technique before actually lifting heavy loads: Take a big inhale, hold it, then deeply exhale. During a lift (like a squat, bench press, or deadlift), you'd inhale, hold it during the eccentric (or lowering) part of the movement, then exhale while pressing to the top. (Keep reading: Specific Breathing Techniques to Use During Every Kind of Exercise)

    The Benefits of Belly Breathing During Exercise

    Well, you're working an actual muscle—and one that helps to improve core stability, says McCall. "People don't realize the diaphragm is an important stabilizing muscle for the spine," he says. "When you breathe from the belly, you breathe from the diaphragm, which means you're strengthening a muscle that stabilizes the spine." When you do diaphragmatic breathing through exercises like squats, lat pulldowns, or any of the like, you should actually feel your spine steady through the movement. And that's the big payoff of belly breathing: It can help you learn to engage your core through each exercise.

    Also, breathing from the belly allows more oxygen to move through the body, which means your muscles have more oxygen to continue crushing strength sets or conquering run times. "When you chest breathe, you're trying to fill the lunges from the top down," explains McCall. "Breathing from the diaphragm pulls air in, filling you from the bottom up and allowing more air in." This isn't only crucial to having more energy through your workouts, but throughout the day as well. Big belly breaths make you feel more awake, says McCall.

    With more oxygen throughout your body comes the ability to work harder through your workout, too. "Belly breathing improves the body's ability to tolerate intense exercise because you're getting more oxygen to the muscles, which lowers your breathing rate and helps you expend less energy," says Bar. (Also try these other science-backed ways to push through workout fatigue.)

    To top it off, practicing a few moments of mindful belly breathing—especially if you focus on counting through the inhales and exhales to make them even, as Bar suggests—can help with a little stress relief and some moments of peace (or, say, when you're recovering from a bout of burpees). "It really down-regulates your system in an effective way," says Bar, meaning it takes you away from a fight-or-flight state and into a calmer, more relaxed composure. Talk about a good way to recover—and a smart strategy for gaining mind and body benefits.

    By Mallory Creveling
    THREADS
    belly breathing
    Yoga
    Meditation
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  14. #134
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    There's a link to a news vid that interview Sin Kwang The

    Local martial arts class learns rare lessons from meditation guru
    By Angel Thompson | Posted: Sun 11:42 AM, Sep 01, 2019

    PARKERSBURG, W. Va. Grandmaster Sin Kwang The came to Shaolin Martial Arts Training Center in Parkersburg to teach meditation while walking. Grandmaster The has been coming to the city to teach classes for over 20 years.

    [IMG]https://media.graytvinc.com/images/690*386/med2.JPG[/IMG]

    "Meditation while walk is important because we will have better results when constantly moving rather than sitting down," said Grandmaster The.
    There are five steps to learning meditation while walking.

    For those who don't meditate, meditation is said to have many health benefits.

    " It reduces stress and also reduces the inflammation of our body and we become healthier and happier person. But also reduces the risk of heart attack or even cancer," said Grandmaster The.

    Jason Knapp is the owner of the Shaolin Training Center in Parkersburg. For more information call (304) 481-5185
    THREADS
    Shaolin-do teaching the SUPER SECRET invincible internal style
    Meditation
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  15. #135
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
    Posts
    47,947

    triggered by meditation

    Eva's problem here was that she trusted an app. An app doesn't always have the tools to guide you when you get into trouble. While some might be able to glean superficial benefits from self-taught meditation, if you really want to learn how to meditate, you need a good teacher.

    MEDITATION MIGHT NOT BE A GOOD FIT FOR EVERYONE—HERE’S WHY
    GOOD ADVICE
    JULIA RIES, DECEMBER 5, 2019


    Photo: Getty Images / Hero Images

    Eva*, a 31-year-old living in Paris, has dealt with severe anxiety for as long as she can remember. As an adult, she frequently experiences vivid flashbacks that take her right back to the trauma she experienced as a young girl, during which she can’t breathe, think, or work.

    Eva heard about meditation and its benefits for physical and mental health, and decided to give it a shot to see if it would help with her anxiety. She downloaded a meditation app and started using it every other day. But instead of overpowering her stress or silencing her trauma, Eva experienced the opposite effect.

    “When I attempt to make my anxiety go away using meditation, my mind fixates more strongly on the thoughts and issues at hand and [I get] overwhelmed,” says Eva, making meditation feel impossible. “The guilt afterward—that I could not clear my mind or focus for those 20 minutes—makes me feel like I wasted time and was a failure, and, therefore, the anxiety gets worse.”

    Meditation can be potentially triggering

    The majority of people can benefit from some kind of meditation practice, as it can help with a wide range of physical and mental issues, says Anne Dutton, LCSW, the director of mindfulness education at the Yale Stress Center. There’s so much evidence indicating that meditation can lift your mood, improve your focus, and help with stress management.

    Yet stories like Eva’s are not unheard of. Many people anecdotally report feeling jittery or nervous after giving meditation a go. In fact, a 2017 study from Brown University found that 82 percent of meditators experience emotional side effects like fear, panic, anxiety, and paranoia at some point during their practice.

    Health experts suspect this is because mindfulness and meditation-based interventions pull people’s awareness to their thoughts and feelings, some of which may be troubling. “You’re basically turning towards whatever is present instead of distracting yourself, so if you’re prone to rumination or very negative mood states, you will come into closer contact with them and that can be triggering,” Dutton says.

    These triggering thoughts can potentially catch people by surprise and cause a panic—which of course negates any potential calm that meditation is supposed to bring. “The quiet of meditation practice may provide a platform for rumination without any boundaries if they are not well-versed in being able to bring their attention back to the breath,” says Sue Kim, MD, an internal medicine physician with Stanford Center for Integrative Medicine. This can make meditation genuinely difficult for people with a history of trauma or other mental health conditions like anxiety or depression.

    Some people can work up to meditation—but don’t force it

    None of this is to say that meditation is bad; countless studies show the benefits of meditation and other mindfulness techniques for helping to ease symptoms of depression and anxiety in particular. But if you find that meditation can be triggering or disturbing, there are some things you can do to address it.

    “[Meditation] takes practice like any other sport or new activity,” Dr. Kim says—which is why people should ease into it to mitigate potentially upsetting situations. Just doing a few minutes a day through a guided meditation app is a good place to start, says Dutton.

    Dutton also recommends going in with no expectations. So many people have hyped meditation up to be a stress-reducing cure-all and are disappointed when they’re not blissed out afterwards. “They’ve got an idea in their head about what it means to be helpful—it means I’m going to feel a certain way [after meditating]—and that’s going to be an impediment to actual practice,” she says.

    If you start to spiral, use grounding techniques to bring your attention back to your breath and your body (think: applying pressure in the chest, touching something warm or cold, etc). Taking notice of those different sensations can help you calm down. Then stop your meditation for the day and revisit if you’re comfortable doing so.

    Over time, you may start to get the hang of it. Meditation is, after all, a form of exposure therapy. “You’re sitting with discomfort in a sustained way and just by the exposure it tends to extinguish itself,” Dutton says.

    However, if meditation persistently exasperates your anxiety or causes panic, health experts recommend avoiding it—especially if you’re by yourself. “If it does trigger distress, then certainly it’s best for individuals not to continue with the practice and to either seek professional guidance around meditation or pursue other activities that may produce similar benefits,” Dr. Kim adds.

    To her point, it might be worth trying a different kind of activity, like a somatic body-based therapy or a moving meditation practice like yoga or tai chi. The key is to find something that can help clear your head of the excess noise and commentary life brings, Dr. Kim says. If it’s not meditation, that’s completely okay.

    *Name has been changed
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •