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NYT: The Magic of Meditation 

7/24/2013

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Even though I am now a few weeks into my kundalini teacher training, I can still rememeber one of the strangest, yet most powerful, things my teacher said to us.  She expressed the importance of honoring the energy that we were working with.  As we practiced, we were constantly brought back down to a state of stillness to check in with how our minds and bodies were responding to this energetic practice.  I couldn't understand the importance of it until I began to read more and more about the beginnings of kundalini and my home practice began to develop more deeply.  

It has been noted that if this energy isn't respected and is continually being drawn upward through our bodies that we can almost feel trippy side effects.  As we raise kundalini, we should bring it back down as well.  Balance.  What I found so cool about this, was that it was actually documented!  What that meant to me was that there truly was something powerful within this practice.  There were studies done to show how minds and bodies are effected while practicing kundalini.  Maybe it's my inner geek coming out, but I just thought that was amazing!  I often feel that we speak about the benefits of yoga and meditation and energy work (like EFT and kundalini) but most people kind of gawk at the idea that anything is actually happening inside of us.  

So you can imagine how excited I got when I came across this recent article in the NYT about the proven benefits of meditation.  This study shows that meditation actually makes us more compassionate.  How awesome is that?  
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The Morality of Meditation

MEDITATION is fast becoming a fashionable tool for improving your mind. With mounting scientific evidence that the practice can enhance creativity, memory and scores on standardized intelligence tests, interest in its practical benefits is growing. A number of “mindfulness” training programs, like that developed by the engineerChade-Meng Tan at Google, and conferences like Wisdom 2.0 for business and tech leaders, promise attendees insight into how meditation can be used to augment individual performance, leadership and productivity.

This is all well and good, but if you stop to think about it, there’s a bit of a disconnect between the (perfectly commendable) pursuit of these benefits and the purpose for which meditation was originally intended. Gaining competitive advantage on exams and increasing creativity in business weren’t of the utmost concern to Buddha and other early meditation teachers. As Buddha himself said, “I teach one thing and one only: that is, suffering and the end of suffering.” For Buddha, as for many modern spiritual leaders, the goal of meditation was as simple as that. The heightened control of the mind that meditation offers was supposed to help its practitioners see the world in a new and more compassionate way, allowing them to break free from the categorizations (us/them, self/other) that commonly divide people from one another.

But does meditation work as promised? Is its originally intended effect — the reduction of suffering — empirically demonstrable?

To put the question to the test, my lab, led in this work by the psychologist Paul Condon, joined with the neuroscientist Gaëlle Desbordes and the Buddhist lama Willa Miller to conduct an experiment whose publication is forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science. We recruited 39 people from the Boston area who were willing to take part in an eight-week course on meditation (and who had never taken any such course before). We then randomly assigned 20 of them to take part in weekly meditation classes, which also required them to practice at home using guided recordings. The remaining 19 were told that they had been placed on a waiting list for a future course.

After the eight-week period of instruction, we invited the participants to the lab for an experiment that purported to examine their memory, attention and related cognitive abilities. But as you might anticipate, what actually interested us was whether those who had been meditating would exhibit greater compassion in the face of suffering. To find out, we staged a situation designed to test the participants’ behavior before they were aware that the experiment had begun.

WHEN a participant entered the waiting area for our lab, he (or she) found three chairs, two of which were already occupied. Naturally, he sat in the remaining chair. As he waited, a fourth person, using crutches and wearing a boot for a broken foot, entered the room and audibly sighed in pain as she leaned uncomfortably against a wall. The other two people in the room — who, like the woman on crutches, secretly worked for us — ignored the woman, thus confronting the participant with a moral quandary. Would he act compassionately, giving up his chair for her, or selfishly ignore her plight?

The results were striking. Although only 16 percent of the nonmeditators gave up their seats — an admittedly disheartening fact — the proportion rose to 50 percent among those who had meditated. This increase is impressive not solely because it occurred after only eight weeks of meditation, but also because it did so within the context of a situation known to inhibit considerate behavior: witnessing others ignoring a person in distress — what psychologists call the bystander effect — reduces the odds that any single individual will help. Nonetheless, the meditation increased the compassionate response threefold.

Although we don’t yet know why meditation has this effect, one of two explanations seems likely. The first rests on meditation’s documented ability to enhance attention, which might in turn increase the odds of noticing someone in pain (as opposed to being lost in one’s own thoughts). My favored explanation, though, derives from a different aspect of meditation: its ability to foster a view that all beings are interconnected. The psychologist Piercarlo Valdesolo and I have found that any marker of affiliation between two people, even something as subtle as tapping their hands together in synchrony, causes them to feel more compassion for each other when distressed. The increased compassion of meditators, then, might stem directly from meditation’s ability to dissolve the artificial social distinctions — ethnicity, religion, ideology and the like — that divide us.

Supporting this view, recent findings by the neuroscientists Helen Weng, Richard Davidson and colleagues confirm that even relatively brief training in meditative techniques can alter neural functioning in brain areas associated with empathic understanding of others’ distress — areas whose responsiveness is also modulated by a person’s degree of felt associations with others.

So take heart. The next time you meditate, know that you’re not just benefiting yourself, you’re also benefiting your neighbors, community members and as-yet-unknown strangers by increasing the odds that you’ll feel their pain when the time comes, and act to lessen it as well.

David DeSteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, where he directs the Social Emotions Group. He is the author of the forthcoming book “The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More.”
link to story http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/opinion/sunday/the-morality-of-meditation.html?_r=1& 

Yeah. I'm still geeking out.  If you're not already hitting the meditation cushion regularly, get your butt on that!

meditation makes magic happen! 

xo, b

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kundalini meditation for stress relief

7/3/2013

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I wanted to share a Kundalini meditation with you today that you can literally do anywhere!  I have been practicing this meditation and love the peace it offers to both my mind and my body.  This is a great meditation to incorporate into your daily life and also right before or after a stressful situation. 

KUNDALINI MEDITATION FOR STRESS RELIEF 


-sit upright in a comfortable position and rest your hands on your knees in gyan mudra 

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-inhale through your nose for 8 strokes (8 inhales)
if you're new to pranayama and breathwork, you can start with less inhales and work your way up to 8. make these inhales steady and even


-once you complete the inhales, release the breath through one, steady exhale through your nose



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-complete these breaths in cycles: inhale 8 strokes, exhale 1 stroke 
continue this breathwork for anywhere from 3-11 minutes.  
again, the timing may be something you need to work up to. take your time and do what works best for you! if at any point it feels uncomfortable, return to breathing normally.


-once you complete the breathwork, take a long inhale through your nose and hold for 15 seconds. Then release for one long exhale. 
Take another long inhale and hold for 15-20 seconds. While you're holding your breath in, roll your shoulders forward. Exhale and stop the shoulder rolls. 
Finish this meditation off by taking one last long inhale and hold for 15-20 seconds.  As you hold, shake and roll your shoulders to loosen any tightness or stress. Then stop the shoulder rolls and exhale. 



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After you're done with this meditation, sit in stillness and enjoy the energy and calmness.  let yourself be present in the experience.  



practice this meditation the next time you're stressed!  Or even better, practice once or twice a day to keep the anxiety away.  



xo b 
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How Do You Show Up?

6/24/2013

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Seems like such a simple question.  I often end my classes asking this.  Once the sweaty flow is over and everyone is basking in the light and energy of a deep savasana, they all curl up into a ball and rest for a moment.  I ask everyone to pause in that fetal position.  Many times it's used as a pit-stop on the way to sitting back up on the mat.  But, I adore this pose.  The fetal position is one that represents new life and fresh starts.  We get a chance to "start over" after each practice.  Essentially, we get to press the reset button.  We have the ability to step off the mat as the person we want to be.  We can decide there how we want to show up in the world. 

Do you ever think about that? I often reflect on how I used to show up.  I was quiet, anxious and fearful.  I wanted to show up as someone strong, competent and able to share my message.  I knew the person I wanted to be.  And I knew that's not the person I was being. 

Now I'm very aware of how I show up for people.  I want to be support for my husband.  I want to be a guide for my students.  I want to be an eager student for my teachers.  And I want to be a messenger and voice for anxiety for the world and share my experiences and healing journey with as many people as I can!  

We all have people we want to show up for.  And we have desires of how we want to show up for ourselves.  Think about the energy you want to share with the people around you.  Don't let your fear push you up against a wall.  

The next time you finish your practice, curl up into that fetal position and think about who you want to be and how you can be that for the world.  We are so incredibly lucky to get that 'do-over' and fresh start everytime we step off the mat. Let's not waste this beautiful opportunity to shine bright!

xo b 
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    Author

    I'm a formerly anxious chick that found my zen on the mat. I used yoga, pranayama and yogic philosophies to alleviate my debilitating anxiety and get my life back on track. Now, I spend my time teaching yoga, coaching others and helping people find a more peaceful path in life. 

    * The opinions expressed on this blog are solely my own and what personally worked for me. Always consult a physician before starting any new yoga or workout routine. 

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