Your place for meditation information, support and community
From the category archives:
When I teach meditation, I always get questions as to the benefits of meditation. Below is a list of benefits that science researchers, MDs, and long-term meditators have found. I’ve just copied and pasted one of the slides that I use in these talks. What’s important to realize is that none of these benefits come [...]
{ 0 comments }
Read the full article...How would you like to: Manage stress by reducing levels of stress hormones. Produce higher number of blood cells that protect the immune system. Have better quality and duration of sleep. Feel greater optimism about coming days and immediate week. Make more progress towards important personal goals. Have higher states of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness, [...]
{ 0 comments }
Read the full article...Hello everyone. Please forgive me for disappearing from this blog. In January, I came down with H1N1 (swine flu) in London. It took me 10 days before I could fly home and only now have I gotten my life back together. I want to share with you how grateful I am for my insight/mindfulness practice [...]
{ 0 comments }
Read the full article...I practice mindfulness meditation for three main reasons: Learning about the mind; Training the mind; Creating spaciousness in the mind. It’s only through our mind that we relate to ourselves, interpret the world around us, and relate to others. Therefore, the more we understand how the mind views events, responds to problems, and reacts habitually, [...]
{ 2 comments }
Read the full article...Meditation has never been easy or comfortable for me. I’m not one of those folks who taste the delight of peace and stillness in meditation unless I’m on a retreat, and even then it takes a fairly long time for me to get there, and it tends to be brief and fleeting. Most of my [...]
{ 2 comments }
Read the full article...Anna wrote, “I believe that meditation [has] a lot of benefits, now do you think it also has disadvantages?” I decided to answer her as a post because I think she asked a fascinating question. According to Encarta Dictionary (2005), synonyms for “disadvantage” include: difficulty, drawback, shortcoming, weakness, hindrance, handicap, detriment, minus, demerit, inconvenience At [...]
{ 0 comments }
Read the full article...Begin your meditation by spending a moment noticing still water. See it. Or feel it. Or “hear” it. You might only experience still water for 1 second. Notice that. Then spend a few moments expressing gratitude. Refresh this practice by feeling grateful for all the things you take for granted. Clean water out of the [...]
{ 0 comments }
Read the full article...I don’t know about you, but I’m a perfectionist so that when I meditate I want to do it perfectly. In the past that meant sitting with a quiet, non-thinking, peaceful mind that never left the breath; of course, that also meant I always fell short of my ideal. After a while, when it came [...]
{ 1 comment }
Read the full article...As I wrote in my previous post, when practicing mindfulness, you remain in the present moment, curious about and open to the thoughts, feelings, and surroundings just as they are…rejecting nothing, and clinging to nothing. You hold a space of equanimity. And this is just what you do when you sit in meditation…except you don’t [...]
{ 0 comments }
Read the full article...For me, meditation has always had a somewhat exotic flavor to it. When I first encountered a statue of the Buddha in a Japanese tea garden as a child, my mother told me he was contemplating his navel. Because I didn’t see what there was of interest to contemplate about a navel, I had no [...]
{ 0 comments }
Read the full article...How much of your life do you spend looking forward to being somewhere else?
—
