The Harvard Divinity School Augmented and Virtual Reality Collective hosted an event Thursday featuring a series of speakers and demonstrations examining the ways in which technology can influence neuroscience and meditation.

At the event, speakers presented medical and scientific research related to the mind. Dr. Jeffrey D. Rediger, a Harvard Medical School professor and Medical Director at McLean Hospital, described studying a hundred cancer patients who had experienced spontaneous remission.

He said the trends challenged his skepticism of spiritual and psychological healing methods.

In medicine, were embarrassed by them, we call them flukes. After a while, after you talk to these people, you start to see this pattern, Rediger said. I think these things happen outside of what we understand about the physical laws of nature.

MIT research scientist Andreas Mershin spoke about the importance of nurturing curiosity.

If we sustain it, if we ask better questions, we start becoming a much more powerful community and much more powerful individuals, Mershin said. Questions are more powerful than answers.

Also at the event, Baruti KMT-Sisouvong, director of Cambridges Transcendental Meditation Program, evaluated the role of transcendentalist thought on the individual and society.

Technology demonstrations following the speaker portion of the event. They included demonstrations of When We Die, a virtual reality program designed to prompt contemplation of mortality, and Chi, an app designed to provide a virtual reality simulation of Tai Chi.

The Virtual Reality Collective hosted the group Consciousness Hacking, a Cambridge-based association of thinkers at the event. Consciousness Hacking is a collective that aims to explore technology as a pathway towards psychological, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing, according to the groups website. Their research focuses on technology and neuroscience.

This is hopefully a community that lives their questions, which is totally exciting and exactly what I hoped for, said Adam H. Horowitz, a leader of Consciousness Hacking and a co-organizer of the event.

Those goals are similar to the work that the Augmented & Virtual Reality Collective hopes to tackle.

I came to HDS essentially to ask the larger question of what kind of world we are building in this technological landscape, and how can we build for well-being and really the whole human being, said Tim L. Gallati, a student at the Divinity School and founder of the Augmented & Virtual Reality Collective.

Staff writer Jordan E. Virtue can be reached at jordan.virtue@thecrimson.com.

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HDS Event Explores Overlap of Meditation, Technology, and Medicine - Harvard Crimson

By Jayam Anantharaman

Human beings are the only species in Gods creation who make an issue out of nothing. Animals take life as it comes, but when man fails to do a certain thing or to possess certain things, he gets angry and slips into a depression. An individuals decline begins with desire and ends in misery. To keep the mind happy, we have to learn to be content with minimum wants.

Krishna said in the Bhagavad Gita, From attachment desire, from desire anger, from anger infatuation, from infatuation, aconfused mind that results in loss of reason and leads one to ruin. Gradually, by rearranging your priorities, you experience peace and calm. Bringing the mind under control is not a one-day exercise. It takes time to get into the habit. Meditation also helps the mind to concentrate and enables you to achieve great results.

Like meditation, music, too, has a tranquillising effect. Those of us who perform arduous physical or mental work will benefit by listening to good classical music or bhajans early in the morning before starting the workday. Good music is atonic; it has a healing effect.

People suffering from digestive disorders, diseases of the nervous system and backache can obtain great relief by listening to soothing music.

Likewise, by submitting yourself to natures grandeur watching a sunrise or sunset in the mountains or by a beach, or sitting near a waterfall you feel both ennobled and humbled. The Divine makes its presence felt in our lives, saving us from possible decline.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Meditation, music heal - Economic Times (blog)

For Americans of all political persuasions, the last few months have been a nervous, unsettling time. Tensions that were buried under the surface are out in the open. Scary possibilities that seemed remote now feel plausible. If you're a news junkie or the sort of person who gets into arguments on social media, it can be hard to fall asleep, knowing the next breaking story or tweet could mean another major upheaval.

On the other hand, it's a great time to be a company that helps people deal with their unwanted anxiety. The week after the presidential election, Calm, the maker of an eponymous guided-meditation app, saw its rate of sales spike by more than 50 percent, according to co-founder Michael Acton-Smith. "There are a lot of very anxious, stressed people out there," he says.

He used to be one of them. Calm is Acton-Smith's third startup. His first was the online retailer Firebox.com. His second, Mind Candy, made a video game that had 80 million registered users.* Despite the success, Acton-Smith found it hard to relax. He suffered from fatigue, headaches, and "the whirring mind of an entrepreneur, waking up at 4 a.m., thinking of all these things."

Acton-Smith had long had a vague sense a mindfulness practice was something that might help him. With a friend, Alex Tew, he had even purchased the domain Calm.com in 2011 with plans to start a digital content business around mindfulness; Tew was an avid practitioner. But it wasn't until 2014 that Acton-Smith, during a long sabbatical, finally dove into the literature on meditation and began practicing it himself.

Once he experienced the benefits firsthand, he was all in. He joined Smith in San Francisco, where they set out to create products that offered the benefits of simple mindfulness training--restful sleep, improved focus, relief from stress--without the hippie-ish spiritual or cultural trappings that sometimes put people off.

Calm's core product is The Daily Calm, a 10-minute guided meditation on the app led by Tamara Levitt, the company's head of content, who has been studying various mindfulness practices for more than 25 years. Each day's meditation emphasizes a different aspect of mindfulness. After much debate, Acton-Smith, Tew, and Levitt agreed the meditations should only be available for that day and then disappear.

It turned out to be a crucial decision, Acton-Smith says. The offering encourages users to adopt Calm as a true daily habit, rather than stockpile the lessons for hypothetical later use like those back issues of The New Yorker on your nightstand you tell yourself you'll read someday. The idea of disappearing content also nicely echoes the mindfulness principle of acknowledging a thought and then letting it go. (Calm now archives a small number of its most popular Daily Calms.)

Without raising any outside money, Calm has become "very profitable," says Acton-Smith. It booked $7 million in revenue in 2016--app subscriptions cost $12.99 per month, or $60 per year--and anticipates more than $20 million this year. More than 8 million people have downloaded the app, and while some content themselves with the limited free offerings, "I've been amazed how comfortable people are paying" for the premium subscription-only tier, he says.

Besides the Daily Calm, the company's offerings include nature scenes and soundscapes, and "Sleep Stories," short, soporific tales read in a lulling voice. There's a Calm coffee-table book, and eventually Acton-Smith plans to do apparel and possibly even a Calm-themed hotel. He believes there's an opportunity to build a brand that will be "the Nike for the mind," likening the public awareness of meditation today to the state of exercise in the 1960s, before the jogging and aerobics fads. "I think we're right at the start of a new wave that's developing around mental fitness," he says.

It only helped, Acton-Smith says, when a competitor, Headspace, raised $30 million in 2015. Prior to that, he says, investors regarded mindfulness as a niche interest. Now, "People realize this is not niche. This is extremely mainstream." That said, Calm isn't eager to follow suit: "We're quite excited about continuing to grow under our own steam," he says.

Acton-Smith is an avid Calm user himself and reports much improved sleep since his Mind Candy days. A regular meditation practice is an asset to anyone doing a startup, he says. "It helps smooth out the huge highs and crushing lows that come with being an entrepreneur. No one wants to follow a leader who's screaming one minute and stressed and upset the next."

Of course, it's partly thanks to such a leader that Calm has become so popular since November. It could be a very profitable four years.

*Correction: Owing to a transcription error, the original version of this story said Moshi Monsters had 18 million registered users, rather than the correct number, 80 million. This story has also been edited to reflect the timing of Michael Acton-Smith's purchaseof Calm.com and his role at Mind Candy.

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This Meditation Startup Is Turning Stress Into Profits - Inc.com

In humanity's never-ending quest to destress, we turn to the Scandinavians for answers.

First they brought us hygge, and now they bring us Sway.

Sway is a new meditation app from the Nordic branch of Ustwo, the studio that made Monument Valley, and Danish wellness company PauseAble. It melds physical movements with the technology we carry in our pockets to help us learn mindfulness techniques.

It's not the first of its kind. Apps like Headspace, Buddhify and Pulse, which is also from Ustwo, are already helping people find peaceful moments while also being citizens of a busy world. Sway's difference is that rather than providing guided meditations, it teaches techniques designed to help you guide your own meditation and apply mindfulness to movements and moments that you'll experience in daily life.

Society today is stressing us out, and meditation is one way of dealing with this, said Ustwo Nordics' founder Marcus Woxneryd in an interview. "The problem is it needs a lot of practice and dedicated time -- it is a craft you need to become good at to get the effects of, so we wanted to enable that practice to anyone anywhere."

As with previous Ustwo apps, Sway is mesmerizing to look at. This is purposeful -- it uses gently pulsing purple graphics designed to have a calming effect -- but Ustwo is actually hoping you'll look away from your phone while you're using Sway.

The app uses audio and an ambient soundtrack to provide direction and feedback and takes its readings from your phone's gyroscope, meaning you don't need to interact with your screen. As you progress through the levels, which range in duration from three to 20 minutes, you'll learn a whole range of techniques that rely on you moving different parts of your body.

The first level, for example, encourages you to use slow flowing motions to gently move your phone around, which the app tracks with the device's gyroscopes. There are six levels on the app. Every day you move up a level, but every day you miss a meditation you move back a level.

There are six levels in total, each of which teaches a different movement-based meditation technique, many of which have been inspired by the ancient Chinese martial art tai chi. "We discovered a simple way for technology to determine voluntary attention through slow continuous bodily movements," said Peng Cheng, founder of PauseAble. "This movement itself actually anchors attention in the present moment."

Sway is about learning to meditate without the help of a guide.

The idea is that by relaxing, you can sharpen your focus and boost your concentration. The team conducted research with the Center for Human Engaged Computing at Kochi University of Technology in Japan to find out how this form of "interactive meditation" works in comparison with more established guided meditation techniques. They discovered that not only does it work as well, but in noisy environments it works better, making it ideal for your daily commute.

Consider the irony of using your phones to destress, when you've been told so often that tech is the culprit.

"We are looking at phones in a different way," said Cheng. "Many people look at it as a stressor, but we think it is more about how we design the interaction." The technology is ideal for implementing interactive meditation because it is capable of both detecting human attention and giving feedback, he added.

"Our contribution here is we discovered a simple way for technology to determine voluntary attention through slow continuous bodily movements." The hope is that users will gradually learn to sustain mindfulness for a longer period of time. It is only this way, said Cheng, that the full calming effect can be achieved.

Sway is available now on iPhone and costs 2.99 or $2.99 to download from the App Store.

Batteries Not Included: The CNET team shares experiences that remind us why tech stuff is cool.

Technically Literate: Original works of short fiction with unique perspectives on tech, exclusively on CNET.

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Ustwo's Sway app wants to put meditation in your motion - CNET - CNET

Im always searching for ways to counteract my type-A, future-focused tendencies that make me a tangled ball of stress. Try meditation, they say. Ive tried sitting still, focusing on nothing in particular and thinking about not thinking. Ive had some success with it, but the real breakthrough came when I started journaling.

Up until a couple months ago, Id always thought of journals as something my teenage self would scoff at. But actually writing with pen and paper has become a powerful therapeutic intervention for helping me stay sane, grateful, and grounded in my always-on life. The meditative effects have primarily been two-fold.

First, my journaling is an uninhibited form of creative expression where I can write whatever and however I want, and no one else can judge me. This has been especially liberating because 99% of what I write is seen by others and thus gets filtered. But when I journal, I can write about anything. I can be extremely selfish and unabashed, which leads me to essentially writing away my worries, stress, fears, and any other unpleasant thoughts I have in my head.

Laboriously laying out these thoughts on paper have led to many revelations I wouldnt have arrived at if Id just sat and ruminated on them. The second benefit sounds more meditative. With journaling, I feel utterly present in the moment, entranced by the repetitive motion of moving my pen and seeing my thoughts materialize onto paper. Its very different from when Im writing words on my laptop. Its just more relaxing.

If you decide to give journaling a shot, its important to ditch any ideas of being perfect about it. I know people whove spent way too much money on pens and notebooks, only to still have blank pages. If premium pen and paper are what youre into, then thats cool. Im okay with my notebook from the Japanese dollar store and a good enough pen. Just remember to actually, you know, write.

And dont get too hung up on what to write about. Plenty of random thoughts pop into my head throughout the day, but theres usually one that resonates more deeply than others. Before, Id used to let those thoughts languish and eventually fall into the ether, but now I spend 20-30 minutes teasing them out and just writingthere doesnt even have to be a conclusion or takeaway! Thats the great thing about this. In addition to the catharsis, you learn to be more generally aware of how certain things make you feel and why.

Its never too late to start a journal. And Im saying this after so many years of writing already.

Contributing writer. Nomad. Miscellaneous ramblings at http://thefyslife.com.

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When Meditation Doesn't Work, Try Journaling to Stay Sane - Lifehacker

During yoga pranayama exercises people practice controlling the breath, or prana, to induce a state of calm and focus. Paying attention to breathing and slowing down respiration is a core component of many mindfulness practices. Research suggests the practice has multiple benefitsit induces an overall sense of well-being while reducing anxiety and improved sleep.

But what exactly is going on in the brain during meditation? Imaging studies of humans have shown brain regions involved in mind-wandering, attention and emotion are involved in various stages of mindfulness practice. A new mouse study, published Thursday in Science, shows that neurons in the brain stem may also mediate the link between breathing and inducing a state of meditative calm.

The basis for the new study dates back to 1991, when a group of neuroscientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, (U.C.L.A.) discovered the pre-Btzinger complex, an area containing neurons that fired rhythmically in time with each breath. Quite different from the cardiac pacemaker, the breathing pacemaker has a whole variety of different rhythmsfor example, a yawn or a sigh or a gasp, says study co-author Mark Krasnow, a biochemistry professor at Stanford University. Rather than simply providing air to your lungs, these types of breaths are also associated with social and emotional signals.

Recent evidence suggests the pre-Btzinger complex can control a variety of breathing behaviors. In a study published last year in Nature, Krasnow and his colleagues reported on a subset of neurons within this brain region that is solely responsible for generating sighs. When the researchers stimulated these neurons in mice, they sighed continuously. But when the team removed those nerve cells, the animals kept breathing, never sighing. Now, the team has uncovered a separate group of neurons in this area that appear to have another specific function: regulating states of calm and arousal.

Krasnows team genetically engineered mice to remove a specific subset of neurons that contains two genes: cadherin 9 (Cdh9), a gene that is expressed in the pre-Btzinger complex, and developing brain homeobox protein 1 (Dbx1), which prior studies had demonstrated are necessary for respirationwithout it, mice do not breathe.

When the team removed these Cdh9/Dbx1 neurons from mice, the animals still breathed normally with one slight difference: breaths came more slowly than in normal mice. The rodents were also unusually calmthey spent less time exploring their surroundings and more time sitting still. We were totally surprised, says study co-author Kevin Yackle, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who conducted the study while he was a postdoc at Stanford. It certainly wasnt something we expected to find.

The researchers also discovered these neurons form connections with the locus coeruleus, another area in the brain stem involved in modulating arousal and emotion. [One] thing thats interesting about this, and surprising, is that this small group of neurons is not involved in producing the inspiratory rhythm per se, says Jeffrey Smith, a neuroscientist at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, who was not involved in the study. Smith, along with one of the current studys co-authors, neurobiologist Jack Feldman at U.C.L.A., discovered the pre-Btzinger complex. Its now becoming apparent that theres a lot of structural and functional complexity to the pre-Btzinger complex itself that we hadnt really anticipated.

Evidence from human research also suggests meditation and respiration are closely connected. In a recent study, for example, Antoine Lutz, a scientist who studies the neurobiology of meditation at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, and his colleagues at the University of WisconsinMadison discovered long-term meditators develop slower breathing patterns than those who did not practice on a regular basis. The slower breathing in long-term practitioners may activate this ascending pathway less, says Lutz, who was not involved in the current study. Maybe its a signature of a different level of stress.

According to Lutz, the findings from latest Science paper raise the possibility that any form of practicefrom yoga, pranayama to meditationthat is actively manipulating respiration might be using this pathway to regulate some aspects of arousal. He points out, however, this pathway may not be as relevant for forms of meditation that do not involve directly controlling respiration. For example, in some types of mindfulness training, individuals simply observe their breath rather than control it.

Breathing is about staying alive on one level, but its also connected to emotional life, says Christopher Del Negro, a neurophysiologist at the College of William & Mary who was not involved in the work. The studies showing that different neural populations in the pre-Btzinger complex can also control sighing and regulate arousal, begin to break that next level of not just talking about breathing for physiology, but breathing for emotional well-being, he adds.

Understanding how the brain controls breathing could also help develop new therapeutic targets to treat conditions such as anxiety, panic disorders and arousal-related sleep disorders. [Cardiologists] have ways of pharmacologically controlling the heart rhythm, Yackle says. But a similar type of pharmacological approach for breathing doesnt exist, and I think it could be important in multiple fields of medicine.

Before that happens, however, neuroscientists will first need to uncover how this brain region works in people. Researchers have found a pre-Btzinger complex in humans, but its anatomy and physiology are much less understood. For now Krasnow, Yackle and their colleagues plan to investigate the other populations of neurons in the breathing pacemaker of rodents to see what other functions they might find. The present study, though, holds promise of eventually furnishing at least a partial window on the physical underpinnings of an ancient practice.

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Meditation's Calming Effects Pinpointed in Brain - Scientific American

Ensemble XXI, directed by Jeffrey H. Rickard, will present a choral meditation for the season of Lent at 3 p.m. Sunday at Calvary Presbyterian Church, 4495 Magnolia Ave., Riverside.

Music will include Ave Verum Corpus by William Byrd, A Thanksgiving by Bob Chilcott, Prayer to Jesus by George Oldroyd, Round Me Falls the Night by Vincent Persichetti, Renew Me This Night by Jeffrey H. Rickard, Jesu, Lover of My Soul by Philip W.J. Stopford and Jesu, Grant Me This, I Pray by Percy Whitlock.

Instrumental music will be provided by Margaret Winter, flute, and Jeffrey H. Rickard, organ, and the service includes the congregational hymn What Wondrous Love is This? set to the American hymn tune Wondrous Love.

Ensemble XXI is a Redlands-based choral ensemble of more than 20 voices specializing in the presentation of choral evensong in the Anglican choral tradition.

A freewill offering will be received in support of Ensemble XXI.

Source: Ensemble XXI

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Ensemble XXI will present choral meditation for Lent April 2 at Calvary Presbyterian Church in Riverside - Redlands Daily Facts

Mar 30, 2017

Meditation is a big word thats getting lots of attention these days! So many people are talking about it but can anyone actually tell you what it is?!?

Maybe it would be easier to start with what it is not.

Meditation is not a religion; it is not a cult, its not scary or dangerous.

Meditation is a way to gain a better understanding of what is going on inside your head and your body, and it can help you have a better life.

There are almost endless different kinds of meditation but they all have one thing in common, the seated posture. Sitting with your back straight and your legs crossed allows the body to become motionless for long enough to get in touch with the feelings you are having inside, and the effect those feelings are having on your state of mind.

All of the different forms of meditation have one purpose, to allow you to detach your self from whats going on in your head!

Why does this matter? Because most of what is going on in our heads isnt very nice!

You see our brains have evolved over millions of years, to help us survive. Back in the days of lions and tigers trying to eat us, we had to be VERY sensitive to dangers around us. Now, millions of years later, the biggest threat we face in life is someone dissing us on Twitter, yet our minds are still programmed to seek out danger, so we tend to look at everything from a negative slant.

Well, it doesnt need to be that way! It is only the primitive part of our brain that sees the world that way. We are not cave people anymore! The newest parts of our brain that have evolved are where our feelings of love and happiness and creativity function.

Meditation helps us cool down the fear response that comes naturally to us, and helps us access the higher function areas of our brain.

This allows us to live happier, healthier more productive lives. By having access to this new awesome area of the brain we can do better at school, perform better in sports, have better relationships with our parents and friends, AND spot dangerous thoughts feelings and behaviors before they lead us into trouble!

As I said, there are almost endless different types of meditation used for different things, but the one I find the most useful in our everyday life here on planet earth is called Mindfulness Meditation.

The technique of Mindfulness Meditation is super easy to learn, simple to use all throughout the day and is the foundation for a happy healthy life!

For a few minutes in the morning and in the evening we sit cross-legged with our back straight to practice meditation. Then we take the skill out into our daily lives and use it every moment we can to dramatically improve the quality of our reaction to the things going on around us.

To Learn More Check Out The Next Article Called What is Mindfullness?

Do you meditate? How do you choose to relax? Comment below

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What is Meditation - Kidzworld

The middle way is an approach to life- whether monastic or as a householder- tethered to suchness. Suchness means, in practice, that only harm actually matters. In the middle way, for those who pledge to be guided by its spirit of harmlessness, the first challenge is to know the self well enough to stop the harm in which that self is complicit. Each day brings its own set of conditions favourable to the emergence of avarice, ill intent and misinformed behaviours.

The Sanskrit word for suchness istathta.It translates, as my root teacher used to say, ...things as it is. It is a term intended to indicate a state of awareness that is bereft of ideologies. To be tethered to suchness is to be tethered to the present and the imminence of all being. How can such an ideal become the basis for our practice? Our practice in real life is to apply the principle of kindness is more important than rightness. Obviously, in the beginning, anyone who wants to figure this shift out is liable to make a fool of themselves from time to time. Although we often recognize its truth right away, our binary habits easily steer us wrong. Even so, shift happens.

The harm in which we are complicit comes from a comparative mindset in which there is no interface between essential choices. In other words being judgmental, opinionated and certain about many things. Often we justify these harmful attitudes as being 'right', either through inherent superiority or in compliance with divine will. Another way to say this is to mentally set up things we like against things we do not like. This is the disease of the mind, this reflex of adversarial comparison, and if we can weaken this habit of mind we can engage in the harm reduction goal of middle way practice.

Meditation is the venue that brings all these conceptions into alignment. What this means is to cultivate an openness so thoroughgoing that it harbours no preconceptions at all. In the meditator's awareness there is only suchness; things (plural) as it is (singular). Perception moves; sometimes many sometimes one; movement completely consistent with the breathing in and breathing out that is the mark of stillness. In stillness we experience the interface between breathing in and breathing out, reallythe only thing going on at that point. We note that at the basis there is no conflict or harmful wish between breathing in and breathing out, the ideal karmic conditions; we do this in meditation.

Wayne Codlingis a former Zen monastic and a lineage holder in the Soto Zen tradition. He teaches Zen style meditation in various venues around Victoria. Waynes talks and some writings can be found on his blog http://sotozenvictoria.wordpress.com

You can find more articles from our interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking, HERE

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Why We Need Meditation - Times Colonist (blog)

It seems that when you ask anyone how they're doingwhether it's friends, family, colleagues, or strangers on the streetthe answer is always "stressed." What is causing all that stress? Turns out that most of the strain is coming from our jobs. The World Health Organization even estimates that stress costs American businesses up to $300 billion a year in job turnover costs, health care expenditures, and absenteeism.

We've morphed into a culture that expects a frenetic pace, demands that we don't stop until our energy is depleted, and asks that we limit self-care to the bare minimum. But finally, employees are resisting this speed, and employers have realized that slow and steadynot crazy and all over the placewins the race. The idea of "mindfulness" has made its way into the mainstream with apps like Calm and best-selling programs from Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey. It's become clear that the workforce needs to decompress, calm their thoughts, and take the adult version of nap time during their workday to succeed without imploding first. The solution? Meditation rooms in the office. These were once a "new age" perk pretty much only available in the start-up cultures of places like Silicon Valley. But more and more companies are now recognizing that the ability to sit still and meditate during the workday is good for employees.

A study conducted at the University of Washington found that those who had meditation training in the workplace were able to stay on task longer and were less distracted. Meditation also improved memory and alleviated stress.

Major companies are trying to capitalize on these benefits, incorporating meditation into their culture on a daily basis. Etsy's headquarters include a "breathing room" where digital devices are not allowed. The only furniture is a stack of mats. Google goes a step further by offering their staff mindfulness courses, including one called "Search Inside Yourself." At General Mills, there's a dedicated meditation room in every building of their vast campuses, and they offer all staff members weekly meditation sessions and yoga classes. They also teach "Mindful Leadership" to settle the mind and create a calmer, more productive workforce. And Zappo's, in addition to encouraging their team to meditate throughout the day, offers their employees EnergyPod chairs, massage chairs, regular wellness fairs, and on-site health screenings.

"Everyone gets stressed, so it's important to have ways to manage it in order to stay productive," explains Nico Pronk, Ph.D., F.A.C.S.M., F.A.W.H.P., president of HealthPartners Institute and chief science officer for HealthPartners. "Precision, accuracy, speed, and quality of work all suffer when people are stressed."

You guessed it: This benefits companies just as much as it benefits employees. "More productive employees create a more pleasant company culture and an increased bottom line," explains Steve Orma, Psy.D., a clinical psychologist and specialist in insomnia and anxiety. "This kind of culture attracts the most talented applicants, because they want to work in that kind of environment," he says. "Just look at all the perks companies like Google offer their employees and how that attracts the smartest people in the world."

If your company doesn't offer a quiet room (yet), then make it a priority to take 10 to 20 minutes every day to quiet your mind. Add it to your calendar. Go outside and sit on a bench to close your eyes, clear your head, and take deep breaths. Put on headphones and listen to a meditation on an app such as Calm or Headspaceyou can do it at your desk.

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Why More Companies Are Incorporating Meditation Into the Workplace - Shape Magazine