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21 Day Meditation Challenge: My Experience

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Re-Centering Guided Meditation by Twin Tree Healing
Subscribe to Twin Tree TV: Virtual workshops that encompass the modern-day approach of two sisters; infusing shamanistic, angelic, and intuitive practices into spiritual teachings. And as...

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Chankama Sutta (Dipabhavan Meditation Centre, Koh Samui)
Chankama Sutta Dipabhavan Meditation Centre, Koh Samui track: KAGO DO - Skylines (Original Mix) [Wavetech Music] http://pro.beatport.com/track/skylines-original-mix/5652402 kagodomusic.com.

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CAUTION! Powerful Kundalini Awakening 528Hz Music for MEDITATION
CAUTION! Powerful Kundalini 528Hz Chakra Tuning Music for Meditation - Deep Relaxing Binaural Beats Enjoy this really powerful and effective binaural brainwave power meditation music. Lay...

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David Brendel is concerned that mindfulness is gaining a cultlike status in the business world.

As a physician, psychiatrist, and executive coach, Brendel doesnt have anything against mindfulness and meditation techniques. He knows the benefits mindfulness poses for stress levels and life-threatening illnesses. He's well aware of the growing neuroscience research that demonstrates the positive effects mindfulness has on the brain. He incorporates a lot of cognitive psychology into his own work to help clients transform their mindsets and work on important behavioral changes needed for career success.

The problem he has with mindfulness is that everyone seems to be for it, and Brendel is worried were all just blindly following the leader.

"Ive been struck by the growth of different mindfulness approaches over the years, and I recommend them to many of my clients," Brendel tells Fast Company. "At the same time, Ive noticed over the past year or so, [mindfulness] has just sort of exploded in the popular press and popular imagination, and you see almost nothing about it thats critical, negative, or cautionary."

Brendel says this kind of "blind acceptance" can prevent people from using the constructive critical eye so desperately needed when thinking about potential risks of a practice thats gained so much traction, it was called a "revolution" by Time magazine in 2014.

Below are the risks, according to Brendel, of a blanket acceptance of mindfulness in the office:

Brendels biggest concern with mindfulness is that it can lead to avoidance in thinking through overwhelming situations and having difficult conversations. Instead of pushing through internal barriers to change thoughts and behavioral patterns, people accept them.

"So, instead of carefully, logically, and rationally thinking about difficult issues and coming to very difficult decisions, [some of my clients] were kind of backing up from those scary and overwhelming thoughts that they needed to have or decisions that they needed to make or difficult conversations that they needed to have, and just going into a state of acceptance," he explains, "and just noticing whats going on but not actually changing."

Instead of pushing through internal barriers to change thoughts and behavioral patterns, people accept them.

Meditation and mindfulness can lead to analytical thought processes if people use the practices to change their usual way of doing things. But the practices can also lead people to block out the world and accept their lives. If this is the case, mindfulness can have adverse effects on creative breakthroughs since, so often, you need to change the way you think to have "aha" moments.

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The Downsides To Mindfulness Practices At Work

When Rebecca Erwin was a varsity rower at the University of North Carolina, the coach had the team's members take a yoga and meditation class.

It had an impact.

"My teammates and I noticed that yoga and meditation improved our flexibility and focus, but also made us feel better, not just when we were rowing but in our everyday lives," she recalled. "I wondered if yoga and meditation really have scientific benefits, especially if they have specific effects on the brain, and if so, how that works."

Since becoming Rebecca Erwin Wells, M.D., she has done more than wonder about the effects of mind-body interventions, she has studied them.

"We're coming to recognize that meditation changes people's brains," said Wells, an assistant professor of neurology at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. "And we're just beginning to gain understanding of what those changes mean and how they might benefit the meditator."

In separate clinical studies, Wells has looked into the effectiveness of a meditation and yoga program called mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) as a therapy for mild cognitive impairment -- problems with memory or other faculties without yet having dementia -- and for migraine headaches.

In the first study, the participants were adults between 55 and 90 with mild cognitive impairment. Those who practiced MBSR for eight weeks had significantly improved functional connectivity in the brain's network that is active during introspective thought such as retrieving memories, along with trends of less atrophy in the hippocampus (the area of the brain responsible for emotions, learning and memory) compared with the participants who received conventional care. These findings indicate that meditation may positively affect the areas of the brain most impacted by Alzheimer's and thus may be capable of slowing the progress of the disease.

Wells' second study found that adults with migraines who practiced MBSR for eight weeks had shorter and less debilitating migraines than those in the control group who received standard medical care. The members of the MBSR group also had trends of less frequent and less severe attacks, and reported having a greater sense of self-control over their migraines.

"Both of these were pilot studies with small subject groups and additional research is needed, but I'm still very excited by the findings," said Wells, who began both studies while completing fellowships at Harvard Medical School. "This type of meditation is a safe and relatively simple intervention, and if it can delay cognitive decline and help relieve migraines, it could contribute to improved quality of life for many of these individuals."

Another Wake Forest Baptist faculty member probing meditation's effects and capabilities is Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., an assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy.

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Researchers probing potential power of meditation as therapy

The aging actress has always been a deliciously potent subject for movies, from Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard" to Margo Channing in "All About Eve" and way beyond.

It's clear why: The struggle to remain young and vital is so universal, yet especially urgent for a movie star. It's also because playing an aging star is such a wonderfully juicy role for well, an aging star.

Which brings us to gorgeous Juliette Binoche, who, at 51, is hardly what we'd call aging even if she looked her age, which she doesn't, we all know 50 is the new 30. Still, in "Clouds of Sils Maria," her luminous, expressive face becomes an ideal canvas for director Olivier Assayas to meditate on the interweaving forces of time, age, identity, self-worth, art, and oh, a few other things.

Assayas also makes excellent use of a compelling Kristen Stewart, moving yet further from her "Twilight" days (and slyly mocking them) as a cerebral, doubt-plagued personal assistant. Assayas completes his intriguing actress triangle with young Chloe Grace Moretz as an of-the-moment Hollywood starlet who seeks more serious acting cred.

Binoche plays Maria Enders, a 40-something French actress who's found success both in serious European work and in Hollywood blockbusters (much like Binoche herself). "I'm tired of acting hanging from wires in front of green screens," she tells her assistant, Valentine (Stewart). "I've outgrown it."

All the more reason, Valentine will argue, that Maria should accept an offer to star in a London revival of the play and then film that made her a star two decades earlier. In "Maloja Snake," named after a mystical Alpine cloud formation that signals bad weather, Maria once shone as the ingenue Sigrid, whose potent charms drive her older boss, Helena, to suicide.

But now, Maria's being asked to play not Sigrid, but Helena. She hates the character for her weakness and desperation. Making things worse, the actress who first played the role ended up dying soon after in a car accident, adding superstition to the mix.

But Maria realizes it's an opportunity she can't pass up especially with the publicity that Jo-Ann Ellis (Moretz) will generate; a Lindsay Lohan type, she's a TMZ regular and utter catnip to the paparazzi.

So she agrees, and the lengthy middle section of the film finds her hair now cut unglamorously short, with no more makeup or sleek gowns holed away to rehearse lines with Valentine in a remote Swiss Alps chalet, near where one can occasionally spy that eerie-but-beautiful cloud formation. In these increasingly intense scenes, the line often seems intentionally blurred between the two women's real-life interaction and the roles they're reading.

Amid all the subtext about aging, there's also an exploration of what constitutes art. Maria and Valentine check out Jo-Ann's latest Hollywood film, watching her zap an opponent with her superpowers, and then share a lively debate. "There's no less truth there than in a supposedly serious film," Valentine insists, to which Maria simply bursts out laughing. Assayas is purposely playing here with Stewart's "Twilight" history, and Stewart seems to enjoy playing along.

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Review: Binoche, Stewart Excel in Assayas' Meditation on Age

Dharma teacher Frank Jude Boccio, a born and bred New Yorker, didnt expect to like Tucson. The city changed his mind.

The punk-rock-writer-turned-Zen Buddhist does miss a few things about New York City, particularly the unity among Buddhist traditions there. About six years ago, he started the secular Zen Buddhist community, Empty Mountain Sangha, in his Tucson living room. After sharing space with Tucson Yoga, 150 S. Fourth Ave., for about five years, the group moved in March to its own space at 148 S. Fourth Ave.

Boccio, 58, moved to Tucson in 2007 after a stint in Oregon and says he finds the various Buddhist communities here are rather insular.

He hopes to change that.

On Saturday, Empty Mountain Sangha will sponsor a Change Your Mind Day, a day of free meditation teachings and practices at Armory Park. Teachers from five meditation traditions will share the basics of their practices, punctuated by flute music and qigong a combination of breathing, meditation and fluid movements.

Boccio brought the idea with him from New York City, where Change Your Mind Day was first practiced in Central Park in the early 1990s. Started by the Tricycle Foundation, a nonprofit that publishes a Buddhist journal, Change Your Mind Day has spread across the country.

Boccio hopes the days first appearance in Tucson will promote collaboration among Buddhist traditions. He loved that variety in New York.

I went to them all, Boccio says of the meditation days in the park. It was basically just a day to hang out in Central Park and listen to teachers from various traditions.

Boccios experience with yoga began as a result of his dissolving first marriage.

I went to a yoga center and was so blissed out after my first class and savasana, he says. What I noticed after a few weeks is that I felt great while doing yoga and when I left the studio, but by the time I got off the subway to go home, I was already stressed out.

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AVERILL PARK, NY (PRWEB) April 09, 2015

Educator and award-winning author Leonard Perlmutter will teach a new six session course entitled, Comprehensive Meditation at The American Meditation Institute April15 through May 20, 2015. The course curriculum includes meditation, easy-gentle yoga, therapeutic breathing, mind optimization techniques, Ayurvedic medical principles and the power of prayer. While the program is open to the general public, attending physicians will receive 15 AMA Category 1 credits and nurses will receive 15 contact hours.

The program of study will present a comprehensive survey of the historical, philosophical and scientific nature of meditation, yoga and Ayurveda. Leonard Perlmutter, the founder and director of the American Meditation Institute, is the author of The Heart and Science of Yoga: A Blueprint for Peace, Happiness and Freedom from Fear. Noted medical, pioneer physicians Mehmet Oz MD (Dr. Oz), Dean Ornish MD, Bernie Siegel MD and Larry Dossey MD have endorsed Mr. Perlmutters book, which serves as the curriculum for this "Comprehensive Meditation course.

In 2008, AMI conducted a retrospective case study of participants who previously completed and practiced the material taught in Leonard Perlmutters course. The study found that students experienced the following positive, reproducible, long-term health-promoting changes: lowered blood pressure, lowered heart rate, reduced cholesterol levels, decreased chest pain, diminished or extinguished acute and chronic pain, weight loss, increased breathing capacity, increased exercise capacity, improved quality and quantity of sleep, improved energy levels, increased creative capacity, diminishment of migraine headaches, significant reductions in stress and fear, elimination of irritable bowel syndrome, a general sense of happiness and optimism in all facets of life for every participant

According to recent course graduate, Joel M. Kremer, MD, who is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology in Albany, New York, This teaching has been an enormous benefit in my personal and professional life. I have less stress, more focus, and am able to serve my patients with greater clarity. It becomes surprisingly easy now to recognize the many clinical situations in which patients with somatic manifestations of 'dis-ease' could greatly benefit from Yoga Science. -30-

About the American Meditation Institute The American Meditation Institute is a 501(c)3 non-profit educational organization devoted to the teaching and practice of Yoga Science, meditation and its allied disciplines as mind-body medicine. In its holistic approach to wellness, the AMI combines the healing arts of the East with the practicality of modern Western science. The American Meditation Institute offers a wide variety of classes, retreats, and teacher training programs. AMI also publishes Transformation, a bi-monthly journal of Yoga Science as holistic mind-body medicine. Call 800.234.5115 for a mail or email subscription.

Media Contact: Robert Washington 60 Garner Road, Averill Park, NY 12018 Tel: 800-234-5115 Fax: 518-674-8714

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Founder of The American Meditation Institute Leonard Perlmutter Presents New Meditation and Yoga Course to Reduce ...

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2HrsRain on Wooden Deck ~ Healing Ambient Sounds for Deep Sleeping Study Relaxation Meditation
ASMR. Soothing sounds of the rain that falls on a wooden deck. A perfect moment to relax or fall asleep. Sweet sounds of nature help to sleep children and adults. Peaceful atmosphere for concentrat...

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2HrsRain on Wooden Deck ~ Healing Ambient Sounds for Deep Sleeping Study Relaxation Meditation - Video