Ashfield

Al-Anon Meeting: Mondays at 7:30 p.m. 469 Main St., opposite St. Johns Church.

Celebrate Recovery: A 12-step program open to all seeking freedom from hang-ups and habits. Meets Tuesdays at 7 p.m. at the Athol-Orange Baptist Church, corner of Church and Walnut streets. For more information, call Mike K. at 978-894-5960.

Yoga Classes: Pure Yoga & Wellness Studio, 10C Elm St., offers classes in yoga, pilates, core fitness tai chi, reiki, seimei and massage. The first class is free. Contact Jody Fontaine at 413-824-9435 or info@pureyogawellness.com.

Movie Matinee at Greenfield Senior Center, 35 Pleasant St.: Monday at 1 p.m. featuring Ghost, starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. Friday, Nov. 1, at 1 p.m., RBG, Ruth Bader Ginsberg documentary. Call 413-772-1517 or stop by the front desk to reserve a seat. Space is limited. Free.

Greenfield Zen: Mondays, 7 to 8:30 p.m. Sitting and walking meditation. Cushions and chairs available. $5 suggested donation, but not required. Initial instruction for beginners at 7. All are welcome at the Community Yoga & Wellness Center, 16 Federal St. (second floor) Contact Paul Sonier at 413-665-0278 or prajna801@icloud.com.

GriefShare, a 13-week Christian support group, is now taking place at Living Waters Assembly of God, 450 Davis St. Encourages and helps those experiencing grief from the loss of a loved one, family member, friend, son, daughter, child, parent, relative or whoever, and helps to bring comfort, strength, healing and joy to their lives. Every Tuesday at 11 a.m. or 6:30 p.m.

The Center for Self-Reliance Food Pantry, 3 Osgood St., is open every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. to eligible Franklin County residents. The pantry provides a free variety of healthy and nutritious food choices, including fresh produce and frozen meats. Call 413-773-5029 or email jcosta@communityaction.us for more information.

MEGAdanceZumba Fitness: Mondays and Thursdays, 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., Guiding Star Grange, 401 Chapman St. First class is free. For more information, call Megan at 413-552-6288 or visit MEGAdanceZumba Fitness on Facebook.

Cub Scouts Pack 3: Meets Mondays, 6:30 p.m., First Congregational Church, 43 Silver St. All boys in grades one to five are welcome; new members can join at any time. For more information, call Mark Maloney at 413-773-8618 or John Passiglia at 413-773-3757.

Debtors Anonymous: Tuesday, 6 p.m., The RECOVER Project, 68 Federal St. This is a 12-step program designed to help transform ones relationship with money. For additional information, call 413-773-5608.

Zen Meditation: Tuesday, 7 to 9:30 p.m. and Saturday, 9 to 11:30 a.m., Green River Zen Center, Studio B, second floor, 158 Main St. For more information, call 413-256-1549 or visit greenriverzen.org.

Yoga for Seniors at the Montague Retreat Center, Tuesdays at 9 a.m. First class for new students free. klarosmovement@gmail.com

PVRS Weight Room: Open Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 6 to 7 p.m. to Northfield residents.

Halloween at Mahar: Trick-or-treating and Halloween games, with prizes, will take place at the Ralph C. Mahar Regional School on Tuesday from 6 to 7:30 p.m. The event is for grades kindergarten to 6 only and features approximately 16 stations for children to collect candy. Free. Parental supervision required. Sponsored by the Mahar Key Club, the Mahar National Honor Society and the Mahar Student Council.

NELCWIT Support Group: Creative Ways is a support group for survivors of abusive relationships to express their emotions through artistic mediums, facilitated by a NELCWIT counselor. It meets from 10 a.m. to noon on Mondays at NELCWITs office in Orange. Free and confidential. Call for more information: 413-772-0871.

Free Weekly Tales & Tunes: Enjoy stories, songs and craft activities with your child(ren) and other families and caregivers from your community at the M.N. Spear Memorial Library. Tales & Tunes will continue for the 2019 to 2020 school year on Mondays from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Facilitated by Katie Tolles and intended for children up to age 5. Sponsored by the M.N. Spear Memorial Library and Union 28 Community Network for Children program. For more information, contact Gillian Budine at 978-544-5157 or budine@erving.com.

Weekly Playgroup: Enjoy time with your child(ren) and other families and caregivers from your community at the Shutesbury Elementary School. For the 2019 to 2020 school year, playgroup will be Fridays from 8:45 to 10:15 a.m. Facilitated by Joie Ciepiela and intended for children up to age 5. Sponsored by the Shutesbury Elementary School and Union 28 Community Network for Children program. Not held during school closures. For more information, contact Gillian Budine at 978-544-5157 or email budine@erving.com.

Welcome New Baby: A special offer for new babies (up to 6 months old) and their families in the communities of Erving, Leverett, New Salem, Shutesbury and Wendell. Welcome Baby visits are a comfortable and comforting way for parents to connect with an early childhood expert and get information that you can use with your new baby and their siblings. Gift bags are free and made possible by funding from a Coordinated Family and Community Engagement grant. For more information or to schedule a visit, contact budine@erving.com or 978-544-5157.

Union 38 Family Network Free Drop-In Playgroup for children up to age 5 and their caregivers. Fridays, 9:30 to 11:30 am. throughout the school year at Sunderland Elementary School. Not held during school closures and holidays. Contact Amy Battisti at amy.battisti@frsu38.org or 413-362-9145 with questions. Funded by a Coordinated Family and Community Engagement grant.

Heartfulness Meditation: Every Sunday at 8:45 a.m. at the Heartfulness Meditation Center, 267 Amherst Road. For more information, visit heartfulnessmeditationpv.org or email heartfulnesspioneervalley@gmail.com.

The Womens Center at Montague Catholic Social Ministries is offering free sewing classes on Mondays from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Snacks provided. Guided lessons, free fabric, other materials and the use of sewing machines supplied. The class is for beginners and women who already know how to sew. The goal is to allow women to learn a skill that could possibly support economic security. To register, call 413-863-4804, ext. 1003 or 413-325-4200 or email womenscenters@mcsmcommunity.org.

Parents Helping Parents Grandparent/Parent Support Group: Meets the second Tuesday of the month from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at The United Arc, 294 Avenue A. For more information, call/text 413-834-4073 or email patkeith@unitedarc.org.

Basic Needs Program: The program, at Montague Catholic Social Ministries, is open Wednesdays, 9 a.m. to noon, for resources and referrals. To leave a message or to make an appointment, call 413-863-4804, ext. 1002. To access Basic Needs, buzz 103 at the Moltenbrey entrance on 3rd Street.

Union 38 Family Network Free Drop-In Playgroup for children up to age 5 and their caregivers will be offered Tuesdays from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. throughout the school year at Whately Elementary School. Not held during school closures and holidays. Contact Amy Battisti at amy.battisti@frsu38.org or 413-362-9145 with questions. Funded by a Coordinated Family and Community Engagement grant.

Rep. Paul Mark Office Hours: Mark, or his aide, hold office hours Mondays at the Greenfield Community College Downtown Center, 270 Main St., Room 119, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Thursdays at the Charlemont Town Hall, 9 a.m. to noon; and Northfield Town Hall, 1 to 4 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays by appointment. For more information, call 413-464-5635.

Greenfield Salvation Army Free Community Meals and Drop-in Center: Open Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Breakfast from 8 to 10 a.m. Lunch 11 a.m. to noon on Mondays and Tuesdays, and 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday through Friday. Coffee is always on.

A Free Community Meal is served Mondays at 5:30 p.m., Our Lady of Peace Church, 7th Street, Turners Falls. Sponsored by the Franklin County Community Meals Program.

Second Helping Supper: Mondays, Episcopal Church of Saints James and Andrew, 8 Church St., Greenfield. Doors open at 4 p.m., supper served at 5:30. Sponsored by the church and Deerfield Academy.

Loaves & Fishes: Free hot meal, Mondays and Thursdays at 5:30 p.m., Bethany Lutheran Church, Cheney Street, Orange. Sponsored by the Franklin County Community Meals Program.

Community Meal: Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 5:30 p.m., Second Congregational Church, Court Square, Greenfield. Sponsored by the Franklin County Community Meals Program. Volunteer groups interested in assisting in the preparation of the meal or anyone who wants more information can call 413-772-1033 or write to: P.O. Box 172, Greenfield MA 01302.

West County Community Supper: Fridays, Trinity Church, 17 Severance St., Shelburne Falls. Coffee and tea at 5 p.m.; supper at 5:30.

Stone Soup Cafe: Meal at All Souls Church, Greenfield, on Saturdays at noon. As a pay-what-you-can offering, those who can afford to make a donation may do so while those who cant are never discriminated against or turned away. Food includes vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free options.

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Talk of the Towns: Oct. 25, 2019 - The Recorder

Earlier this month, the insurance and health services company Cigna hosted a meditation event featuring Ted Danson. Come meditate with Ted Danson, the email invitation read. As a busy actor, producer and family man, Danson also understands that it is important to take action to reduce burdensome everyday stressors. At first I ignored it (and how did Ted Danson get connected with Cigna?), but then I was having a rough week and I thought, I want to meditate why not?

The event was held at a small yoga and meditation studio. A couple dozen other members of the press and I sat on meditation cushions, and Danson kicked it off by talking with a Cigna psychiatrist about the dangers of chronic stress, and about the benefits of meditation. (It lowers blood pressure, improves mood regulation, and enhances nervous-system function.) He also mentioned it being good for upending the ego, and for getting out of your own dead-end thought patterns.

Photo: Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for Cigna

It all felt kind of surreal a beloved celebrity talking about personal pain, sponsored by an insurance giant (an industry notorious for causing stress?) but it was also nice, honestly. Then we were all led in a 20-minute meditation session by an instructor named Marissa (pictured, up top). She guided us to feel the weight of our seats on the cushion, the weight of our hands on our legs, to hear the sounds around us, to feel the temperature of the air on our skin It all went by very quickly, and I never really stopped thinking, worrying, or adjusting to the strangeness of the situation, but when I opened my eyes, I felt good.

At one point beforehand, Marissa had said that it was fine to have a meditation practice that felt insultingly short, which I liked. That five minutes would be great, but that even five breaths would be helpful. She also said that the point of meditation wasnt to clear your thoughts and feel peaceful, but to sit with your own annoying mind, almost to prove that you can.

Afterward, people asked Danson about his acting career, his meditation routine, and the end of The Good Place. It felt funny and yet strangely appropriate to be talking about television in the same breath as existential dread, sponsored by insurance. How do you deal with emotional pain? Did you take home any keepsakes from the set? Why are we here?

The meditation session was also nice enough that I thought, Why not actually do this for a while? Id shown up to the event feeling bent out of shape I was down about various work and life things and afterward I felt better. Minorly rearranged. Since then, Ive been doing ten-minute sessions most days on Headspace. I know Im the last person in the world to get into Headspace, but it has a free beginners ten-day sequence. Strange doors are always appearing, it seems, to take us where we want to go.

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The Secret to Inner Peace Is Ted Danson - The Cut

Coffee, exercise and meditation now beat catching up on the news when it comes to the perfect morning ritual, according to a new study.

The findings emerged in a survey of 2,000 Americans which sought to explore peoples morning routines, lifestyles and the way in which they wish to spend their time.

Results showed over half (52%) find time for coffee in the a.m., while a further two in five want to exercise first thing in the morning even before jumping into reading the news and starting their workday.

These days, Americans celebrate the self-care movement and embrace the concept of activities such as meditation in regard to its contemplative and mood-elevating abilities 36% said that they would meditate if given the freedom to design their perfect morning.

In fact, one in three now considers meditation an essential element to the perfect morning.

The research, conducted by OnePoll in conjunction with Thermador, saw that exercise or some form of meditation is more essential to any perfect morning than even reading the news (31%) or watching it on TV (33%).

Still, dreams of meditative contemplation or relaxing post-yoga lattes can seem distant for most respondents, and the freedom to design their own schedule elusive. Two-thirds (65%) long for more control of their mornings and 77% rate their mornings as busy.

A lively one in five said they are always in a rush to even get out of the door each morning.

No matter your individual lifestyle, customizing your day is an indulgence we all wish we could have, said a spokesperson for Thermador.

This survey illustrates the need that todays luxury consumers share to personalize their morning experiences so that they can better achieve the ever-elusive perfect start to the day.

The trend toward more self-reflection time in the morning was also apparent in other core morning must-haves that luxury consumers would regularly indulge in if given the opportunity to design their life: yoga (24%) and juicing (26%) were among the things professionals would love to prioritize when it comes to customizing their busy schedules.

Time is such a precious commodity that even the slightest boost is welcomed one in four respondents said simply having 10 extra minutes per day would make all the difference, while a mere 30 minutes was deemed the average response for the sample as a whole.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, three quarters (74%) of those surveyed agree that having more time in the morning would be a true luxury.

So, is this dream of an extra 30 minutes per day attainable? Well, with cooking and food preparation taking up the most time of any given day, the secret may lie in kitchen automation.

When asked to consider the latest time-saving kitchen innovations from fully automatic coffee machines, to dishwashers designed to complete a wash cycle in just 20 minutes, respondents estimated that they could save 27 minutes on average with a fully automated smart-home kitchen.

The Thermador spokesperson added, With connected appliances across all product categories, Thermador is empowering consumers to maintain control over their daily routines, while at the same time providing access to culinary experiences from recipes sent directly to the oven, to notifications that meals are ready to be enjoyed.

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One in three Americans now consider meditation an essential part of their morning ritual - New York Post

Participating in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program appears to alter how the brain processes fear memories. In a study that will appear in the Nov. 1 issue of Biological Psychiatry, a team led by researchers at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) report that mindfulness meditation appears to help extinguish fearful associations.

A common way to treat anxiety disorders is to expose patients to the anxiety-provoking stimulus in a safe environment until it no longer elicits fear, a process known as exposure therapy. This exposure provides an opportunity to learn that these stimuli are not threatening and thereby facilitate adaptive regulation of emotional responses. To be successful, first a new memory must be created between the stimulus and a feeling of safety, then the safety memory, rather than the original fearful memory, must be recalled when the stimulus is presented again in a new environment.

Mindfulness meditation been proposed to provide an optimal condition for exposure therapy because it involves experiencing the present moment with an open, curious, and nonreactive mindset. Numerous studies have documented that mindfulness meditation programs are useful for reducing anxiety, however, the mechanisms were unknown. The current study investigated enhanced learning of the safety signal as one mechanism through which mindfulness can help individuals learn to have a less reactive and more adaptive response to anxiety-provoking stimuli.

The researchers used MRI brain scans and a fear-conditioning task to examine changes in neural networks associated with attention and memory following mindfulness meditation training. In the study, 42 participants completed an eight-week, mindfulness-based stress-reduction program in which they learned formal meditation and yoga practices. Another 25 participants were randomized to an eight-week, exercise-based stress-management control group, in which they were taught about the impact of stress and performed light aerobic exercise. The researchers found that changes in the hippocampus after mindfulness training were associated with enhanced ability to recall the safety memory, and thus respond in a more adaptive way.

Mindfulness training may improve emotion regulation though changing neurobiological responses associated with our ability to remember that a stimulus is no longer threatening, said Gunes Sevinc, first author of the paper, who is a postdoctoral research fellow at MGH.

Fear and anxiety have a habitual component to them the memory of something that provoked fear in the past will trigger a habitual fear response when we are reminded of the event, even if there is no actual present-moment threat. The data indicate that mindfulness can help us recognize that some fear reactions are disproportional to the threat, and thus reduces the fear response to those stimuli. Mindfulness can also enhance our ability to remember this new, less-fearful reaction, and break the anxiety habit, said Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, the studys senior author.

One of the major caveats in the study was that all of the participants were healthy individuals without anxiety. Future studies need to be done with clinical samples and using threatening stimuli relevant to their anxiety (e.g. spiders, cues that trigger panic or PTSD, etc.) to determine if similar changes in brain activation occur in these conditions. Furthermore, some of the findings were observed in both the mindfulness and control groups, suggesting that some of the changes are not unique to mindfulness training, or might be due to some other component of the program, such as social support.

Other authors on the study were Britta K. Hlzel, Jonathan Greenberg, Tim Gard, Vincent Brunsch, Javaria A. Hashmi, Mark Vangel, Scott P. Orr, and Mohammed R. Milad.

The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

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Mindfulness meditation study shows changes in neural responses to pain and fear - Harvard Gazette

David Michie teaches us a healing meditation to purify karma andcultivate well-being.

Artwork courtesy of livingbuddhistart.com

It is no coincidence that the words medication and meditation are only one letter different. They both come from the same Latin root word, medeor, meaning to heal or to make whole.

In the West, our medical focus is on the externalon the curing of physical symptomswhile Eastern traditions focus more on the internal, that is, addressing the mental causes of illness. It is our good fortune to be living at a time when we can access the best of both worlds.

Medicine Buddha meditation is a healing practice treasured by many in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. We can practice it for ourselves, or for someone we care about who is ill. The oldest Medicine Buddha sutra we know about dates from the seventh century. In that sutra, we are told the story of a bodhisattva, Medicine Buddha, who made twelve vows about how he would help living beings after attaining enlightenment. The holistic healing of mind and body was an important focus of his vows: he promised to help eradicate pain, disease, and disabilities of all kinds, as well as promote good health and optimal flourishing.

When we practice Medicine Buddha meditation, we do not do so to replace mainstream medical treatment, but to complement it. The practice purifies and removes the underlying, karmic causes of disease and cultivates the causes for holistic well-being. Such may be the power of our practice that we experience significant improvements in the symptoms, too. But we need to be clear about what we are doing.

Medicine Buddha is as much about mind as it is body. Empirical evidence shows that when we meditate, it triggers a self-repair mechanism in our own bodies. We stop producing cortisol and adrenalin, and instead enhance the production of immune-boosting endorphins and seratonin, arming our body against invasive bacteria, viruses, and other imbalances. These changes also promote positive mental states.

An element ofconfidencein the practice is helpful. The placebo effect is said to account for more than a third of all healing. Medicine Buddha meditation has been practiced for thousands of years. If we have confidence that it can work for us, then were off to a very good start.

Resonancemay also account for the powerful impact of Medicine Buddha practice.On one level, we may be sitting alone in a room meditating, but in a different way we are resonating with the many hundreds of thousands of people who have done exactly the same thing before us. Were benefiting from their experience and contributing to the experience of those who follow.

When doing this practice, its important to retain an awareness that you are not an inherently existent person asking an inherently existent buddha to get rid of an inherently existent illness. This would be little different from a theistic or shamanistic approach. It is precisely because nothing has any true, separate, or independent existenceincluding illnessthat practices like this have power.

We invoke Medicine Buddhathrough the use of specific imagery and sound, reaching out to the consciousness of those numberless beings who have already attained enlightenment and who have chosen to manifest Medicine Buddhas qualities.

The minds of buddhas are understood to be all-seeing and all-knowing.Buddhas react to their mantra in the same way we react when we hear our name mentioned, so we pretty much have a buddha on speed dial when we use their mantra. To borrow a metaphor from the late Tibetan teacher Gelek Rinpoche, when we recite a buddhas mantra we are providing a hoop through which they can hook us into their energetic influence.

Note that Medicine Buddha is a Kriya tantra practice. As such, it is helpful that you first have some familiarity with the sutra tradition, as well as receive proper initiations and teachings from a properly qualified teacher, if you wish to fully embody the precious Medicine Buddha lineage.

Lions Roar is a nonprofit. Our mission is to share the wisdom of the Buddhas teachingsto inspire, comfort, support, and enlighten readers around the world. Our aspiration is to keep LionsRoar.com available to everyone, providing a supportive, inspiring Buddhist community that anyone can access, from curious beginners to committed meditators. Do you share our aspiration? We cant do this without your help.

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How to Invoke the Medicine Buddha - Lion's Roar

COLTON -- Finding Peace in the Midst of Chaos, a class for developing skills in meditation and mindful attention, will be held at Five Elements Living in Colton, on Monday evenings from 6-8 p.m., beginning Monday, Oct. 21 and ending Nov. 25.

This approach to mental wellness will give participants tools to use for day-to-day upsets and challenges anywhere and anytime.

This "toolbox" is a collection of many practical strategies for self-calming; replacing obsessive, negative or self-critical thought patterns with alternate and more positive ones; and maintaining or quickly returning to a calm state even when "the flat tire" happens at just the wrong time.

While these strategies are helpful on their own, a meditation practice goes hand-in-hand with them and helps make them a way of life.

Each week participants can look forward to developing a kinder inner voice and a deepening sense of peace that comes as the mind learns to live with calm instead of stress, even in chaotic times.

The class is led by Ginger Storey-Welch, who has introduced meditation to many people and has a wide range of suggestions on how to utilize various meditation supplies and techniques to best suit individual needs.

Storey-Welch has been a practitioner of Zen meditation for 20 years and attends 4-5 meditation retreats per year at both the Zen Center of Syracuse and Dai Bosatsu Zen Center in the Catskills.

For more than 20 years she has led the North Country Zen Group on the St. Lawrence University campus, she has introduced a large number of students and community members to meditation and was recently referred to as "our best teacher of meditation" on campus by Professor Mark MacWilliams.

She has also taught meditation at the Yoga Loft and at Five Elements Living in the past as well. She specializes in showing ways that meditation can become a tool to enhance one's ability to live a more peaceful life.

Register at fiveelementsliving.com (scroll to Upcoming Events) or call 315-262-2622.

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Meditation class offered in Colton - North Country Now

Andy Puddicombe trained as a monk and now runs Headspace (Headspace)

Andy Puddicombe is a former Buddhist monk who became the co-founder of Headspace a guided meditation app that boasts 60 million users around the world.

Even if youve never heard of or seen Andy, his voice is instantly recognisable to anyone thats used the app. His diction is shot through with pauses giving him time to think and when he slips into guided meditation mode, his speech takes on a slow rhythm bordering on hypnotic.

I met Andy at one of Londons swanky Soho hotels in a closed-off meeting room known as the Library. As the name implies, there were armchairs, a coffee table and shelves stacked with books. There was even a roaring fire.

During the course of the conversation, I asked the man who trained to meditate for up to 16 hours what he might recommend for someone to get started on the path to mindfulness right away.

He gives me two answers.

Pick one activity during your day that might be having a cup of coffee or reading the paper and do it without doing anything else at the same time.

That might mean you dont look at your phone while you drink the coffee. Just put it down and focus on doing one thing without any distraction.

So, I put it to you to see if you can focus on this article without any distractions. Ignore your notifications or avoid clicking on another browser tab. Youll have taken the first step towards mindfulness and Ill tell you at the end of the article what Andys second technique is.

Meanwhile, if youre not familiar with Headspace, let me fill you in.

The app is part of a wider company devoted to digital health and making mindfulness more accessible. Initially, thats through guided meditation but there are other avenues, such as movement and nutrition, to consider as well.

Headspace through Andys narration guides you through different techniques and while theres a free tier, you have to subscribe and pay a monthly fee of 9.99 to keep accessing the new content. You can cut the monthly price in half if you sign up for a year at a time.

I get called an overnight success, but its taken 11 years, Andy tells Metro.co.uk. A Bristol native, Puddicombe moved to the US to start Headspace with his co-founder Rich Pierson. Now he lives in LA with his wife and kids and Headspace employs 300 people in LA, San Francisco, New York and London.

The app is pushing beyond just a subscription service on our smartphones. Its currently about halfway through the FDA approval process in the US which will allow doctors to prescribe it to patients therefore sidestepping the need to pay for a subscription as it will be covered by health insurance.

Things like mental health and emotional wellbeing are the disease states we go after. And the common wisdom is meditation is only for mental diseases, like anxiety for example, Andy says. And yes, while theres definitely a place for that, were also seeing a huge impact on physical ailments as well. Things like migraines or high blood pressure can be treated with meditation.

Indeed, Headspace the company is split into three distinct areas: the consumer channel (the app), business-to-business (corporate wellness schemes) and healthcare (the aforementioned FDA process).

The drive into corporate and healthcare is an obvious one its easy to write mindfulness off as some kind of pseudo-profound. But Andy tells me that 10 days of Headspace usage will improve focus by 14% something anyone can try for free using the app.

He defines focus as committing to any task, whether mental or physical, without distraction.

But why is focus so hard to begin with?

Meditation existed 2,500 years ago, Andy explains. Whats happening now is that were amplifying the noise and the distraction.

Hes not telling us anything we dont already know here. The bombardment of digital information whether thats 24/7 news, social media posts or the call of a new Netflix series is leaving us both wired and stressed.

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Hello Norbu Gyaltsen! This is me back in the olden days when I had a different name, wore different clothes, and lived in a very different place. Wouldn’t change that journey for anything #monasterymonday

A post shared by @ andypuddicombe on Nov 20, 2017 at 6:57am PST

When I mention that Generation Z (those typically born between the mid-90s and mid-2000s) wont ever know a world without these things, Andy gets circumspect. He says that we wont know the true effect of the Information Age for at least a generation.

Stuff is happening in schools right now, he says, its coming from a generation who better understand the need for concern around this kind of thing.

The company has a Headspace for Educators program that offers free access to the service for teachers, school administrators and support staff. It has partnered directly with over 168 schools in the UK since 2015.

As the company puts it: Headspace believes that if we can help educators build resilience, improve sleep quality, mitigate stress and foster mindfulness in their classrooms the impact on the next generation will be immeasurable.

We want to not only help Educators build their own healthy routines, but offer guidance and support to easily integrate Headspace into their classrooms in the most thoughtful, validated and relevant way.

To do this, were leveraging our authentic expertise, our full content library, our brand and techniques.

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A rare moment of stillness with our little wriggly boyz #summerlovin

A post shared by @ andypuddicombe on Jul 19, 2018 at 5:38am PDT

Of course, Headspace delivers digital content to you through a smartphone just like Netflix, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook or any other digital service competing for our attention. So is it just part of the same problem?

Andy is willing to talk about his relationship with the smartphone as a piece of tech before Ive even gotten a question out.

A phone is just a piece of metal and plastic, he says emphatically.

It cant do anything on its own, but in most cases people have it optimised for distraction.

At this point, he picks up his iPhone from the coffee table in front of us.

His homescreen is Zen personified.

Its only got a couple of rows of icons on it and is refreshingly free from notifications.

The only red dot I ever see is the one from settings telling me theres an update, he tells me.

It may seem inconsequential but rearranging how your phone works may go a long way to helping you check it less often. And while Andy does have to use social media for his work posting updates to his followers or responding to questions about Headspace he does it fleetingly and with purpose.

So, what does someone who has lived in 10-15 different countries over the course of his life (not to mention co-creating an internationally-recognised brand) feel about the state of the world in 2019?

I believe in people having different viewpoints but I think were losing the ability to listen. Were losing the art of talking about meaningful things, he tells me.

However, I also feel everything is quite cyclical in nature. So while the world may feel divisive at the moment, I have great optimism. I know things will change.

He reiterates that all of his success has come from a simple mission of wanting to bring mindfulness and meditation to a wider audience and promote it as a way to tackle a variety of problems. And getting started with it is simple if youve made it this far without checking your phone or getting distracted then congratulations.

As promised, Andys one other simple tip for getting into mindfulness was to take a minute just 60 seconds to make yourself comfortable, close your eyes, settle your hands on your stomach and just listen to your breath inhaling and exhaling.

Give it a try for yourself and see what happens. If you want to find out more about Headspace, you can visit the companys site here.

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Headspace co-creator Andy Puddicombe talks meditation and mindfulness - Metro.co.uk

Posted: Oct 15, 2019 / 03:52 PM HST / Updated: Oct 15, 2019 / 03:52 PM HST

Body&Brain Yoga Tai Chi Hawaii is hostingthe CONNECT event. Come and enjoy an afternoon of awakening, inspiration, andconnection withIlchi Lee, a world renowned meditation expert and the author of Connect.Learn how to access the most important source of health, power, and creativitywithin your body and brain.

The workshop is happening on Saturday, October 26 from 1p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Hawaii Convention Center, Room 323. Tickets cost $20 andincludes a copy of the book Connect.

At the event, you will HearIlchi Lees book talk and guided meditation for strengthening true connectionin every aspect of your life. You will experience practical self-care tools toreduce stress, gain clarity, and enjoy more happiness. And, you will beinspired to live your best life from your heart.

To register you can call (808) 596-9642 or you can purchase tickets at http://Connect.BodynBrain.com

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Book Talk and Meditation Workshop with Ilchi Lee - KHON2

Kristin Dahl, a holistic nutritionist and herbalist in Los Angeles, goes for a walk, to practice some deep breathing, and does Yoga Nidra as part of her bedtime routine, which is essentially a guided body meditation and body scan.

Ms. Love stretches and does deep breathing for 15 - 20 minutes.

A warm drink can help if its sugar-, caffeine- and alcohol-free. Ms. Love who prepares organic foods without excitotoxins (substances that trigger the neurotransmitters) and preservatives for dinner, around 6 p.m. drinks mushroom lattes, which are warm and cozy and help me wind down. Before bed, Ms. Panton drinks something warm in winter and iced in summer, with antioxidants, and likes turmeric chai tea. Ms. Dahl drinks lemon balm tea.

As part of her multistep skin care routine before bed, Ms. Panton does facial cupping, for better circulation, and ends with the facial-massage technique gua sha, pushing a hard, curved tool around the contours of her face for lymphatic drainage.

Latham Thomas, who is a Brooklyn-based doula and the founder of Mama Glow, a maternity lifestyle label, uses diffusers for essential oils; Ms. Panton prepares her bedroom for sleep with her companys essential oils, a blend of lavender, eucalyptus and frankincense, which she created during a trip to Joshua Tree National Park.

The signature sound of the bedtime routine might be a selection from the Calm meditation apps Sleep Stories, or the white noise of an air purifier, which Ms. Love has in her bedroom, or something more ethereal. Ms. Thomas recommends humming for people who feel they cant meditate. Its like an instant drop-in, she said, and also allows you to extend your breath even longer than regular meditation breath.

The blue light emitted by digital screens could be the most essential part of our tech-poisoned daytime lives to address in a bedtime routine. Dr. Winter said, The blue-green light is interacting with your pineal gland to block melatonin, which is why a cellphone in your face at night is preventing you from making melatonin to help you sleep.

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Improve Your Bedtime Routine With These Five Luxurious Tips - The New York Times

Tom Cronin: When we start meditating we start transcending the current status quo that's inside our programmed head. We are very deeply conditioned and programmed to think in a particular way. When you start meditating you start questioning some of those programs and you start breaking free of that structure that has been sort of in a constant loop inside your head and the collective head of the society's minds, and that's where we are going to start to see systems change coming through, once the collective starts changing their minds individually.

Lynne Malcolm: Hi, it's All in the Mind on RN, I'm Lynne Malcolm. Today, the potential of meditation and mindfulness for the greater good of society.

Daniel Berry: A lot of the qualities of attention that mindfulness has been linked to were really related to this feeling empathy for other people, and I thought maybe mindfulness might enhance this feeling for others because they were feeling compassion.

Lynne Malcolm: That's Daniel Berry, Assistant Professor of Psychology at California State University, San Marcos. We'll hear later about his research on whether mindfulness training can promote pro-social behaviour.

Now let's enter The Portal. It's a book and film which explores the power of meditation for the world, through the personal stories of individuals moving through crisis. Tom Cronin and Jacqui Fifer are co-writers of The Portal.

Tom Cronin: Rather than telling you how to transform, we show you how people have transformed. You go on a journey with six people that have all gone through their own personal crisis and transformation, showing that each and every one of us has that capacity to do that. So it's quite an immersive journey of exploration through other people's stories.

Jacqui Fifer: Yes, it's an experience of the role that crisis plays in our evolution, and we are looking at it on a really personal level but against a global backdrop of a species and a system that is evolving at the moment and the role that we personally play in that process.

Lynne Malcolm: Earlier in his life, Tom Cronin spent 26 years as a broker in finance, trading bonds. But then things began to change for him personally, and eventually motivated him to begin a meditation movement called the Stillness Project, and then to produce The Portal.

Tom Cronin: Well, many years ago I had my own personal crisis. This was back when I was a broker, and the first 10 years of that was kind of clichd Wolf of Wall Street style, lots of drinking and drugs and partying and lots of money and a very frenetic job. I had been experiencing through particular lifestyle habits and choices some serious ramifications which was extreme stress response in my body, so a lot of anxiety, depression, insomnia, even agoraphobia. I had to leave work for a period of time, and was in quite a dark place, really struggling with finding any sort of hope and passion in life.

And I discovered meditation by default or by the universe organising it but it really was a transformational experience for me and I noticed very quickly all of those anomalies, those symptoms dropped away quite quickly, and meditation played a significant role in redirecting my life and I became so passionate about wanting to share that with the world that I founded the Stillness Project, but also felt compelled to use other mediums to get that powerful message of how good meditation can be to redirect our life and transform our lives. So that's when the film and the book started to morph as an idea.

Lynne Malcolm: In The Portal, Tom Cronin and co-writer Jacqui Fifer describe the world as being in a unique developmental stage of evolution.

Jacqui Fifer: That's the way I'm looking at it, so that helps me stay excited about it rather than feel hopeless, which I think a lot of people are feeling at the moment when we look outside and we see the news and we wonder what the hell is going on, what does the future hold for us, all of us, and is there even time to make a difference. And I think that one of the things that I think is interesting about meditation is that it allows you an opportunity to see beyond the current set of circumstances. It's a space of creation. So I think we are really needing to create a whole different system and innovate. We've got the technology now to be able to do it but in ways that we've never actually expanded that far before, and using all of these tools, I think that's really the pathway.

Lynne Malcolm: Tom, it's talked about that we are at a tipping point in the world. What are the main concerns?

Tom Cronin: Yes, I like the way Daniel Schmachtenberger expresses it in the film as a phase shift, the point that we are at, where we are seeing exponential levels of improvement. We are also seeing exponential levels of decay. The main concern is that if we don't shift our state of consciousness which will lead to a shift in the way we lead our lives and the physicalities of the way we live our lives and all the physical dilemmas that we are facing, then what could potentially prevail would possibly be an eradication of the species, being the human species. We lose up to 10,000 species a year at the moment on the planet and there's no reason why, with our current actions and our current trajectory, if we don't make some changes then that that could be a human one as well. But we are very excited about the possibility of there being a dramatic shift to improving things on the planet, with humans in it.

Lynne Malcolm: You mentioned Daniel Schmachtenberger, and he was one of the people that you've interviewed, he is a philosopher. Tell me about his take on where we are at and what are some of the solutions?

Tom Cronin: He does say in a very non-judgemental way that it can go either way; to a higher level of order or to a lower level of chaos. And so the way we can move through that ultimately, like he says, is challenging the systems, shifting our state of consciousness, shifting our state of mind. It's the state of mind that created the problem and it's going to be the state of mind that's going to solve the problem, and that's why I come from the perspective of we need to get people meditating because when we start meditating we start transcending the current status quo that's inside our programmed head. When you start meditating you start questioning some of those programs and you start breaking free of that structure that has been in a constant loop inside your head and the collective head of the society's minds, and that's where we're going to such see systems change coming through, once the collective starts changing their minds individually.

Lynne Malcolm: The Portal features the ideas and work of nine people. Some are experts in their field and others tell their personal stories. One of these which really moved producer Jacqui Fifer is the story of Due Quach.

Jacqui Fifer: Due's family were refugees from Vietnam. Obviously that was a challenging time, the refugee experience, but they were also dealing with persecution, being from Chinese extraction in Vietnam, so it's a long-term feeling of displacement in your country. So then she grew up in a new country with that same sense of displacement in quite a violent area, with parents who were trying to adapt culturally, wanted their children to assimilate, didn't even really want to teach them their native language so that they would not grow up speaking with an accent, like really, really mindful of how do I create the best opportunities for my children in this new land of opportunity.

So they were in an area that was quite violent and a lot of drugs, so she was exposed to a lot of stuff as a young girl, but studied and got a scholarship to Harvard, and everything came to a head in Harvard and she had a bit of a breakdown. And then she decided to teach herself neuroscience to heal her brain from the developmental trauma she was experiencing. So I just think in terms of somebody who's been through so much and who has such a high performance kind of a mindset that no matter what is going on and how deep you get, what are the ways that I can get myself out of this?

And she has got a really nice knack of just being able to talk through some of the really everyday strategies that she had, like trying to get herself switched into a more positive frame of mind rather than negative, listening to jokes, listening to more positive music, watching comedies, justit seems funny to say it but that was allowing her to activate her brain in a different way that it hadn't been activated. And all of that experience, and being a first-generation college student she is now implementing that in the work that she does with people who come from similar kinds of communities, so I really love the loop that she's done on that.

Lynne Malcolm: And another person you spoke to was Amandine Roche and she's worked with people in Afghanistan. Tell me about her.

Tom Cronin: She was a United Nations human rights lawyer and was doing great work with the UN but noticing herself and her colleagues were all incredibly stressed with trauma and PTSD from the environments that they were working in. So she started to realise that how can she simply go about as United Nations peacekeeper when she doesn't experience inner peace. So she developed the Inner Peacekeeping Program, which was a strategy to enable those peacekeepers to start having their own inner peace using meditation and yoga and mindfulness practices.

And from there she realised that the change that she was bringing into people's lives was much more impacting through her meditation and yoga than through her lawyer practice, so she actually became, by default, a yoga meditation teacher and is now primarily focusing on that work with very challenging environments. She says most of Afghanistan is experiencing PTSD right now and we have to start working through that by helping them get free of those challenges.

Lynne Malcolm: The personal stories told in the book The Portal have a common thread. The people have found a way through some sort of personal crisis using meditation.

So, Tom Cronin, is facing adversity necessary to experience some sort of life transformation?

Tom Cronin: It's certainly not necessary because many people have become enlightened without crisis. But if there is crisis, then what is it there for? What is the way through it and what do we learn from it? If we keep banging our head against the wall, eventually we're going to think this is really painful and maybe I should try something different. This is what crisis is, it's a cue for change. And there's a beautiful quote; suffering is proportional to our resistance to change, and happiness is proportional to our ability to embrace change.

We don't need to get to that breaking point for change, we can deviate and navigate an alternative route before we even get to crisis, and that's where becoming more conscious enables us to be more intuitive about the path that we are walking, and that alleviates the need for these major catalytic events in our lives to give us some guidance or cue for something different. So if we are in crisis then we have to start looking within ourselves and asking what is this teaching me, what am I here to learn, what is the point of this?

Lynne Malcolm: So you've talked about the power of meditation to save the planet. How have each of these people that you featured in the film felt that they've contributed to the greater good, the collective, to save our planet?

Tom Cronin: I was always taught, and I'm a strong believer in this, that the greatest gift we can give to the world is the reduction of our own suffering and an experience of happiness, first and foremost. And one thing that we see firstly happen in all of their lives is they've gone from that place of turmoil and conditioning and deep scarring from their upbringings to a much lighter place, a much more conscious place, a much kinder place of living. And that's the first step in the process, is to transform their own inner world and not be bound and attached to the past and affected by the scars of the past.

The next step tends to be something as a natural unfolding, and we are seeing that in quite a few of these people in the stories, that they are naturally compelled then to want to share that with the world. And so from there they feel this compulsion to start running programs and writing books and creating retreats and things like that, so a lot of them have moved into that space now, doing phenomenal things in the world.

Jacqui Fifer: It's the 'me to we', isn't it.

Lynne Malcolm: Yes, so how does that experience of interconnectedness build through individuals practising mindfulness and meditation? How does it go from the individual to the planet, the greater collective?

Tom Cronin: The only way we really are going to get the shifts happening is individually, but collectively through the individuals. So it's a one by one process. Multiply that into 100,000, 1 million, 1 billion and 7 billion, that's when we are going to start to see major systems changes, major collective shifts on the planet.

Lynne Malcolm: Some would argue that sometimes passively focusing inwards may prevent people from effective action for change, that individuals meditating is not enough, that action needs to be made as well.

Tom Cronin: It definitely needs to be twofold. Where meditation is the great starting pointand the analogy like to use when they get asked this question is the same thing that happens when we get notified when the plane is about to go down, that you must put your face mask on first before you put someone else's on. When you are stressed, angry, tired, worn out and affected by scars of the past, your capacity for leverage in creating change in people's lives is quite limited, so it must start with the individual first to find that inner peace, to find that connection, to find that infinite unconditional source of love and light and compassion really gives us greater leverage and greater scope to create greater change in other people's lives.

Jacqui Fifer: I think there's a default through these processors to want to touch other people, to want to expand beyond your own individual experience, and that probably involves diving deep and going to places where internallyexploring parts of you that you maybe weren't super comfortable with. If you are meditating and maybe not doing the rest of the work, I wonder whether you could get stuck in that phase.

Lynne Malcolm: Jacqui Fifer, director and co-writer along with Tom Cronin of the book and film The Portal which explores the potential collective good that can come from individual's practice of mediation.

You're with All in the Mind on RN, I'm Lynne Malcolm.

Whilst scientific research into the effect that meditation has on individuals is still in its infancy, more and more scientists are now exploring this field.

Daniel Berry is Assistant Professor of Psychology at California State University, San Marcos. His research investigates whether training in mindfulness meditation could promote pro-social feelings and behaviour. He explains his recent series of experiments to Diane Dean.

Daniel Berry: We brought college students into the lab, and they thought they were participating in a study about how social interaction over the internet was influenced by being actively engaged. So we had them listen to either a mindfulness audio recording, it was about 10 minutes long, or various controls. In some studies we used a relaxation recording where they did progressive muscle relaxation, and in others we just had them focus their attention.

After that we had them watch an online ball tossing game that was played by other people, but in reality there was no other people there, the whole thing is staged. They see some avatars on a computer monitor in front of them tossing this ball around, and after a couple of seconds one of the three avatars is completely excluded from the game.

Immediately after that we take a couple of measurements from them, and one of them we just tell them, 'Why don't we have you write some emails to the other players, and they are going to receive them at the end of the study.' So people usually end up saying something about the ostracism, they might say something really mean to the perpetrators of the ostracism, or they might do something really nice and try to comfort the person, the victim who was ostracised. And we have condition blind raters code them. So people who are not involved in the study and they don't know what experimental conditions folks received.

And right after that we have them join in on the game. We just simply counted the number of throws that the participant gives to the person who was just excluded, and what we found in this research across several studies is that even brief mindfulness training promotes helping behaviour toward these people who are ostracised. They write them more comforting emails and they also throw the ball to them more in the game.

But another important key here is we also measured this ability to feel for and feel as the other person does. In our field we call them something else, they are called compassion and personal distress or empathic distress. So we measured these two emotions and they can tell us a little bit about the motivation that the person was feeling. If they are feeling compassion, it seems like they were more focused on the person's predicament, they wanted to help them, they were concerned for them. And if they are feeling empathic distress, this is feeling as another person is. And sometimes this can be kind of tricky if we are feeling as another person is, we might confuse that for our own pain and it's not the pain of the other, when it's really all about the other person's pain. And what we found was, yes, the people who were in the mindfulness condition were more helpful, but by measuring these emotions we also found that they were more helpful because they were feeling compassion. Or in other words they were feeling for the person, the ostracism victim.

Diane Dean: Quite a significant problem for society is how to assist the underprivileged, the unemployed or the homeless. Often these groups rely on the work of charities. Can mindfulness training promote more consideration of these particular groups?

Daniel Berry: We tested something similar to that in my dissertation research, although it doesn't get at it specifically. And actually don't know if the results are all that positive. In my dissertation we had graduate students train in either four-day mindfulness training or four-day sham mindfulness training. We told them that they were meditating but we gave them simpler instructions that didn't guide their attention through meditation experiences. So what they were doing instead, we might say stuff like; just take deep breaths as we sit in meditation.

And before and after they did this training, we actually measured them using end-of-day surveys. So before they went to bed at night they filled out social interactions that they had with strangers, and we recorded the race of stranger who they said they interacted with. And some of the interactions that they could check off were helping behaviours, like offering up money to a stranger. We also measured things like positive interactions, so maybe smiling at a stranger, and also negative interactions, making a gesture at somebody on the interstate or on the highway while they cut you off, things like that, ways that we typically interact with strangers on the day to day.

But right now it is looking like mindfulness training doesn't seem to boost these helping behaviours that are more spontaneous out in the real world. So there's not really a difference between mindfulness and sham meditation, at least what I'm seeing in my data from my dissertation. So I think that could speak a little bit to this idea about offering up help to people who are homeless, but I don't know if anything has been done on that quite yet, and our results really can't speak directly to that because, again, we don't know the status of the people who they were interacting with, their social class, whether or not they were homeless or if they had a home.

Diane Dean: You've also been doing some research on resilience in the face of social threat, a situation which can involve a certain degree of anticipated behaviour. Can mindfulness training help to build resilience in the face of social threat, or ostracism?

Daniel Berry: Sure, and one way that we've studied this is actually really similar to the one study I just told you about. Instead of having our participants watch somebody else being ostracised, we had them experience ostracism in the same way. They were thrown into a ball tossing game thinking that they were playing with other people, and in reality they weren't and they were excluded from that game by the other two software generated players. And ostracism is a really important social threat because if we are ostracised by the group, that could have several implications other than just hurt feelings. We may not have access to the resources of the group any more.

And what we foundwe gave people either, again, brief mindfulness training, 10 minutes, or an attentional control. This brief training in mindfulness, without even knowing that they going to be ostracised of course, seems to reduce the distress response to it. So some ways that we measure this distress, it's all self-report right now but we are looking at their self-esteem after they are ostracised. So people who have just had brief training in mindfulness don't take as big of a hit in their self-esteem as folks who have not had that training. Also we rate people's feelings of belongingness to the group, and it seems like these mindfulness trainees don't experience, again, as big of a hit to their sense of belongingness as people who have not received this training after ostracism.

Diane Dean: So, Daniel Berry, mindfulness can promote empathy, but can it be effective in understanding cultures and groups who are outside our day to day activities? And can this effect be measured neurologically?

Daniel Berry: I'm not just interested in mindfulness can promote empathy toward anybody out there in the world, I'm interested if it can promote empathy in circumstances where it really counts. And more often than not when we are interacting with people outside of our racial category, or it really works with any kind of social category, it could be your political beliefs or even something as simple as the sports team that you pull for, when we are interacting with folks outside of our social category we show them less empathy.

And one thing that we've learned not from our lab of course but from other labs is that when people see faces of others showing pain and neutrality, like a neutral expression, no emotion at all, is that we tend to have a gap of empathy for people outside of our racial category or ethnic category, and we don't have that gap for people inside of our category. For example, if you are a white individual who is seeing a face of a white person showing pain, what these neural signals will show is that you are feeling the pain as if it's you, and we can see that in the EEG.

So what we are looking at right now, and we've finished data collection on this study but we are still analysing it, so I wish I could tell you the results, but we just don't know yet, but the hypothesis is that even just this brief mindfulness training will take away this gap, or in other words we will start to feel as others do regardless of their social category.

Diane Dean: So, the applications of mindfulness are really promising, but is it perhaps over-sold?

Daniel Berry: I'm aware of the hype and am also aware of the concerns about that. I think this happens a lot in some areas of research where a topic really catches fire like mindfulness has in the last couple of decades, and we get to a stage where it seems like some of the effects are not either as strong as we thought they would be or maybe it's that they don't even exist at all, we just got really lucky with those first few studies.

What I will say about this issue of being mindful of this hype about mindfulness is that researchers like myself and colleagues really need to focus on doing high quality work where they are isolating their variables and we are making sure that we are doing the experiments so that we can make causal inferences about mindfulness. So I think the high quality research will continue to come, and it might be that we find that maybe this isn't as beneficial as we once thought, but until we actually continue doing these tests through experiments, we can really say it but we don't really know if that's true.

Lynne Malcolm: Daniel Berry, Assistant Professor of Psychology at California State University, San Marcos, speaking with Diane Dean.

Meditation has been practised for thousands of years in cultures across the world, but it's recently become more popular in modern life, in the western world. Tom Cronin explains why he thinks this is.

Tom Cronin: I think partly because of the need of the time. When we are in a dark room the first thing we go looking for is the light switch, and we have created quite a dark room for ourselves with the way we are living our lives, and so people are looking for tools and devices to try and bring some level of balance back into their life. They are sleeping every night, they are going to the gym, they just can't seem to get beyond the state of overwhelm and anxiety that they are in, and so the next step is to look for something else, and that's the inflection point that we can get to where we can go down that path of drinking and drugs or whatever it is, some level of addiction, all we can go to another path for a tried and tested model that has been around, as you said, for thousands of years, and so it's starting to assimilate into our lives in a much bigger way now, out of need.

Lynne Malcolm: Tom Cronin and Jacqui Fifer are co-writers of the film and book The Portal: How Meditation Can Save the World. What are their hopes for the future of the planet?

Jacqui Fifer: I was talking to somebody about this yesterday. All of the stuff that I see is all about future possibility, it's all about positive tech, it's all about the shifts that can happen in climate, it's all about the technology that already exists that can be rolled out on a wider level to make really, really positive steps. So that's my world and I want to live in that place because that allows me to contribute in the best way that I can.

Lynne Malcolm: And Tom?

Tom Cronin: Look, there's only evolution. My perspective is that everything is evolving. And if it means for a better experience for all sentient beings on the planet, and that must include animals, and I think I would also go as far as the natural world, if that evolution needs to occur without humans destroying things for other species and other sentient beings, then that's evolution if they're in the way and they need to be removed from the process, because it will be so much better if there is an existence on this planet that isn't as destructive. But to include humans in that process, I'm really optimistic as well. I think we are very conscious race that is becoming more conscious, and we just need to really break the shackles of our own individualisation and neediness and start to experience a collective unification and a greater sense of not just collective unification amongst humans but amongst the natural world as well, that's really, really imperative.

Lynne Malcolm: Tom Cronin, co-writer along with Jacqui Fifer of The Portal. Head to the All in the Mind website for details of the film and the book, which is published by Murdoch. Diane Dean is the producer, and the sound engineer today is Simon Branthwaite. I'm Lynne Malcolm. Thanks for your company, catch you next time.

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Meditation for the collective good - All In The Mind - ABC News