How Meditation Changes Your Brain Frequency As yogis have known for centuries and scientists can now prove, the benefits of meditation are profound. Meditation is perhaps the most crucial instrument to harness the power of thought, cultivate more peace, clarity and happiness. Learning to train the brain and focus our attention is crucial to thriving and cultivating a peak performance in any endeavor. Longtime psychotherapist Dr. There are five major categories of brain waves, each corresponding to different activities. Slower wavelengths = more time between thoughts = more opportunity to skillfully choose which thoughts you invest in and what actions you take. 5 Categories of Brain Waves: Why Meditation Works 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. How to Meditate: A simple meditation to use to begin the transition from Beta or Alpha to the Theta State is to focus on the breath. To begin the meditation, sit comfortably in your chair with your shoulders relaxed and spine tall. Watch your breath. Silently repeat the mantra: “Breathing In. Consistency is key.
10 theories that explain why we dream Kinja is in read-only mode. We are working to restore service. I like #7 and #8 of sorts, as they sort of fit in with the kinds of dreams I have. Fixing things, solving thing, experimenting with situations, and learning. That said, I know that differs a lot from the kind of dreams I probably had as a child, so there really can't be a single answer to this I guess. On that note after seeing Inception I loved the comments about how our dreams are basically "filled in" with familiar places/things to make them feel more complete. Flagged
5 Tips For Butchering Your Life...So You Can Finally Live Emancipating One’s Self Takes Patience, Grace and a Level of Brutality In Order to Hack Away at That Which Doesn’t Serve In Growth I had been a free-spirited artist who put my dreams, passions and convictions aside to adopt a life that I thought was necessary in order for me to ‘grow up’ and ground myself. You know…to live the American Dream. I became a wife to a safe man who took care of me financially, while taming me into ordinary. Then I woke up. 2013 was when I purposely and methodically butchered away my life, my Self, the heavy skin from 10 years of marital and personal discord, as well as sever the restraints of that which I had grown to know as my cage. I was left in pieces—hacked, chopped, bloody and raw. That was the most challenging and painful set of events in my entire life thus far. As the dust has begun to settle around broken debris of framework, I can now more clearly see the crystal blue sky and the seemingly infinite space around me. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Relephant Reads:
Eye Direction and Lying - How to detect lies from the direction of an individual's gaze / visual accessing cues. Interesting Info -> Lying Index -> Eye Direction & Visual Accessing Cues Eye Movement and Direction & How it Can Reveal Truth or Lies This is a continuation of our previous article Detecting Lies. Many comments by our visitors asked about how eye direction can indicate the presence of a lie. Can the direction a person's eyes reveal whether or not they are making a truthful statement? Short answer: sort of. In these shows a detective will deduce if a person is being untruthful simply because they looked to the left or right while making a statement. In reality, it would be foolish to make such a snap judgment without further investigation... but the technique does have some merit. So, here it is... read, ponder and test it on your friends and family to see how reliable it is for yourself. Visual Accessing Cues - "Lying Eyes" When asked a question a "normally organized" right-handed person looks (from your viewpoint, looking at them): The Gist of it... How this information is used to detect lies:
How to Explain Complex Ideas (Like Tech) to Those Who Don’t Understand Building Self Esteem With Writing Therapy One of the most common techniques used for building self esteem is the use of affirmations. Affirmations are things you tell yourself on a regular basis to “affirm” your personal strength, beauty and value. Affirmations are great, but unless there is a real belief in what the words represent, they will do nothing for your true self esteem. To get at your true self esteem, you must dig a bit deeper; and for this purpose I recommend writing about your life. The Brain Dump and Building Self Esteem Ever since I started “brain dumping”, I became a big believer in its power. Each little morsel of your brain is valuable real estate. The more space in your brain that is taken up by worry, doubt, frustration, sadness, etc.; the less space you will have available for positive thoughts. To achieve a successful brain dump all you have to do is get out a pen and notebook and start writing. If you have a problem in the forefront of you mind, start writing about it. Building Self Esteem Post-Brain Dump
Zentangle: Pattern-Drawing as Meditation by Maria Popova If greater creativity and more mental balance are among your new year’s resolutions, look no further than Zentangle — a type of meditation achieved through pattern-making, created by artist duo Maria Thomas and Rick Roberts. Each pattern is built one line at a time, organically combining simple patterns into complex zentangles in unplanned, unexpected ways that grow, change and unfold on the page as you enter an immersive state of flow. Totally Tangled offers a fantastic introduction to the relaxing and beautiful practice through step-by-step instructions and over 100 original tangles. We’re particularly taken with Zentagle because its basic principle — building on simple shapes and combining different patterns into complex creativity — is such a beautiful visual metaphor for our core philosophy of combinatorial creativity. Donating = Loving Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter. Share on Tumblr
Is Consciousness Universal? For every inside there is an outside, and for every outside there is an inside; though they are different, they go together. —Alan Watts, Man, Nature, and the Nature of Man, 1991 I grew up in a devout and practicing Roman Catholic family with Purzel, a fearless and high-energy dachshund. He, as with all the other, much larger dogs that subsequently accompanied me through life, showed plenty of affection, curiosity, playfulness, aggression, anger, shame and fear. Yet my church teaches that whereas animals, as God's creatures, ought to be treated well, they do not possess an immortal soul. Only humans do. It was only later, at university, that I became acquainted with Buddhism and its emphasis on the universal nature of mind. As a natural scientist, I find a version of panpsychism modified for the 21st century to be the single most elegant and parsimonious explanation for the universe I find myself in. We Are All Nature's Children
30 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Die {Via studioflowerpower on etsy} “Rather than money, than fame, than love…give me truth.” ~ Thoreau I woke up this morning and my life clock marked 30. My first sleep-deprived idea was to pack a small suitcase, get on the first train, move to another country, change my name, change my hair color (or get plastic surgery if needed), and start from scratch. When I don’t know how to deal with life, I hide sometimes. By now, I’m good at both: fighting and disappearing. A true warrior doesn’t feel forced to do either, but moves through and with and for life, like water. So after I washed my face and considered the costs of running and those of fighting, I decided to do neither and have some juice instead. {Alkaline Espresso / Click for recipe.} We are a constant process, an event, we’re change. As such, our smaller houses, our temporary homes can only be made of cards. Loving the questions means to love yourself. So here is an exercise we can do together: a tweak to your usual bucket list. You.