Smile! (from Pinterest)

Are you smiling?  

REPOST: Unheard Music (from storypeople.com)

(from www.storypeople.com 1-20-2013 daily email subscription)

Don't you hear it? she asked & I shook my head no & then she started to dance & suddenly there was music everywhere & it went on for a very long time & when I finally found words all I could say was thank you." ~Brian Andreas (storypeople.com)

Be Yourself (from notsalmon.com)

Free Yourself!

FOCUSandFLOW365 PicQuote: Light the Flame

"Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being." -Albert Schweitzer

REPOST: Scientific Studies on Meditation (from blog.ted.com)

TED Blog

http://blog.ted.com/2013/01/11/4-scientific-studies-on-how-meditation-can-affect-your-heart-brain-and-creativity/

11 January 2013

4 scientific studies on how meditation can affect your heart, brain and creativity

Many people have tried to sell me on the idea of meditating. Sometimes I try it, and have an incredible, refreshing experience. But usually, as I close my eyes and focus on my breathing, while I know that I’m supposed to be letting all thoughts go, more and more fly through my mind. Soon I have a laundry-list of “to-dos” in my head … and then my legs fall asleep. It’s all downhill from there.

Today’s TED Talk, however, might actually convince me to give meditation another shot.

“We live in an incredibly busy world. Our pace of life is often frantic, our minds are always busy, and we’re always doing something,” says Andy Puddicombe at the TEDSalon London Fall 2012. “The sad fact is that we’re so distracted that we are no longer present in the world in which we live. We miss out on the things that are most important to us. The crazy thing is, people assume that’s just the way life is. But that’s not really how it has to be.”

In this talk, Puddicombe — who is as equally as turned off by incense as me — shares the fascinating story of how he become a monk, and gives a convincing argument for why it is worth it to take 10 minutes a day to refresh the mind.

“Most people assume that meditation is all about stopping thoughts, getting rid of emotions, somehow controlling the mind, but actually it’s much different than that,” says Puddicombe. “It’s more about stepping back, seeing the thought clearly — witnessing it coming and going — without judgment, but with a relaxed, focus mind.”

To see a demonstration, with juggling, watch this surprising talk. And after the jump, four recent scientific studies that bear out that there might actually be something to this meditation thing.

For years, meditation fans have said that the practice keeps them healthy. But a new study,published in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes in November 2012, actually tested this. For the study, 201 people with coronary heart disease were asked to either (a) take a health education class promoting better diet and exercise or (b) take a class on transcendental meditation. Researchers followed up with participants for the next five years and found that those who took the meditation class had a 48% reduction in their overall risk of heart attack, stroke and death. It’s an initial study, but a promising one. [Time]

Is meditating a good way to increase creativity? Maybe, but it depends on what kind. Researchers at Leiden University in the Netherlands looked at the way two types of meditation — focused-attention (for example, focusing on your breath) and open-monitoring (where participants focus on the both the internal and external) — affected two types of creative thinking — the ability to generate new ideas and solutions to problems. In a studypublished in April 2012 in Frontiers in Cognition, they revealed that the participants who practiced focused-attention meditation did not show improved results in the two creativity tasks. However, those who practiced open-monitoring meditation did perform better at task related to coming up with new ideas. [Meditation Research]

Researchers at UCLA wanted to study the brains of people who had been meditating for years, versus those who had never meditated or who had only done it for a short period of time. They took MRI scans of 100 people — half meditators and half non-meditators. They were fascinated to find that long-time meditators showed higher levels of gyrification (a folding of the cerebral cortex that may be associated with faster information processing). In a study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in February of 2012, they shared that, the more years a person had been meditating, the more gyrification their MRIs revealed.  [UCLA Newsroom]

Distractions are everywhere. But can meditation help a person better navigate through them? A computer scientist at the University of Washington teamed up with a neuroscientist at the University of Arizona to test this. The pair recruited 45 human resources managers, and gave a third of them eight weeks of mindfulness-based meditation training, a third of them eight weeks of body relaxation training and a third of them no training at all. All the groups were given a stressful multitasking test before and after the eight weeks. In a study published in the Proceedings of Graphics Interface in May of 2012, they showed that the mindful-mediation group reported less stress as they performed the multitasking test than both of the other groups. [Washington.edu]

So, how do you feel about meditation?

On 1-10-13 SPH says...

"Live in harmony with the music of your spiritual truth.  Trust its lyrics. Groove to its rhythm. Flow with its melody."  -Shelly P. Harrell

FOCUSandFLOW365 PicQuote: Silent Purpose

"Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has a purpose." -Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

FOCUSandFLOW365 PicQuote: Expect Things

"You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them." - Michael Jordan

What things are you expecting? 

On 1/6/13 SPH says...

"Remember, it's all about the journey." -SPH

Meditative Reflection for January 2013

on getting centered...

FOCUSandFLOW365 PicQuote: Astonish Yourself

"If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves."  ~Thomas Alva Edison

REPOST: Shrinking Stress & Anxiety (from psychcentral.com)

Therapists Spill: The Best Ways to Shrink Stress & Anxiety

By MARGARITA TARTAKOVSKY, M.S.

Stress is a reality for all of us. But it doesn’t have to lead to overwhelm. There are many ways to reduce the amount of stress in your life — and to revise how you react to it.
Below, four clinicians share their best tips for shrinking stress and anxiety.
1. Exercise. “Do anything that allows energy to be expressed,” said Ryan Howes, Ph.D, a clinical psychologist in Pasadena, California. He suggested everything from walking to running to lifting to playing dodge ball.
2. Write down your worries. “Moving your worries from your head to paper is a great stress reducer,” Howes said. “Part of the stress is worrying that you’ll forget what you’re worried about.” Writing it out helps you forget momentarily, he said. It also can improve your sleep, he added.
3. Sit with the anxiety. Sometimes the best approach is to stop fighting and feel the anxiety – if the angst is mild to moderate, Howes said. Breathe, and simply say to yourself, “This is anxiety that I am feeling,” said Christina G. Hibbert, PsyD, a clinical psychologist and expert in postpartum mental health.
“When you allow yourself to feel the anxiety without resistance, you may find it’s not as intolerable as you think, and you may even learn more about the root of your anxiety,” Howes said. Hibbert also encouraged readers to remember that anxiety is just another emotion. “[It is] not who you are and certainly not determinant of who you will be today.”
4. Remember that there are no problems, only situations. How we perceive situations turns them into problems, Hibbert said. “We can choose to turn our ‘situations’ into ‘problems’ or we can learn to see them as something else — life experiences, lessons, or perhaps a time to practice our best coping skills,” she said. “Changing your views about your life situations allows you to determine just how much ‘stress’ you allow into your life.”
5. Focus on the here and now. Stress typically strikes when we’re stuck in the past or fretting about the future, Hibbert said. She suggested the following strategies to focus on the present:

• “At any given moment in the day, simply stop, take a deep breath, and notice where you are, notice what is happening [and] take it all in.
• Imagine a big brick wall popping up that blocks you from thinking of anything but what’s right in front of you.
• Get in tune with your senses: Take a walk, feel the ground beneath your feet, smell the flowers in the air, listen to the birds chirping. You will decrease your anxiety and increase your joy by learning to focus on now.”

6. Meditate daily. Just five to 10 minutes a day is valuable, Hibbert said. “The more we practice meditation, the easier it becomes to stop, get still, and breathe our way through feelings of anxiety or stress, giving us the power to create calm in any stressful storm,” she said.
7. Detach from the situation. This means being present without experiencing emotional overwhelm, said Joyce Marter, LCPC, psychotherapist and owner of Urban Balance. She gave the example of an emergency room doctor. “He or she is present and functioning but is able to set aside the emotional responses that would render him or her unable to function in times of stress or crisis,” she said.
Focusing on someone else can help you gain awareness, she said. “Being of service to somebody else — by listening, helping or volunteering — can get you out of your own head and help you view your stressors with greater perspective and clarity.”
8. Ditch the “shoulds.” “Most stress [occurs] because we don’t want to accept reality or we think that life, or people, or situations, should be different than they are,” said Julie Hanks, LCSW, a therapist, writer and blogger at PsychCentral.com. Whenever Hanks feels stressed out, she repeats this phrase from author Byron Katie: “There is nothing wrong here.”
9. Get to the root of your anxiety. Howes suggested getting to the bottom of your anxiety or stress by asking: “Why are you anxious? What are you really afraid of? When were you first afraid of it? Does it remind you of any fear from your past?” According to Howes, “Oftentimes, we stress out more because we’re projecting past baggage onto the present.” When you can identify this past baggage, it reduces the chances of it returning.
10. Practice self-care. “Self-care, such as proper nutrition, rest, exercise, social support and leisure activity, [helps to] reboot your mind and body,” Marter said.
11. Create a positive mantra. “Cut yourself some slack and recognize we are all human and works in progress,” Marter said. She suggested reciting a positive mantra or statement when you’re stressed or feeling overwhelmed. She gave the following examples: “I am doing the best that I can,” “I am a capable and resilient person,” “I am fine just the way I am.”

LINK: HTTP://PSYCHCENTRAL.COM/LIB/2012/THERAPISTS-SPILL-THE-BEST-WAYS-TO-SHRINK-STRESS-ANXIETY/

On 1/4/13 SPH says...

My first business identity was "Faith not Fear" and I continue to feel very connected to this orientation to life.

On 1/3/13 SPH says...

don't give up

FOCUSandFLOW365 PicQuote: Bubbling Up

"Every thought that bubbles up in our minds can teach us things about ourselves, if we are able to listen." ~David A. Cooper

FOCUSandFLOW365 EmpowerCard #1: Path Of The Heart

"Are you ready to step off of the path of timid souls and get on the path of your heart's truth." ~SPH