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Posts tagged with “meditation”

One Mind Live: Free Holiday Week of Peace & Customized Meditation Giveaway

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You’ve likely read about the benefits of meditation, and you’ve maybe even experienced them for yourself.

Meditation can help you:

  • Reduce your stress
  • Increase your focus
  • Enhance your creativity
  • Deepen your sleep
  • Heighten your sense of presence
  • Improve your mood and overall well-being

And yet knowing all these things, you may find it difficult to maintain a consistent practice. Even if you have the time, it be challenging to shut out distractions, shut off your brain, and simply be. I know I’ve struggled with this.

It can be even more difficult because it’s usually a solitary pursuit—but it doesn’t have …

4 Things to Keep You Going When You’re Stressed at Work

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“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” ~Charles Swindoll

I remember working at a job where I absolutely could not do anything right.

This was one of those jobs where it was extremely fast paced and you received 100 tons of work that must be completed by an unrealistic deadline. And here’s the kicker: your time at work was spent in meetings, all day. I’m talking about four to seven hours of your day. You get the picture.

So you may ask when I had time to do the work. Unfortunately, after …

A Simple Technique to Quiet Your Mind and Be Present

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“Get out of your head and get into your heart. Think less, feel more.” ~Osho

Meditating. It’s one of those things that we all know we’d be better off doing, but most of us struggle with it immensely.

It’s difficult. It’s hard to find the time. And it often doesn’t seem like it’s working.

For many years, I’ve tried to make meditation a regular habit. But rarely can I do it consistently. It’s almost always the first thing to go when I’m crunched for time or feeling stressed.

Of course, those are the times that meditation is best!

But, for …

How Meditation Can Help You Find the Perfect Friend

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“When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

I meet with a lot of people who say things like, “Oh, I’ve tried meditation before but I’m just not good at it.” When asked to explain, the most common answer is, “I just can’t make my mind get quiet.”

I’ve heard responses like this so often that I’ve come to realize that this is the single greatest misunderstanding about meditation. In truth, meditation is not about calming our mind or achieving a state free …

Be Present, Be Yourself: 5 Lessons from Dance Meditation

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“While I dance I cannot judge, I cannot hate, I cannot separate myself from life. I can only be joyful and whole. This is why I dance.” ~Hans Bos

I am not a dancer. I was kicked out jazz ballet, and I am so clumsy that I once broke the mirror in an aerobics class. I don’t dance at parties, either, because to be honest I don’t enjoy it.

But turns out, just like everyone else, I am also a dancer.

A year and a half ago I was volunteering in the Turkish mountains, and after a rather upsetting situation …

5 Unusual Ways to Meditate for Simple Daily De-stressing

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“Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.” ~Joan Borysenko

Meditating even for just two minutes every day could help reduce your anxiety, calm your mind, and energize the senses. That’s two minutes of your twenty-four hours. Two minutes that could lengthen your life as you get rid of the negative energy surrounding you and welcome the positive.

Contrary to what you may think, meditation doesn’t have to be in an empty house or room overlooking gorgeous scenery. It would be a bonus, yes, but I have proven that you can clear your mind …

Meditation Happens When…

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Source: Spirit Pond

Pause for a Cause with Mindful in May

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Today’s video is more than a cute cartoon (though I find it adorable!)–it’s an introduction to a global meditation campaign for social good.

Mindful in May is a one month online meditation campaign delivered to your inbox daily in May, to motivate you to bring a new healthy habit into your life, while raising money to help nearly one billion people on the planet who struggle daily without access to clean, safe drinking water.

Starting on May 1st, participants will commit to regular meditation through a mindfulness program delivered by daily e-newsletters. This will include weekly guided meditation downloads, cutting …

Letting Go of the Guilt That Keeps You Chained to the Past

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“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything—anger, guilt, or possessions—we cannot be free.”  ~Thich Nhat Hanh

One night after my nine-year-old son had just gone to bed, he asked me if I would lay with him, as he was scared. I was getting ready for a busy week and was tired, so I replied, “No, you’re fine. Go to sleep.”

When he died the following afternoon after being hit by a car, I remembered what he’d asked me. The guilt that followed me from that …

Mindful in May: Global Meditation Campaign

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Today’s video is more than a cute cartoon (though I find it adorable!)–it’s an introduction to a global meditation campaign for social good.

Mindful in May is a one month online meditation campaign delivered to your inbox daily in May, to motivate you to bring a new healthy habit into your life, while raising money to help nearly one billion people on the planet who struggle daily without access to clean, safe drinking water.

Starting on May 1st, participants will commit to regular meditation through a mindfulness program delivered by daily e-newsletters. This will include weekly guided meditation downloads, cutting …

What to Do When You Feel Caged: The Key to Lasting Freedom

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“Wherever you go, there you are.” ~Confucius

Everything I do is about living and sharing freedom. But what is freedom anyway?

To understand freedom, it’s helpful to understand its opposite. The opposite of freedom is feeling caged, constricted, and ruled by guidelines you don’t believe in.

For many people, their job feels like jail. For some people, their community feels like jail. For others, school feels like jail.

I’ve been in all those jails. And for the most part, I was in those jails because I didn’t know there was an alternative. Now that I know the alternative, I have …

A Letter from Your Future Self

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“The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now.” ~Robert G. Ingersoll

Dear Past Me,

Remember that day when you thought all was lost? When you thought there was barely any point in carrying on?

The bank account was dangerously low.

You were arguing with everyone close to you.

The roof was leaking.

It felt like everything was a struggle and the so-called abundance of the Universe was nowhere to be seen.

You were going over the mistakes you’d made.

The money you had lost.

The opportunities you had missed.

You were going over angry …

Forming Healthy Habits: 3 Tiny Choices That Create Huge Change

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“It is better to make many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.” ~Proverb

Seven years ago I was a sedentary, over-caffeinated, unmindful, somewhat neurotic meat-eater with a bit of a drinking problem. My meals came out of boxes with chemical compounds for ingredients and had little in the way of anything that grew outside or came from a field.

I made excuses for not exercising, but in reality I was so insecure that I didn’t think I was strong enough to be athletic. I was afraid of making an …

Meditation Remixed: Movies, Pop Culture, and Inner Peace

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DJ/VJ and Audio Visual Artist Brett Belcastro created an awesome remix video using over 80 scenes from movies and TV shows to entertain and inspire viewers to find peace within their minds. And entertain and inspire it does!

As a huge movie buff, I appreciate how Brett used pop culture to share the power and importance of meditation.

From the Vimeo page:

“The idea for this video remix came to mind about a year ago while I was listening to a guided meditation by the Deepak Chopra. I was so inspired after attending his ‘Seduction of Spirit’ seminar this …

5 Surprising Things I Learned During a Year of Silence

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“Freedom is instantaneous the moment we accept things as they are.” ~Karen Maezen Miller

Four years ago I spent the better part of a year being silent.

A friend had told me that in silence, the bits of you that need healing heal themselves. He was talking about the bits of me that had pushed me until I was sick and depressed, too anxious to answer the door.

I call it my year of silence, but it was more like a year of “doing nothing” because I wasn’t silently reading a book or silently reorganizing my cutlery drawer; I was …

7 Benefits of a Surprisingly Simple Meditation Technique

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“Our way to practice is one step at a time, one breath at a time.” ~Shunryu Suzuki

I blinked my eyes, wiggled my toes, and carefully heaved my right foot out from under me. It had gone completely numb after twenty minutes of meditation. I prodded it tentatively.

“The idea is to be able to meditate wherever you are,” our teacher said, pouring out some green tea as we stretched, “to be really present in whatever it is you are doing—cutting the lawn, doing the dishes, whatever it is. To simply breathe in…and out…and just be.”

“You don’t have …

3 Powerful Insights About Finding Yourself and Creating Change

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“Get out of your head and get into your heart. Think less, feel more.” ~Osho

When you’re on a spiritual quest in the chaotic outlying suburbs of Bangkok, and you’re having a complete and utter meltdown about your ability to face your inner demons and greatest life fears, where should you turn?

Well, I feel well qualified to answer this question, having been in that exact situation!

Where I turned was a peaceful little Buddhist temple, and more specifically a gentle and elderly monk named Yut.

Don’t be deceived by the “gentle and elderly” description, however, for Yut was also …

5 Meditation Tips for People Who Don’t (Yet) Like to Meditate

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“Don’t wait for your feelings to change to take the action. Take the action and your feelings will change.” ~Barbara Baron

I own a series of CDs called “Classical Music for People Who Hate Classical Music.” We know we should like and listen to classical music—they’re the classics after all! But when I actually find time to listen to music, I reach for Mumford & Sons, not Mozart.

Some of us have a similar relationship with meditation.

We know we should meditate—it has so many mental, emotional, and physical benefits, and who couldn’t use a bit of slowing down in …

5 Ways Meditation Can Improve Your Life and Make You Happier

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“If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place.” ~Lao Tzu

For most of my life I had the overwhelming feeling that I was lacking something. I felt like I was not good enough, smart enough, or pretty enough.

I was nothing but an unattractive, chubby girl of little worth. In my late twenties I formed a huge crush that changed my life, for the worse, or so I thought. Against my will, I developed an unbelievable attraction to women. I was horrified!

Being gay was the cherry on top of my pile of …

5 Ways to Turn Simple Daily Tasks into Meaningful Rituals

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“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” ~ Robert Brault

“Routine” can seem like a dirty word; we can get stuck repeating the same actions over and over again and feel like slaves to our habits.

Yet there are some things we simply cannot get around—sleeping, waking, eating, working, and engaging with others. There are also repetitions that we embrace as rituals—Friday afternoon with its promise of the weekend, weekly religious observances, a favorite TV show even.

What if we could turn regular, seemingly mundane daily activities into …