Mindfulness Archive

Harvard Gazette: Eight weeks to a better brain, through mindfulness meditation

January 5, 2012 · Category: Meditation, Mindfulness

From The Harvard Gazette: Participating in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy, and stress. In a study that will appear in the Jan. 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, a team led by Harvard-affiliated researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) reported the results of their study, the first to document meditation-produced changes over time in the brain’s gray matter. “Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist ...

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Teachers: How to incorporate meditation in the classroom

December 20, 2011 · Category: Meditation, Mindfulness, Parenting

I just stumbled across a reader comment from early last year by a teacher in Massachusetts, Camille Napier Bernstein, who begins each day with a "stillness" exercise for the first few minutes each day in her classroom. The students are not only receptive, but sometimes enthusiastic about how valuable it has become to them. She has written about her successes with the practice. An excerpt: I teach in a public school. You might wonder if the practice has caused controversy. Certainly, my first two years were fraught with worry that a student might misinterpret the practice to his parents, and I doggedly ...

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Living daylight

September 12, 2011 · Category: Buddhism, Meditation, Mindfulness

A quote that really struck me today, from the Almaasary of quotes from A.H. Almaas: What determines whether a soul has basic trust? Basic trust is the effect on the soul of a particular aspect or quality of Being that we call Living Daylight. We call it this because if one's perception is subtle enough to visually see and kinesthetically feel the substance of one's consciousness, it actually looks like daylight, and is felt as an alive consciousness. It is experienced as something boundless, in the sense that it is not bounded by one's body but rather is experienced as something ...

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Treating chronic pain through radical acceptance

June 7, 2011 · Category: Adyashanti, Buddhism, Eckhart Tolle, Health, Meditation, Mindfulness, Witness Consciousness

A new friend asked for my advice about using meditation to treat chronic pain. I would assume that, like me, you have consulted many doctors and they aren't able to do much to help. In this case, one of the most powerful therapies is what we might call "radical acceptance." The basic premise is that we often don't realize how much of our suffering is of our own creation, created by how we react to the pain in our body. Sometimes the core of pain itself can be like a grain of sand in an oyster; but through our irritated reaction, it ...

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Meditation makes your brain bigger, prevents natural age-related thinning of the cortex

May 9, 2011 · Category: Health, Meditation, Mindfulness

A 2006 Harvard Gazette story "Meditation found to increase brain size" begins: People who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don’t. Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. Brain scans they conducted reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input. In one area of gray matter, the thickening turns out to be more pronounced in older than in younger people. That’s intriguing because those sections of the human cortex, or thinking ...

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The other side of peace

December 20, 2010 · Category: Adyashanti, Buddhism, Intellectual, Mindfulness

Fellow Adyashanti student Margo, at A Peaceful Human Race, has an excellent new post titled "the other side of peace," which does a good job of exploring the paradoxical nature of peace. It's a topic that interests me, as I've long been fascinated by the fact that peace sometimes requires something that looks an awful lot like war -- and perhaps, occasionally, even war itself. Her post begins: "conflict is essential to the development and growth of man and society. it leads either to the construction or destruction of an entire group or state. . . if there is no ...

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An enlightened view of enlightenment

December 13, 2010 · Category: Adyashanti, Buddhism, Eckhart Tolle, Intellectual, Mindfulness

I haven't written much on Mudita Journal about the concept of enlightenment, but it's been in the background for me for several years, ever since I discovered the teachings of Adyashanti (and Eckhart Tolle, before him). Perhaps I should write a post about it, sometime, for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar, who see it as a "mystical" concept, or who are skeptical that it has any value. Meantime, I know a few of my readers are acquainted with Adyashanti — or "Adya," as students often call him — and his teachings. In any case, a friend said the ...

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The gentle art of blessing

December 11, 2010 · Category: Adyashanti, Buddhism, Eckhart Tolle, Mindfulness

I was contacted today by a fellow student of Adyashanti's teachings, who lives in Albuquerque and was wondering about the status of the group I had tried starting there, years ago. It turns out she has a blog as well, called A Peaceful Human Race. Reading it, I was moved by this post: for the last couple months, i've been reading the gentle art of blessing by pierre prandervand. a little excerpt from the book can give you a taste of what this book is about, or you could click the title of the book above, order, and check it out yourself. pradervand ...

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Suffering as a form of spiritual guidance

January 5, 2010 · Category: Buddhism, Eckhart Tolle, Intellectual, Mindfulness, Witness Consciousness

In response to my post on the significance of suffering, Andrew ends his insightful comments with: So in that sense I think the issue of suffering is important: I think denials of it lie at the root of many problems. I do wonder, though, if this gets at what you are talking about. I sense you may be referring to something more. Good points. And yes, I am groping for something more, here. In a nutshell, it's this: I have come to the view that suffering, if you respond to it correctly, will open you to a sense of deep and profound connection with ...

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The Invitation

December 26, 2009 · Category: Individualism, Intellectual, Mindfulness, Personal, Witness Consciousness

by Oriah It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon... I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals, or have become shrivelled and closed from fear ...

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