The Dalai Lama was once asked what he thought of celebrities dabbling in mediation and Buddhism. He surprised the listeners by replying in that rumbling low voice of his â Is very good ⦠because famous people already know that money and power and fame do not make you happyâ. I thought of that when Dr. Kilstein suggested I curate this article about how David Duchovny studies Zen meditation techniques from time to time.
Actor David Duchovny recently spent a weekend shovelling horse
« November 2011 | Main | January 2012 »
December 2011
12/19/2011
12/08/2011
12/07/2011
Meditation Techniques To Relieve Hip Pain
Are you looking for simple meditation techniques to relieve hip pain?
The first and most important caution is to warn you to check with your doctor before using any meditation technique for chronic pain relief of your hips, back or any other place.
Now let's take a look at how meditation techniques work to relieve your hip pain.
How Meditation Works To Relieve Your Pain
There have been a number of studies over the past few years that suggest that the practice of meditation can lead to significant pain relief.
Despite these findings, the mechanism through which meditation causes such relief hasn’t been fully ascertained.
However, recent research reported in Brain Research Bulletin suggests that the answer may lie in the manipulation of alpha waves. Alpha waves are brain waves that originate primarily in the occipital lobes, and their function is being actively researched.
A 1966 study showed that a group of Buddhist monks who meditated regularly had elevated alpha rhythms across their brains.
In the new study, the researchers followed 12 subjects who had never meditated before and looked at the waves’ role in a specific part of the brain—cells of the sensory cortex that process tactile information from the hands and feet. Half the participants were told not to meditate, while the other half were trained in a technique called mindfulness-based stress reduction.
The first two weeks of training were devoted to learning to pay close attention to body sensations.
These findings suggest that the practice of meditation can lead to changes in alpha wave behavior, which in turn may lead to the pain relief. There is some research that suggests that alpha waves can be involved in inhibiting communication in the brain, and in the case of meditation, it may be that meditators are able to accordingly inhibit their pain signals.
Guided Meditation Techniques To Relieve Hip Pain
Here is a guided meditation for pain relief that's proven to work well with hip pain. This meditation is from Wildmind, and authored by Vidyamala.
allow the breath to settle and to find its own natural rhythm, letting the breath breathe itself. Try not to interfere with this process, and notice how the body moves in response to the breath: the chest expanding and relaxing, the belly rising and falling. If your breath is affected in any way by your illness or pain, then just noting this with a kindly, gentle awareness. Try to let go of any ideas about how you think it ought to be, and just rest with an awareness of how things actually are for you in each moment.[Pause]
Sometimes it can help to include an image with a sense of the breath: you can imagine a wave flowing up the beach, turning, and flowing back out to sea again, noticing how the movement of the breath has a rhythm very like this. Or you might have another image that you find evocative and calming. Use your imagination in your own way to help the mind and the body settle around the breath.
[Pause]
Notice how each breath is unique, how no two breaths are the same. Notice the texture, the quality, and the duration of each breath. If you notice the body or the mind tensing up around your experience, in the noticing you can gently let go again without judgement. Do this over and over again if necessary with a kindly, gentle awareness.
Include any pain or discomfort in the body within your broad field of awareness. Very often we resist feelings of pain or discomfort, and this just leads to more tension, more pain and more discomfort. Use the breath to help soften the hard edges around the pain and allow a tender, gentle awareness to permeate the in- and the out-breaths. As you use the breath to soften resistance to the pain or discomfort, you may notice how the experience of pain is in fact a constantly changing mass of different sensations. Experience how it comes into being and passes away moment by moment.
[Pause]
Now you can broaden out your experience even more to invite in the pleasurable dimensions of your field of awareness. They might be very subtle, such as tingling in the fingers, some sort of pleasure around the breath, or maybe the sun is shining through the window onto the skin. In your own way scanning through your whole experience and noticing little moments of pleasure, no matter how fleeting – arising and falling with each moment.
You may notice that each moment of life contains elements that are painful and elements which are pleasurable. This is the way things are in this world for everyone. Notice the tendency to harden against pain and to grasp after pleasure, and in the noticing relax back into the broad field of awareness.
[Pause]
Now broaden out your awareness still more to include an awareness of others. Become aware that all humanity experiences a mixture of pain and pleasure moment by moment in much the way that you do. The stories of our lives are unique, but the range of basic human experience and emotions will be very similar. We all have hopes and dreams, fears and regrets, no matter where we live, our age, color or wealth. In this way we can allow our own experience of pain and illness to become a moment of empathy for others who are in pain, or who are ill, rather than a moment of isolation. All life suffers in one way or another. All life experiences pleasure in one way or another.
In the same way that you imbued the breath with a kindly awareness towards your own experience, you can now allow a kindly awareness to permeate the in- and the out-breaths as you think of others. Maybe you can get a sense of the whole world breathing – all life breathing like waves on the ocean. Rising and falling. Allow a sense of the hard edges of separation to soften, letting go into a sense of all that we share and a feeling of connection with all life as you sit or lie here resting quietly with the breath moment by moment.
Rest with this quality of awareness for as long as feels appropriate for you at this time.
[Pause]
Now in your own time bring the meditation to a close. Come back to a full awareness of the body lying on the bed or sitting on the chair. Feel in firm contact with the earth.
You can use guided meditation techniques to relieve hip pain by having a friend read the script to you, or by recording the meditation for pain relief and playing it back to yourself.
But your best solution is to check out my Meditation Techniques website. We have many free guided meditations that you can download for free.
12/05/2011
12/04/2011
Best Gift For Yoga Students
The holidays are rapidly approaching and you are looking for the best gift for yoga students in your family. They are really "in" to the yoga lifestyle and you'd like to give them something that will be meaningful and practical.
So as a yoga teacher/ yoga student, I've come up with what I believe is the Best Gift For Yoga Students. Serious students of Yoga want to have a really great yoga mat, because they spend a lot of time "on the mat".
Now I'm going to suggest you get them a yoga mat - wait. Not just any yoga mat. A very specific yoga mat.
I know what you are thinking. They already have a yoga mat. That's correct. But most yoga students I know have many different yoga mats.
There are mats for practice at home. There are mats for practice in a studio. There are even mats specifically for travel purposes.
But if you are serious about getting them a great gift. Look no further. And rest assured, everyone in their yoga class will be jealous of them.
Best Gift For Yoga Students
Most yoga mats are 72 inches long but leave it to Manduka - who makes the best yoga mats in the business - to come up with one 85 inches long. Why does the Extra Long Yoga Mat
Fall in love all over again with this season's Limited Edition Manduka PRO. If you have not met, this latest addition to our Limited Edition collection is the Manduka PRO - Black Magic. It has all the allure of our Black Mat PRO in a stunning deep purple shade and now also available in the 85" length! With its denser, thicker form, unparalleled comfort and cushioning, superior non-slip fabric-like finish, and simple, elegant design the Manduka PRO will revolutionize your practice. And best of all, it now comes with a Lifetime Guarantee. When you want the very best yoga mat, the mat chosen first by yoga teachers throughout the world, there really is only one choice – the Manduka PRO, for your practice and for our world.
This mat is extremely comfortable. It takes a lot of punishment and it stays dry when sweat drips on it. So, if your favorite yoga students like hot yoga, this could be a perfect gift for them. Manduka is a very green conscious company. And I know that because you are serious about finding the best gift for yoga students, a mat that is ecologically sound will make that gift even more appreciated.
Manduka PRO series yoga mats, designed to last a lifetime (or two), curb the amount of PVC mats that enter landfills every year and reduces overall mat consumption. Also, during the manufacturing of most PVC products, toxic emissions may be released into the air. However, PRO series mats are manufactured through a process that ensures no toxic emissions are released into the atmosphere. The PRO series mats are certified safe for human contact by OEKO-TEX, an environmental certification agency in Europe for the textile industry.
Of course, when you are ready to buy the Best Gift For Yoga Students, I'd recommend you get your yoga mat at Amazon. Extra Long Yoga Mat
