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April 2003 Dear Wildmind Subscriber, A very warm welcome to Wildmind's latest newsletter! In this issue:
Four studies of meditation health benefits launched The US National Institutes of Health are funding four clinical trials investigating the health benefits of meditation. Two trials will investigate the effects of meditation in African Americans with cardiovascular disease, while another will investigate the effects of meditation on arterial vasomotor dysfunction, heart rate variability, transient myocardial ischemia, and psychological stress and quality of life, measured by anger, hostility, anxiety, depression, perceived health, disease-specific symptoms, and life stress and social resources. The fourth trial will assess the relative effectiveness of a mindfulness meditation-based intervention for binge eating disorder in comparison to a psycho-educational intervention and a waiting-list control group. With spring here (in the northern hemisphere), this is the perfect season to embrace growth and free yourself from anxieties and conflicts that damage your heatlh and well being. Our next online courses start on Monday, April 7! Our online courses offer what you need to create more balance in your life, maintain fulfilling relationships, make time for yourself, and create beliefs, opinions and points of view that work for you, rather than against you. You can check out our course offerings below. Meditation in the news We've collected together some recent news stories about meditation. You can see our full index of news stories here. War's
Stress Takes a Toll on the Homefront Buddhist
perspective on war Is
Yoga Really So Bad? A
meditation on the way to wellness Sandra
Sunnyo Lee: Self No Self - Meditation Paintings Meditation
is Finding Your Center | |
| Give $1 to Wildmind We'd like to thank everyone who has kindly donated to help support our mission of benefiting the world by promoting awareness and compassionate values through the practice of meditation. If you've benefited from our site and would like to give something back, then making a small donation can help us enormously. Of course you can feel free to give more than a dollar! |
Our online courses A student comments: "I have been doing [the meditation] for about two weeks and have already seen a great improvement in my focus, attention, awareness and my overall life. Prior to this I was living life in my head instead of experiencing life in this moment. Thank you creating this site and making the tools for this type of enlightenment available." Steve, a Wildmind student. We offer four online courses as well as our popular Life Member Program. For more information, click on any of the photographs or links and you'll be taken to our online store, where more details are available. Our
next online courses start on Monday, April 7. | |
 | Life
Member Program Lifelong access to all of our course materials, but without personal feedback and guidance. Suitable for self-directed students. |
| "The Path of Mindfulness and Love" Our introduction to meditation, helping you to transform your life through mindfulness and lovingkindness, and helping you to set up a regular practice. |
 | A level two course, introducing advanced techniques for combating negative mental states and for cultivating calmness, energy, contentment, and concentration. |
 | "Entering
the Path of Insight" Introducing the practice of insight meditation, which helps us to appreciate the interdependent nature of the reality we live in. |
 | "Awakening
the Heart" An alternative level two course, introducing the cultivation of lovingkindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and emotional balance. |
New material on Wildmind We've posted twelve new pages since the last newsletter. There are three on the metta bhavana (development of lovingkindness) meditation: We've added several more pages on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), including a syllabus outlining the course, and eight abstracts from published papers evaluating the effectiveness of MBSR in the treatment of chronic pain, psoriasis, anxiety disorders, fibromyalgia, and depression. Wildmind now has a UK bookstore!
We've had a selection of books on meditation and related subjects for some time now, courtesy of Amazon.com. Wildmind has now teamed up with Amazon.co.uk to offer visitors in the UK the opportunity to browse the very best titles on meditation. You can check it out here. | |
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Preorder Bodhipaksa's New Book! Wildmind: A Step-by-Step Guide to Meditation is on the way from the printers and will be available in late April in the UK, Europe, and Australasia at a price of £11.99. This edition is not available in stores in the US. However... |
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Windhorse Publications does ship books to the US and elsewhere in the world at a reasonable rate, so wherever you are you'll be able to order the book in advance and have it delivered to your door. Windhorse Publications has done a magnificent job on the design of this book, and it's exceptionally beautiful as well as full of practical advice to help you live a more meaningful and fulfilling life. We hope you'll love the book as much as we do. If you check out this PDF file of the title page you'll get an idea of how stunning the presentation is.
Click on the image or title to go to Windhorse Publications so that you can buy your copy. New CDs by Bodhipaksa | |
 | Bodhipaksa has just finished collaborating on two CDs for At Peace Media, both of which involve collaborations with composer Michael Benghiat. |
YOGA PULSE The first CD is entitled "Yoga Pulse," produced by At Peace Media and will be available through Wildmind's bookstore in April.
Having heard Michael's wonderfully relaxing music, we can highly recommend this CD -- even if you don't do Yoga -- and we'll let you know as soon as it's available on our site. If you've heard and like Bodhipaksa's first CD of guided meditations, you'll love the deeply relaxing Body Scan meditation that he leads on this CD. THE SIX ELEMENTS The second CD is a more extended collaboration between Bodhipaksa and Michael, and is a guided meditation and musical exploration of the Six Element practice, which is a contemplation of our interconnectedness with the universe. It will be available sometime in 2004, and of course we'll keep you posted. | |
 | Wildmind's CD makes a splash For the last month, Bodhipaksa's popular CD of guided meditations has been Amazon.com's best-selling guided meditation title. Of course you don't have to go to Amazon to purchase it -- you can buy it here. |
| Book of the month
Mindfulness
and Money |
Have you ever found yourself making impulse buys of things you don't really need? Ever feel bad because you think you consume too much? Have you ever found yourself giving gifts to friends even though you were in debt? Perhaps you need to read this book. Kulananda lives a life of simplicity in a Buddhist community in Britain. Dominic Houlder is Dean of the Sloane Program at the London Business School. Both are practicing Buddhists, and together they've put together a book of practical wisdom to help us find financial peace, whether or not we follow the Buddhist path. Drawing on traditional Buddhist teachings, illustrated by the experiences of many practicing Buddhists, and with numerous practical exercises, the authors show us how to become more aware in relation to money. They show how we can misuse money to try to feel complete,and how we can learn to find inner wealth in order to become more whole. If you're interested in buying this book from Amazon.com, click on the cover or title above. To purchase from Amazon.co.uk, click here. | |
 | Quote of the month "To find the real path we have to go off the path we are on now, even for an instant, and earn the privilege of losing our way. As the path fades, we are forced to take a good look at the life in which we actually find ourselves." David Whyte |
The inner path of personal change is not like a broad sidewalk with defined edges that is clearly defined and which can be easily followed. It's more like an ancient and little-used track in the wilderness. In places it's become overgrown or seems to fade away. Sometimes it seems to split into several directions, and we're not sure which branch heads in the direction we want to go or whether the different branches perhaps converge again further along. There's no way we can follow such a track without making mistakes; without making decisions that cause pain to ourselves or other people. We are forever wandering past the boundaries of the track, or following false branches that take us out of our way. And in fact, as Whyte suggests, we have to wander off the track and to follow the false trails in order to establish where the real track lies. In fact I sometimes talk about the spiritual life as being "the fine art of making mistakes." It's of little significance that we make mistakes -- everyone, after all, makes mistakes that cause themselves and others to suffer -- but the important thing is that we be prepared to learn from our mistakes. If we keep coming back to an awareness of where we are in relation to where we want to go, then we'll end up heading in the right direction, not despite our mistakes but because of them. Suffering, in fact, is life's way of reminding us that we have strayed from our inner path of growth. As we sense growing dis-ease and disharmony in our lives, we can confidently know that we have strayed from the path of awareness and lovingkindness. We can then, as Whyte says, " take a good look at the life in which we actually find ourselves" and see what needs to be changed. It's in this way that we learn and grow beyond our current limitations. Bodhipaksa Copyright
© 2003, Bodhipaksa. | |
Lama Surya Das, a personal friend and translator for the Dalai Lama, gives a Buddhist
perspective on war. This is an audio newscast from National Public Radio's
Here and Now.
