Joe, a student in my online class, was worried that meditation would hurt his career. He works in a very competitive business where everyone is single-mindedly pushing and driving hard all the time. The whole idea of “letting go” seemed absurd in that context. But at the same time his stress and anxiety levels were sky high. He knew this wasn’t a sustainable way to live.

Yes it’s true that in meditation, we’re told to drop everything and let go. But that doesn’t mean becoming passive and ineffectual. There’s more to this instruction than meets the eye.

There’s an image that comes to mind for me to …

Helena Oliviera, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Naomi Tsu battles high levels of stress every day at work. And increasingly, the Atlanta attorney, doesn’t always cut it off when she goes home.

“It’s hard to put down that BlackBerry,” laments Tsu.

Tsu carves out time every day to rest her busy mind and ease her stress levels. She enjoys cooking and spending time with friends. And she routinely begins her day with meditation — lasting anywhere between five minutes to an hour. With every breath in — and out — she feels her body relax.

“It makes my stress level livable,” she said. “After I meditate …

Read the original article »

Lindsay Wise, Houston Chronicle: Army veteran Weldon Holder stood barefoot on a yoga mat and extended his arms straight in front of him, fingers interlaced and palms pushed away from his chest.

“Drink the breath and let the awareness reside in the body,” urged his instructor, Pam Johnson. “Long and smooth. Stay with the breath.”

The pair slowly raised their arms above their heads, then back to their sides.

“Stay, stay in this place, be present,” Johnson said. “Let it happen. … Exhale.”

Holder, a burly 37-year-old former Cavalry scout from Houston, started practicing yoga in September at the suggestion of his wife …

Read the original article »

The theory that meditation can reduce stress, depression …

The general is surprisingly good at meditation. It’s not just the impeccable posture — that might be expected of a man long used to standing at attention. It’s his hands, which rest idly on his knees, and his combat boots, which remain planted firmly on the floor. Over the next several minutes, Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Surgeon General of the Army, will keep his eyes closed and his face perfectly relaxed.

Few in this hotel conference room, where three dozen have assembled to mark the 10th anniversary of the Samueli Institute, a research organization specializing in alternative therapies, are able to match …

Read the original article »

It is a stressful time for university students who are in the middle of writing final exams but now a little relief can be found on campus.

Staff at the University of Calgary’s Wellness Centre say students are all feeling the pressure of finals and dealing with the holiday season.

To help students cope, they have converted a dance studio in the Kinesiology Department on campus into a stress free zone.

The overhead lights are turned off and soothing music is played and a labyrinth is laid out in the middle of the floor for walking meditation.

“Sometimes they don’t even need …

Read the original article »

David Wild: Mindfulness meditation is as much as four times more effective than group support in relieving the severity of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) symptoms, according to research presented at the 2011 Digestive Disease Week meeting. Patients with IBS who participated in eight weekly meditation sessions and meditated daily at home experienced residual symptom relief three months after ending treatment.

Lucinda A. Harris, MD, who was not involved in the study, said the research confirms that modalities like mindfulness need to be integrated into a holistic approach to treating IBS, which also …

Read the original article (free registration required) »

The flashbacks and nightmares came often for Robert Singh.

U.S. Army veteran Singh served three tours in Iraq, from 2004 through 2010. He was an Army medic for most of that time. It was a violent, dangerous and intense job. Singh was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in 2007.

After he left the military in 2010, it became obvious that the drugs Singh was prescribed for PTSD weren’t helping.

So when Singh learned of VetMind, a novel study being conducted at Oregon Health & Science University to understand how mindfulness meditation helps veterans’ PTSD symptoms, he enrolled.

And he’s happy he did.

The meditation exercises Singh learned in the study and continues to …

Tralee Pearce: I haven’t studied enough. I’m going to fail the test. My mom’s going to be mad. Maybe I’ll skip class.

Thoughts like these can quickly gallop out of control in kids’ minds, but what if there was a way they could clear them away? Enter the three-minute breathing meditation, which can be done anywhere, whether it’s on the bus or in a school hallway.

It’s one of the cornerstones of the increasingly popular practice of mindfulness, a blend of Buddhism-inspired calm and cognitive-behavioural therapy. Used as a therapy for adults for about 30 years, it’s now moving into the world of kids …

Click to read more »

I’ve read a couple of books by Dan Goleman, who is most famous for being the author of Emotional Intelligence, but this is the first time I’ve encountered one of his audio programs, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Relax: Six Techniques to Lower Your Stress is, as you might expect, about stress and how to relax. It offers six guided practices intended to help develop a sense of ease, relaxation, and wellbeing.

In the introduction, Goleman points out that there are many and varied symptoms of stress, including psychological tension, muscle tension, and nervous system arousal, and that not everyone experiences stress in the same way. Therefore, not every antidote to stress …

In times of stress, we’re often encouraged to pause for a moment and simply be in the ‘now.’ This kind of mindfulness, an essential part of Buddhist and Indian Yoga traditions, has entered the mainstream as people try to find ways to combat stress and improve their quality of life. And research suggests that mindfulness meditation can have benefits for health and performance, including improved immune function, reduced blood pressure, and enhanced cognitive function.

But how is it that a single practice can have such wide-ranging effects on well-being? A new article published in the latest issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, draws …

People often come to my meditation courses because they want to learn how to slow down their crazy busy lives.

So you start sitting for 10, 20, or maybe even 30 minutes a day. But after some weeks of this, you still feel like things are crazy busy and all over the place. So your meditation isn’t working, you say to me.

Here’s my first thought. I’m wondering if you’re thinking of meditation as something you can drop into your life for say, 30 minutes a day, and have it counterbalance the other 15 or so hours that your mind is on full tilt. (I’m assuming you spend …

Alice G. Walton: Most people do what they have to do to get through the day. Though this may sound dire, let’s face it, it’s the human condition. Given the number of people who are depressed or anxious, it’s not surprising that big pharma is doing as well as it is. But for millennia before we turned to government-approved drugs, humans devised clever ways of coping: Taking a walk, eating psychedelic mushrooms, breathing deeply, snorting things, praying, running, smoking, and meditating are just some of the inventive ways humans have found to deal with the unhappy rovings of their minds.

But which…

Read the rest of this article…

Things come at us with so much urgency and demand these days. Phones ring, texts buzz, emails pile up, new balls have to be juggled, work days lengthen and move into evenings and weekends, traffic gets denser, financial demands feel like a knife at the neck, ads and news clamor for attention, push push push PUSH.

On top of these external pressures, we deal with internal ones as well. These include all the inner “shoulds,” “musts,” and “have-tos,” like: “I gotta get this done today or my boss’ll get mad.” Or: “I must not look bad.” Or: “I can’t leave the house with dishes in …

Stress is a fact of life for many of us, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Mindfulness meditation can make all the difference between feeling stressed out and well-balanced.

For those of you in the Boston area, Sunada Takagi is offering a course on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) to help you start down the road to health and wellbeing. The program centers on the ancient practice of meditation, presented in a pragmatic, common sense way. You’ll learn how to build up your inner resources for healing and growing — so you can start taking charge of your life.

MBSR is based on Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s pioneering work …

Yogis have sworn by it for years, but now there is scientific proof that meditation eases stress and promotes better health.

Meditation triggers change in electrical activity of the brain, improving the mind and body in measurable ways, the latest study on work stress, led by Dr Ramesh Manocha at Sydney University, reveals.

“Within the context of meditation and stress, it’s the largest study in the world … and we’ve applied some rigorous conditions,” Dr Manocha said.

The secret to the success of the study, he said, was the “mental silence” traditional approach used in Sahaja Yoga.

“What authentic techniques should do is show you how to widen space between thoughts until the space is so large you have no thoughts whatsoever in that …

Louise Brown: They come to the guidance counsellor with headaches and tears and insomnia and nerves and grades dragged down by the expectations that weigh on their teenaged shoulders.

In one of the most academically high-octane schools in Canada, the epidemic of student stress reported by one in three Ontario students has reached a point staff no longer can ignore.

Concerned at the growing number of students diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety disorders — and more who seem headed that way, especially in Grade 9 — North Toronto Collegiate has launched an unusual program to teach teens how to handle the stress thrust on them… Read the rest of this article…

Are you one of those people who would like to have a regular meditation practice but a list of things seem to get in the way?

People who are in this situation cite numerous reasons for this dilemma.

They say:

• their family members are too noisy
• they are too busy
• they travel often
• they have had a change in their daily routine which has upset their regular practice
• they have been ill or are caring for someone who is ill
• they have a visitor who was supposed to stay for 3 days and is still with them after 3 months!

All of these reasons that they do not have a regular (or daily) meditation practice are …

While most people are aware that meditation can help us to relax, a group of University of South Australia researchers hope to prove that a daily dose of meditation can do much more.

They have begun a research project investigating stress responses in people who meditate regularly compared to people who are long-term carers and who do not meditate.

Behavioural neuroscience researcher Dr Maarten Immink says ultimately the project aims to show that meditation reduces stress and that it can have physical as well as mental function benefits for people who live in higher stress situations.

“Previous research has already shown that meditation helps with attention, memory and decision …

The other day, I was conversing with a friend, telling her about how I’ve been having a difficult time sleeping as of late. I’ll maybe sleep four hours a night — and this is coming from someone who typically requires a solid eight. The stressors of life have been, unfortunately, taking their toll.

“Have you tried meditating?” she asked.

In response, I shook my head “no.” I mean, really. How could my coffee-chugging, gum-snapping, neurotic-driven self quite possibly clear my thoughts for 30 seconds, let alone the length of a meditation session?

Instructor and Program Manager Jennifer Stevenson of the Art of Living Foundation explains that there are two types …