celebrities

Miley Cyrus urges young girls to meditate

May 23, 2012

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San Francisco Chronicle: Miley Cyrus is encouraging young girls to meditate more and take time to discover what they really want out of life.

The pop star and actress admits she lost her way during a tough period in her life – and started hanging out with people she thought were “cool” in a desperate bid to be just like them.

Then she found meditation and realized her best friend is herself – and she urges other confused teenagers to follow her example and get in touch with the real you.

Appearing on TV show “The Conversation with Amanda DeCadenet,” the former “Hannah Montana” star says she’s sick of meeting young girls who want all the wrong things in life.

She explains, “Some girls that I see and I see what they want and what is the most important thing in their life, I just wanna shake them and say, ‘Wake up! The world is so much greater. Go, be by yourself, go meditate, go spend 10 minutes really looking at yourself and I don’t know if you’re gonna like it.’

“I always say, ‘If I met me, would I really like me…? Would you really wanna be your friend?’

“We kind of judge people and we put people down about the things that we really don’t like about ourselves. It’s the same with the people you choose to have in your life.”

The realization made Cyrus rethink who her real friends were: “I see the people that when I was in a sad point in my life and when I so just wanted to prove a point of, ‘I’m not who people think I am…’ They were cool … but I’m so sick of people trying to be too cool. Cool is so dumb.”

14 executives who swear by meditation

May 9, 2012

Jhaneel Lockhart and Melanie Hicken, Business Insider: CEOs have stressful jobs, and some have taken to intense hobbies to find solace from the daily grind.

Some practice meditation—or even Transcendental Meditation, a mantra-based technique derived about 50 years ago from ancient Indian practices.
We’ve compiled a list of leaders who say that meditating gives them an edge in the competitive business world. Some have even built it into their company’s culture.

Hedge fund manager Ray Dalio uses Transcendental Meditation to check his ego

Dalio — founder and CEO of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund — has built many of the TM principles …

Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys dies at 47

May 4, 2012

Adam Yauch, one of the founders of the hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, has died of cancer at the age of 47.

Yauch, who went by the name MCA, had been battling cancer since 2009.

Yauch was a practicing Buddhist, who actively supported Tibetan causes.

In 1994, he established the Milarepa Fund — an organization dedicated to the promotion of nonviolence — and became a leader of the movement to liberate Tibet from Chinese occupation. The fund was named after the 11th century Tibetan singer-yogi Milarepa, and was originally intended to distribute royalties from Yauch’s Beastie Boys’ 1994 songs “Shambhala” and “Bodhisattva Vow,” which had sampled the chanting of Tibetan monks, to support Tibetan independence.

He organized the first “Tibetan Freedom Concert” in San Francisco in 1996.

Vipassana meditation helps addicts stay clean

March 30, 2012

Vipassana—a form of meditation in which practitioners train themselves to observe bodily sensations without reacting to them—has a growing reputation for helping addicts. “I nearly walked out three times during my first course,” Alex, a former heroin user from England, tells The Fix. “It was so painful to observe all the negativity I had stored away inside me.” But the results were impressive: “Cravings do not effect me like they used to. If I have a craving, I just observe it and it passes away.” Vipassana teaches the mind not to react to the emotions and thoughts that result in harmful behavior; adherents …

Goldie Hawn making happiness into worldwide crusade

March 12, 2012

NZ Herald: What happens to Hollywood superstars when they semi-retire? They meditate, of course. And if anyone is going to do it with a smile on her face, it’s Goldie Hawn.

Except for her, inner peace has turned into an international mission. This week, Hawn is in the UK to promote her meditation manual, 10 Mindful Minutes. Already a New York Times bestseller, the book is aimed at parents and teachers in the hope they will encourage children to practise the basics of yoga and meditation.

In recent years, Hawn, 66 has reinvented herself as a philanthropist and sort of “mindfulness campaigner”. Because, if she …

Meditation on Jobs: Mankato grad writes graphic novel on Zen influences of former Apple CEO

January 1, 2012

Tanner Kent: Though he only graduated from Mankato West in 2008, and from Northwestern University this year, Caleb Melby can now add “published author” to an already lengthy resume in journalism.

He delivered The Free Press as a youngster, started a radio show at KMSU in high school and edited the high school newspaper.

In college, he served as executive director of the school’s news web site and wrote editorials for the Chicago Tribune. In the spring of 2011, he worked as a reporter for The Times of Johannesburg, South Africa, and landed an internship with Forbes Media in the summer of 2011 — an opportunity he parlayed into a full-time job as a wealth reporter beginning next month.

But on Jan. 3, Melby’s latest journalistic venture will arrive in bookstores across the country.

While working as an intern at Forbes, Melby authored “The Zen of Steve Jobs,” a not-quite-factual “re-imagining” of the late Apple CEO’s experiences as an understudy to Kobun Chino Otogawa, a revered Buddhist priest.

“It’s been great,” said Melby, who is visiting home for the holidays before returning

Wildmind is a Community-Supported Meditation Initiative. Click here to find out about the many benefits of being a sponsor.

David Duchovny shoveled horse manure at Zen monastery

December 17, 2011

Wenn, Contact Music: Actor David Duchovny recently spent a weekend shovelling horse manure as part of a Buddhist meditation retreat.

The Californication star escaped to upstate New York for a few days to join a monastery programme aimed at helping guests find inner peace through meditation.

But Duchovny admits the stay wasn’t as relaxing as he thought it would be – because he was put to work as soon as he arrived.
He says, “I just went on a retreat to a zen monastery in upstate New York. It’s a type of Buddhism and meditation is a big part of it…

“I’m a beginner, I’ve only been meditating for a little while. You pay a fee to go for this weekend and what I didn’t know is that even though you pay a fee they put you to work immediately. You go there and first you bus some tables after you eat and they had me working in the garden everyday for an hour-and-a-half. It was fun, I was shovelling horse s**t out there. You pay money and then you shovel horse s**t!”

The actor found himself struggling to obey the strict meditation rules which forbid him from fidgeting while in-session, and he soon discovered a way…

Wildmind is a Community-Supported Meditation Initiative. Click here to find out about the many benefits of being a sponsor.

Donna Karan begins yoga, meditation program at UCLA hospital

November 19, 2011

Sarah Fay: Patients and staff at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center will be the first on the west coast to receive training in a blend of Eastern and Western therapies designed by yoga instructors and fashion designer Donna Karan.

Urban Zen Foundation, started by Karan, is taking up residency at UCLA to ease the minds and bodies of cancer patients and their caretakers. It is the first hospital on the west coast to adopt the program, which involves training in yoga, Reiki, meditation, aromatherapy and other practices. Karan was at UCLA Thursday to visit with patients and staff.

“People think yoga is kind of …

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David Lynch’s strange solo album debut

November 9, 2011