It was quite the visit. That’s for sure. We did a few risky things that I had no idea would even happen!

You’re probably wondering what I’m talking about now. Well, I’m warning you. It involves a little PDM or Public Displays of Meditation and some security mall cops

I think you’ll get a kick out of this. Check out the video and you’ll know what went down.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now the whole point of this wasn’t to be weird or to collect strange stares from people. It was an exercise in quieting your mind. If you can meditate in a busy shopping mall, then you can meditate anywhere and anytime.

I think we got about 10 minutes of meditation in before the security came and tried to kick us out. It probably looked like we were trying to protest or something. But you know how groups of people sitting down, doing nothing can be terrifying.

If you’ve heard of Max before, then you’ll know he’s a BIG advocate of meditation. When he came to our office, he’d just sit there on the couch and meditate for 10 to 15 minutes. I think a few of the people at the office just thought he was sleeping though.

Max has a couple more videos on meditation that you can check out. The first one’s pretty funny and if you’ve got a dirty mind, then get it out of the gutter

Click here to view the embedded video.

This one’s an awesome mini-documentary on the benefits and power of meditation. A great video to send to people who still aren’t convinced of it’s positive effects.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you haven’t read it yet, Max wrote a personal post for FinerMinds readers. It’s all about taking responsibility and how that will be what moves you towards greatness. Awesome read and a must for personal growth junkies like me. Just click here or the link below to give it a read »

7 Days of 100% Responsibility by Max Simon »

Now before you say that you don’t have a garden or live in an apartment, give this article a read through. The author turned his small patio into a meditation garden, so I’m guessing we can take any space available and turn it into one.

Meditation spaces are great. Just like you set time out of your busy lives to meditate, setting space aside also helps remind you to meditate. Not to mention it’ll give your home and more relaxed and rejuvenating feel.

Got any tips for a meditation garden or space? Drop a comment and share!

What Works Best in a Meditation Garden?

From AGardenInTheCity.com

So how much space do you need for a meditation garden? And what elements work best?

Actually, you don’t need much space. Once, in Houston, we turned a “patio” that was really just a 6′ x 8′ space between our apartment and the parking lot (separated by a 10′ fence) into a fairly nice little meditative garden. And with two small children and two intense jobs, we needed it. Since we didn’t have time for upkeep, that space was basically raked gravel, a couple of comfortable chairs, some decoration on the fence, a large umbrella for shade, and …. wait for it….. a wind chime (no wind, though…. HA). So you don’t need a lot of space, money or work to have a little bit of calm somewhere.

Some things seem to show up more often than others. Here’s a list of common meditation garden elements. If you think of some I’ve missed, or have a story about meditation gardens or how people react differently to these elements, use the comment bar below to let us know.

Shade. Very common. It’s difficult to be at peace when you’re sitting in the hot sun with sweat rolling off the end of your nose. Most people find forests to be peaceful places.

Green. The color itself is calming (”test prove…”). Most greenery is soft and multi hued. Native plants, by the way, are less work and are more likely to attractive local wildlife (that’s good).

Water. A lot of people find that being at the ocean is a calming experience. And there are babbling brooks and mountain streams. In the city, you might want a koi pond or a large pot with a hidden pump.

Seating. You rarely see photos of people meditating while standing up. The type of sitting depends on what you’re going to be doing. Sitting and having coffee with the spouse? Chairs with arms and a possible table would be nice. Actually meditating (in a lotus position)? Just a mat will do. Getting some zzzzz’s? How about a hammock?

Click to continue reading »

What’s even cooler? David Lynch is gonna make a movie about him.  According to Lynch though, it’s not going to be a traditional documentary or a typical narrative. And it definitely isn’t going to be a typical David Lynch movie. This looks like it’s gonna be an awesome film.

In fact, David Lynch has been practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique twice a day, for 20 minutes each time, for 32 years.

Check out the article below to find out more about this movie. Can’t wait till it comes out!

David Lynch to make documentary on meditation guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

From GordonAndTheWhale.com

David Lynch is making a movie about meditation guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is best known as the Beatles’ spiritual guide during their visit to India in the late 1960s. The filmmaker known for films such as ERASERHEAD, LOST HIGHWAY, BLUE VELVET, and MULHOLLAND DRIVE will be traveling to India this December to start filming.

The movie won’t be a narrative, but it won’t be a traditional documentary either. “It won’t be a so-called David Lynch film, really; it will be about Maharishi and the knowledge he brought out,” Lynch told New York Magazine. “It’ll have to go in the documentary department, I think. I don’t think it’ll be a ‘talking heads’ kind of thing, but we’re going to do a lot of interviews with people. We’ll interview — I hope — in India, a 97-year-old man who was with Maharishi from the beginning and get stories of times that weren’t so well recorded.”

The Beatles attended Maharishi’s meditation classes and made references to him in songs like “Sexy Sadie” and “Jealous Guy.” John Lennon wrote the song “Sexy Sadie” about the guru’s alleged sexual advances on actress Mia Farrow. The Beatles later renounced these accusations, saying the incident had been a misunderstanding. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi died in February of 2008.

Click here to continue reading »

What’s even cooler is that during this study, there were 2 groups. One group was instructed to meditate twice a day for 20 minutes only and the other group went through health and life style education. And at the end of 9 years, the meditation group had a profound reduction in heart disease, far higher than the other group that only went through health/life style education.

These kind of studies are BIG. Instead of reaching for a bottle of pills, doctors might now recommend meditation as a preventative means for high risk patients. The full details are below in the article from the BBC.

It just goes to show how much meditation can affect a person’s body, mind, and spirit. Drop a comment below and let me know if you’ve ever experienced a shift in health from meditation. Would love to hear your stories.

Meditation ‘eases heart disease’

Heart disease patients who practise Transcendental Meditation have reduced death rates, US researchers have said.

At a meeting of the American Heart Association they said they had randomly assigned 201 African Americans to meditate or to make lifestyle changes.

After nine years, the meditation group had a 47% reduction in deaths, heart attacks and strokes.

The research was carried out by the Medical College in Wisconsin with the Maharishi University in Iowa.

It was funded by a £2.3m grant from the National Institute of Health and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

‘Significant benefits’

The African American men and women had an average age of 59 years and a narrowing of the arteries in their hearts.

The meditation group were asked to practise for 20 minutes twice a day.

The lifestyle change group received education classes in traditional risk factors, including dietary modification and exercise.

Over 9 years, there were 20 events (heart attacks, strokes or death) in the meditation group and 31 in the health education group.

Dr Robert Schneider, lead author and director of the Centre for Natural Medicine and Prevention at the Maharishi University in Iowa said:

“At the end of the 9 years, 80% of the meditation group were still practising at least once a day.

“But there was very little change in the health education group.

“Their lifestyle was much the same in terms of diet and exercise — it’s a very difficult thing to make those changes.”

As well as the reductions in death, heart attacks and strokes in the meditating group, their average blood pressure was significantly lower (5mm Hg), and there was a significant reduction in psychological stress in some participants.

Dr Schneider said other studies had shown the benefits of Transcendental Meditation on blood pressure and stress, irrespective of ethnicity.

“This is the first controlled clinical trial to show that long-term practise of this particular stress reduction programme reduces the incidence of clinical cardiovascular events, that is heart attacks, strokes and mortality,” he said.

Dr Schneider said that the effect of Transcendental Meditation in the trial was like adding a class of newly discovered drugs for the prevention of heart disease.

Click here to continue reading »

Deepak Chopra seems to think it’s okay.

Whatever your feelings are about “puff, puff, pass” spirituality, check out this short video where Deepak Chopra makes a very good case for it. It’s funny too.

A couple weeks ago, both Bill Harris and I were speaking at the Engage Today event in Calgary along with the Dalai Lama and Richard Branson.

From left to right: Brad (Centrepointe’s CEO), Vishen, and Bill Harris (the genius behind the Centrepointe invention)

I also managed to have breakfast with Bill and his lovely wife.

If you don’t know who Bill is, he’s the owner and creator of Centerpointe and Holosync. I told him how great of a response our company had with Holosync. Even our COO, Juan, has been using Centerpointe on a daily basis in the mornings and it takes him into states of meditation he’s never experienced before. Recently, Juan was able to meditate for 1 hour non-stop for the first time because of this!

Now, given the number of people at my company and all my friends who rave about Centerpointe, I really wanted to make sure all the readers at FinerMinds knew about this CD.

Basically it works like this: by listening to specific sounds engineered by Bill, your brain will go into a deeper state of consciousness.

To learn more about Centerpointe and to get the free CDs (yes shipped to you for free), click here »

Traditionally, zen, meditation, yoga, or “being present” aren’t what you would call your typical career attributes. But this is shifting drastically.

Companies like Google, Apple, are starting to realize the benefits of meditation and personal growth workshops for their employees. Even athletes like Tiger Woods claims that his path to success comes from “staying in the present.”

Check out this cool article on the new trends that are taking over the business environment. Maybe you can even show it to your boss and see if the company will sponsor some meditation classes

But if your company isn’t as advanced as say Google or Apple are, what are you doing to keep zen at the workplace. Drop a comment below with your tips. I’d definitely love to hear them

Zen and success at work

By Philip Delves Broughton

If you have ever watched Tiger Woods play golf, you know the look. Brim pulled down over the eyes, which are locked on some point far down the fairway.

Despite all the hubbub, he is locked into the moment.

His opponent stands off to one side gnawing his knuckles, knowing another defeat is just a few holes away. Credit meditation for Woods’ extraordinary focus.

An essential part of Tiger Woods’ success is what he calls “staying in the present” and not letting his mind wander off to hoisting a trophy or depositing another million-dollar cheque.

While other golfers may live in the future, at the moment Woods plays his shots, he is apparently free of the conscious worry which plagues the weekend duffer.

And he puts much of this down to meditation and the Eastern philosophy, mostly Buddhist, he learned from his Thai mother.

In addition to his early morning workouts and hours on the driving range, he also meditates daily.

The value of meditation has long been known to those who practise it. David Lynch, the director of Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, established a foundation for “consciousness-based education and world peace” inspired by his 30 years’ practising transcendental meditation.

Click here to continue reading »

It’s nothing crazy but these simple exercises will do your mind and body a world of good.

Check out this simple guide on how to get started with breathing meditations. After you do some, I’ll bet you’ll be addicted.

Breathing Meditations

From How-To-Meditate.org

Generally, the purpose of breathing meditation is to calm the mind and develop inner peace. We can use breathing meditations alone or as a preliminary practice to reduce our distractions before engaging in a Lamrim meditation

A Simple Breathing Meditation

The first stage of meditation is to stop distractions and make our mind clearer and more lucid. This can be accomplished by practising a simple breathing meditation. We choose a quiet place to meditate and sit in a comfortable position. We can sit in the traditional cross-legged posture or in any other position that is comfortable. If we wish, we can sit in a chair. The most important thing is to keep our back straight to prevent our mind from becoming sluggish or sleepy.

We sit with our eyes partially closed and turn our attention to our breathing. We breathe naturally, preferably through the nostrils, without attempting to control our breath, and we try to become aware of the sensation of the breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils. This sensation is our object of meditation. We should try to concentrate on it to the exclusion of everything else.

Click here to continue reading »

But are all meditations the same? And I’m talking about the actual results here. Not just the length, words, or feelings used in meditations. This gets a little scientific but it’s worth a look at. The brain is an amazing and uncanny thing.

So if you want to know what happens to your brain and body as you go through different types of meditations, check out this presentation given by Dr. Fred Travis at the Science of Consciousness Conference in 2006.

“Are All Meditations the Same?”

Comparing the Neural Patterns of Mindfulness Meditation, Tibetan Buddhism practice “unconditional loving-kindness and compassion,” and the Transcendental Meditation Technique.

By Dr. Fred Travis

The idea for this talk came when I was reviewing a grant to fund the application of Mindfulness Meditation to deal with pain in terminally ill cancer patients. In the rationale section, the author had 60 citations to support the use of mindfulness meditation in this grant. However, 60% of these references were for studies that used the Transcendental Meditation technique as the meditation intervention.

Was the author being scientifically dishonest?

I don’t think so.

Many individuals think that all meditations are the same. Thus, many people feel that scientific research using one meditation tradition can generalize to effects from any meditation practice.

Are all meditations the same?

Short Answer Is “No”.

The short answer is: No. As we will see, meditations differ in procedure, neural imaging patterns, EEG patterns and benefits.

For a full answer.…

I direct you to a book that Jonathon Shear has written discussing in detail the procedures, contents, objects, beliefs, and goals of 10 meditation practices. He asked the abbots of monasteries and the leader of ashrams to write their own story.

For diagrams, presentation slides, and the rest of the presentation, click here »

So not only does Sting perform up to 8 hours of tantric sex, it appears Heather Graham is also on that same track. I wonder what other celebrities are onto this.

While Tantric sex is going great for Heather, she’s yet to achieve levitation, which is her next goal. But her biggest goal, and I will definitely applaud her on this one if she accomplishes it, is to fly above cities and save people like a superhero.

For more on this story, check out the article below from the Huffington Post.

Heather Graham: Tantric Sex ‘Works For Me’

Heather Graham and Sting have something in common.

While promoting her small role in “The Hangover,” Graham told a UK paper how she enjoys tantric sex. Graham is currently dating director Yaniv Raz.

She told the Daily Mail of tantric sex:

I first got into it when I was filming The Guru in 2002 and I haven’t looked back. What most people know about tantric sex is that Sting does it and it lasts eight hours. But he’s not having sex continually. You can take a bath, massage your partner, listen to music. The idea is that you let the whole thing build very slowly until finally you merge with your partner. It works for me.

What’s not working for her is levitation, although Graham claims she has a goal to do that:

Click here to read the rest of the article »

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/tyliner/ / CC BY-SA 2.0