This is a guest post by Jill Magso from the Silva Team

When our personal fountains of good will seem to have run dry or our stores of energy too sorely taxed, it can be difficult to believe that the source for all goodness and good will is really ours all the time. We often speak of filling up our tanks or replenishing our stores, but we rarely take the time to do so. And it is uncommon to be able to actually feel the well bubble up in our body, bringing life, energy, optimism and discernment to our entire psyche and everything we do.

Each one of us, left to our regenerative devices, bathed in a little loving kindness and given just a little space, can feel the fountain of optimism and cheer at least begin to percolate beneath the rocks. Our bodies and minds have within them the blueprint for healing and re-fueling. Sometimes all you need to do is prime the pump to feel the milk of human kindness begin to flow through your veins, into your own heart, and through you out to those you touch.

For today, notice when you feel your personal well of kindness being drawn upon, either because someone is making a withdrawal or a deposit, and notice how full or empty you feel. Simply by paying attention, taking note and being compassionate for our own needs we can begin to clear the way for our own fountain of good.

Step by step to the Meditation:

Find your comfortable seat with your sitting bones pressing into the surface beneath you and your heart lifting from the strength of your connection to the Earth. You can either sit Japanese style on your knees or with crossed legs in easy pose.

Begin with breath observation. For five breaths simply be breathing, noticing how your body moves to accept the breath and then to let it go.This is a guided meditation for which we’ll remain seated. As you inhale, imagine that you are growing roots out and down from your tailbone and deep into the Earth. Follow them with each in breath as they travel down, seeking nourishment and water. Feel them grow strong and begin to work their way between clods of Earth, dislodging small stones as they travel ever downward. Allow every inhalation to swell your roots and give them the energy to dig deeper, connecting you to the Earth.

When you feel completely stable, steady and fed, bring your awareness back up and into your heart. As you inhale begin drawing sustenance up from the Earth, through your roots and up the center of your body into your heart. Allow this feeling to collect here on every exhalation, spreading as a pond would gather from a spring bubbling up through the Earth. Continue for a minute or two inhaling up through your roots and into your heart, until your heart feels like it’s about to run over.

Just as your heart-pond is about to spill over its banks, take your next inhale and continue the path up through your heart center, up and out of the top of your head as if it were a great fountain that upon exiting your head split in every direction and then fell back to the Earth to pool around you and soak back into the Earth. As you inhale, draw this up through your center to the top of the fountain, a few inches past the crown of your head. As you exhale, imagine the stream splitting into infinitely sparkling differently colored lights and falling back down, creating a pool of light and color around you on the floor. Allow this liquid light to pool around you, and seep back into the Earth as a puddle would after the rain.

Stay here, inhaling up through the center of your body, and exhaling down and around your body in a great three dimensional circle, a cycle, a circuit of light, color, energy and health.

When five minutes have passed by timer or by music, bring your attention back to the feeling of your breath moving in and out of your body. Opening your eyes, reach your arms up and over head and draw your hands down in front of your heart.

Jill Magso is a member of the Silva Team and contributes to spreading enlightened ideas and sharing teachings about meditation practices. The Silva Method encompasses a variety of powerful exercises that take you deep into Alpha and Theta levels of the mind so that you can work within your subconscious as well as your conscious mind.

Related posts:

1. 10 ways to improve your meditation significantly
2. A simple visualization technique to keep calm under pressure
3. Mindfulness Meditation: My Path

How do you feel about your relationship? Is there perhaps a sense of uncertainty or doubt always swimming in your head? Does it give you comfort, joy, happiness and courage? Does the future look bright? Does it dissipate a lot of your energies through arguments, confrontations and tip-toeing over mine fields? Do you tend to spend a lot of time in justifying and explaining instead of building on what is obvious?

Why do relationships matter so much anyway? Is it because they can be a source of joy and happiness but also endless frustration and suffering? Perhaps.

I think they matter because they ultimately define us and shape our our wider relationship with life and ourselves. Perhaps this is a tad too philosophical but I’m sure it can easily be grasped as basic truth.

Furthermore, health, balance and a successful relationship can become a wealthy source of positive creativity because it secures your mental well being and prevents your creative resources and energies from being dissipated by it.

But what are the ingredients for a successfull relationship?  Many people have their own I’m sure.

Here is a teaspoon of wisdom from my own epxerience in a few short points:

1. Be aware of that compulsive need to react: There are days we are jumpy more than others but in general we tend to react to a comment, criticism or a behaviour we didn’t fancy so much. Firing a reaction often leads to worsen or complicate things into a snowball effect. Be aware of this and consciously and intentionally refrain from that automatic urge to react.

2. Take a few seconds before countering a proposal or argument: Defensiveness is a very bad ally in relationships. You know how it is, your partner comes up with a proposal or argument that challenges your plan or idea and immediately you are in defense or counter-attack mode – deploying those verbal torpedos to crackdown on the dissenting party. As in the point before, be conscious and take a few seconds to consider the other’s point of view before rushing into an emotional response.

3. List your common objectives more often than your differences: All people in a relationship have differences between them – it’s what relationships are. There might be differences in opinion, attitude, emotional dispositions and in the general way of doing things. Not all differences are bad. On the other hand we don’t need to constantly fixate or elenchate those differences that are challenging. Stop summoning them up which is different from not dealing with them. You need to focus more on the common objectives more often. This will give you enough space to accommodate certain differences and deal with them in a more positive way.

4. Keep in check your body language: This is something I learnt only recently…but never too late right? Sometimes we are discussing, arguing or confronting someone and while our tone, language and volume is OK our bodies are saying something very different. Notice it next time you are in this situation. How does your body talk? Is it agitated? Are you pointing fingers or extending your arms too much? Are you taking a position of dominance or defence? Are you aggressively defining your space with your movements? Sounds funny but it’s actually a very serious business if you learn to notice it and control it.

5. Find time to reconciliate matters: Time is never on our hands let’s face it. It slips, slides and rushes away from our hands like a wet bar of soap. We don’t have enough time to do half the things on our to-do lists let alone carry out ‘extra-curricular’ tasks such as finding time to reconciliate differences of ideas or opinions. Yet we often do have time for argument and confrontation so how is it we do not have time for reconcilliation? Just a thought. The clock will always tick the same amount of minutes and hours but our priorities might need to change from time to time according to the situation at hand.

6. Don’t avoid discussion: Sometimes it’s not a question of time either. It’s a matter of having the right amount of will or desire to discuss an issue. We are all busy hard-working people these days. Sometimes even coming home from a long day at work we still face a long list of things to attend to – kids, chores, maintenance, bills, etc. It gets late and the only thing we need is to unwind and relax – the heart asks for play and pleasure. This is how a certain need for discussion gets on the backburner. Left there for too long it might backfire. It is thus worth it to sacrifice a few minutes of that relaxation time to catch up with pending relationship matters.

7. Feel free to express your ideas without expectations: Sometimes the problem in a relationship is not that we express our ideas and opinions too freely but because we attach a lot of expectations to those ideas. We might expect our partner to react in a certain way – to consent, approve, understand, comply or just take note. We then get very irrate when those expectations are not met and our partner’s response does not match the intended or desired effect. So before expressing an opinion or idea keep in mind that expectations are always prone to trouble in a relationship. Let go of them and you will see how things tend to move on much smoother and trouble-free.

8. Be calmer when the other is panicky: A typical hot dispute between two people in a relationship happens because of the so-called positive feedback. This means as one of them starts getting ‘edgy’ or over-emotional, more emotional stress builds up in the other who after reacting causes the other to react even more emotionally and so on in a vicious loop. What is needed in this situation is to break or dampen that loop – a negative feedback cycle. This means that as one gets more frustrated or panicky the other should consciously make the effort to keep even more calm and grounded thus lessening the effect until it’s killed off. Most ‘fights’ in fact are just a combustion chamber of each other’s reaction until it builds up into one explosive effect.

9. Sweet words cost nothing – say it from the heart: I know of sweet talkers who metaphorically got away with murder most of their lives. Why? Because sweet words count quite a deal and not just for the softer sex. I am not saying that one should do as he or she pleases then make up for it with some nice compliments. What I am saying is that compliments or encouraging words are very helpful in sparking off more postive vibes between people in a relationship. This can tend to end up in a virtous loop – this time for positive vibes instead of bad emotions as in the previous point.

10. Share the happiness before sharing the burden: Many quite rightly think that our loved ones should be there for support in difficult moments or moments of crisis. This is a justified expectation to have. We should expect our partner to lend us a helping hand and share our burden but this is not the true pillar of successfull relationships. The strongest pillar is when we share our joys and happiness more readily then we do with burdens. This helps us nourish and fortify the relationship with positive energy before relying on it for burden-sharing.

11. Mind your language: If sweet words are to be articulated more often then negative ones should also be constrained more strictly. This is the vocabular rule of healthy relationships. Again be more conscious of certain negative keywords such as “Wrong, fault, blame,selfish, childish, worse, incapable, foolish” and a long list of others.

12. Don’t think about the future before the present: It’s important to have a direction in a relationship and understand clearly where one is heading to. Yet sometimes uncertainty about the future can cause some cracks in a relationship that often leads to breakdown. No one really knows what the future holds on a personal level let alone where two people in a relationship are involved. It’s useless letting this uncertainty override your present options. What is certain is that there is a lot of things you can do in the present to positively drive your relationship forward. So that is what you should be focusing on more often.

Be Social. Be Cool. Share the Good stuff and Get it Back by a Tenfold

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I am a big fan of Eckhart Tolle’s writing.But having read his books more than once, I know that ‘fan’ is not the ideal word to use and it is a concept he wouldn’t definitely include in his vision of spiritual evolution.

The thing is that ‘fan’ or fanatic implies a person motivated by an irrational desire to pursue something or be engaged in something. It very often reflects black or white thinking in the form of  an obsession with an idea or  an object of desire. Fanaticism in fact is associated with religious extremist views or for instance ‘ultra supporters’ of a sports team where in both cases, negation or contradiction of their zeal may result in aggression, violence and all sorts of irrational behaviour. In short, it is the over-reaction of the blind and self-centered ego whether in individual or collective form. I have wrote about this before in the article ‘Why Passion is such a bad thing‘.

So I’ll unsubscribe to that term with reference to Eckhart’s work.

The first book of his I read was ‘A new Earth‘ and it was the one following his tremendously successful best-seller ‘The Power of Now‘.  It was one of those books which I can definitely mark as a life-changer. I remember being sunk in it for a whole week and re-read it once or twice thereafter. It swept across and struck a deep chord with many of my views on life and spirituality.  The only other book which I can remember to have touched me with such depth was ‘Man and his symbols’, conceived and edited by Carl Jung.

For those few of you who haven’t read Eckhart Tolle’s ‘The power of Now’ or ‘A New Earth’, I strongly recommend that you do as soon as you have time. In the meantime I will give you a taste of it in the form of some selected quotes in the above slideshow. I am sure that this will also be an excellent refresher of those who have read his work and are touched by it like myself.

Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. Native American Words of Wisdom
2. After enlightenment, the laundry

We all think about money some time or another don’t we? When a mail-blitz of bills hit our mailbox or our financial planner software shows us that we are going to scrape it very, very thin till next paycheck, we sit back, take a deep breath and get carried away by an inundation of worrisome thoughts or daydreams about an alternative life in which money comes down thick and fast from a tap.

This takes us down a narrow road in our mind in which we get locked by thoughts of money scarcity rather than solutions.

In the below points I would like to expose some truths but also some false assumptions about money and how it affects our perspective on life:

1. Money is just a means to an end

You’ve heard it a hundred times I know but it’s a truth that can’t be overstated. When we daydream about a better, comfortable life with more means and better standards of living we inevitably bring in money into the equation since we obviously reason out that we need more of the green stuff in our hands to step up our lifestyle. The problem is that we get stuck on the money bit and forget that it is just a stepping stone (see point 4). This flattens our goals

2. Money can’t buy me love…or health or Happiness

Another piece of folk wisdom you’ve heard a lot. Do we entrench it enough in our conscious living? I doubt it. There is a Native American saying which says: “Only when the last tree has withered, the last fish has been caught, and the last river has been poisoned, will you realize you cannot eat money.” In a similar vein I’d say “Only when your health has been exhausted and your happiness traded in, you remember that money has served no real end.”

3. Money is not linked with happiness as some research shows

Scientific research has shown a very interesting fact about happiness. It shows that when you move from sub-standard income close to the poverty line towards a point where basic commodities are met and life is sufficiently comfortable, happiness increases accordingly. However, beyond this point no matter how income and wealth increases, happiness does not increase accordingly.

4. Money is the wrong focus point of success

As already point out in 1., when we focus on money rather than on our real goals in life such as having opportunities for broader experiences, traveling, comfort and better standards of living we are focusing on the wrong target. We divert our energies, planning and strategies off track. We think that money will get us more stuff and only when that stage is reached we can be happy. This is false reasoning that we all fall into.

5. Money is a short-lived motivation

Sometimes when financial demands are hard and we are in need of some extra cash more than usual, we get distracted into the thought of making money or at least improving our income. This of course is not a bad thing per se. The problem comes from having it as your main motivation for improving your life in general. It is easy to fall for it. You put your main mission in life on the backburner to start off a side-project which could earn you some extra bucks on the way. This becomes a burning motivation which is very short-lived. Some time down the road you might realize that the benefit did not justify the fact that it got you off your main path and hence wasted precious time in the process.

6. Wealth is a mindset not an accumulation of resources

We naturally think of wealth as an abundance of stuff. Partly correct. Yet wealth is not solely possessions but also a mindset and having the right qualities and predispositions to live your purpose with enthusiasm and power, creating an abundance of innovative ideas and materializing your goals under any circumstances.

7. You can’t be money conscious without being life-conscious

Desiring money (bad thing) is not the same as being money conscious (good thing). Being money-conscious means looking at money in the right perspective, without false assumptions and attachment. It means knowing the real value of money without either obsessing with it or at an other extreme burning it away in whimsical ways and for silly ends. But to be money-conscious means that first you are life-conscious, that is, you have your priorities in life set within the right perspective and your choices are balanced, conscious and authentic.

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When we hear about meditation most of us think of a person sitting down in a traditional meditative posture such as the half lotus position with a straight back, closed eyes and a very still body.

Of course the above picture is a very common one and it is a correct one too. This is one of the best ways to meditate and still the mind – with a still body and a quiet mind in a tranquil ambience. But this is not the only way to meditate either. In fact the concept of meditation can be practically stretched to include other forms which do not involve a sitting still posture.

Some meditations are done when the body is active such as when walking or doing some physical activity. In Zen Buddhism, walking meditation is a well known and established form of meditation.

Is it possible to meditate while walking, running or being active?

Yes it is. Meditation is not about switching off your mind but about switching it on. It is about opening up your awareness to your surroundings and inner body. It is about tuning in to the present moment and living the freshness of it instead of blurring in to hazy thoughts and daydreaming.

So it is possible to be more mindful and aware while walking, cycling or running because your mind becomes engaged in the awareness of the surroundings. The body would be moving but the mind would be defragmenting and settling into stillness.

How to do meditation while active?

There are many different ways to do active meditation but all methods depends on directing your awareness into the activity you are doing irrespective of what that activity is. It is about opening up your perceptual awareness and letting your mind flow in sync with your activity.

Here are a few tips to practice mindfulness meditation while in activity:

1. Before engaging the activity stop for a few minutes to prepare your mind on the objectives you want to reach. This is like affirming to your self what you want to achieve. This is an important step for it directs your mind to stay on that track instead of wandering about distractively. I call it the warming up of the mind. Before we start a physical activity or sport we stretch our muscles and warm up our bodies. Same thing with the mind.

2. When you start the activity take some time to direct you awareness to your body. How does your body feel in general? Are your energy levels high or low? How do your muscles feel? Is your breathing deep or shallow? How do your feet feel? What is your general mood? Are you feeling any subtle energies changing in yourself as you do the activity?

3. Now turn your attention to your surroundings. If for example you are walking, enlarge your observation window to include those details that usually go by unnoticed. Patterns in buildings and stone, colors, shapes, sights, smells and sounds. This is mindfulness meditation in action. Your perceptual awareness expands until your mind opens up to a new dimension and everything becomes alive.

4. When your activity is over, take some time to observe how your mind feels different now. Are you more relaxed and focused? Are your thoughts more coherent? Is your general state of being more peaceful and calm? This exercise is important to extend your awareness also into the benefits of the meditation itself so that it becomes reinforced into our mind.

Related posts:

1. Mindfulness Meditation: My Path
2. 10 ways to improve your meditation significantly
3. Learn the programming language of your mind: Learn to meditate

Mindfulness, the practice of focusing on just one thing, means to simply experience the moment while excluding worries, self-doubts and distractions.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society together with his wife Myla, apply the concept of mindfulness to parenting. According to Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness allows us to see past surface appearances and understand our children clearly. It allows parents to be less reactive and more conscious of their actions and choices.

Understand Your Child’s Point-of-View

1. Imagine the world from your child’s point-of-view. Imagine how you appear to your child. Think about what type of parent you are to your child.
2. Be mindful of your expectations of your child. Consider whether they are truly in your child’s best interest.
3. Practice putting the needs of your child above your own needs. Find times when both your child’s needs and your own needs can be met simultaneously.

Practice Self-Awareness

1. When you are unsure or lost, practice bringing your full attention to the situation. Remember that sometimes it is good to remain silent until you become more sure of what is called for in the situation.
2. Make quiet time and practice mindfulness for yourself. Focus on continuing to grow in self-knowledge and awareness.
3. Practice accepting even difficult moments without trying to change them. Let go of attempts to achieve a specific outcome. Practice seeing whatever comes up as “workable.”

Build a Relationship with your Child

1. Apologize when you are in the wrong or have betrayed a trust. Apologies demonstrate that you have thought about a situation. However, they lose effectiveness if they are overused.
2. Think about how your child is unique and notice your child’s special needs.
3. Be clear, strong and unequivocal when the situation calls for it. Let your limits come from awareness and judgment rather than fear and a need to control.

This is a republished article written by Christy Matta for ehow.com under Creative Commons license

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1. Mindfulness Meditation: My Path

photo by h.koppdelaney

Since I started practising meditation, I have been trying out different things – little changes here and there – that although may sound small and petty, they have improved my meditation significantly and consistently.

I have written this article especially for people who have started doing meditation, take the practice at heart and are keen on improving it and taking it to the next level.

Does this describe your present situation? Have you started enjoying and feeling the benefits of meditation but would eagerly try out a few simple tips to significantly improve it?

Learning how to meditate takes a lot of time and patience in the beginning. It’s a slow and gradual progress because we have to learn new things that our mind and body are not accustomed to and unlearn old habits that we have been conditioned to for many years.

Yet there are ways to make this learning process more efficient and effective.

Tip #1. Find your spot:

What I mean by finding your spot is to try and test different spots and orientations within the space you decided to meditate in until you are feeling that you are in the right place. It’s sort of doing some ‘Feng Shui’ for your meditation spot. It may sound funny I know but I believe that space has different energy spots that affect us in different ways.

I initially chose my place casually and arbitrarily. I felt something was not right. I was not comfortable with the place. Then I started changing places and even orientations (I used a compass and took notes) until I finally found the spot where my meditation improved significantly.

Tip #2. Set your intention:

When I started doing meditation I would start the session with no plan and intention in mind.

My intentions weren’t clear. I would have different objectives for the same session such as developing awareness, concentration, visualization and if possible a bit of insight too! Of course this used to put my mind in a knot and my attempts to meditate were often unsuccessful for this reason.

That’s when I understood that I need to set my intention beforehand. If I wanted to do mindfulness meditation, for example, I would say this clearly to myself. This kept my mind from interfering with the process by having a one predefined objective.

Tip #3. Keep a journal:

This is important to help you track your progress and use feedback to keep on improving.

I use a journal to keep notes on each of my meditation sessions. I would start by logging the date/time of the session and the type of meditation.  Then I add in observations about my mood,  state of mind and body before meditating.

After the session I then take notes about the outcome of the session.

Tip #4. Find the right time:

Different people have different times when their mind and body is in better shape and more responsive. For some people it may be early morning, for some others it might be afternoon or late in the evening after unwinding from a hard day of work.

You have to try which time of the day works best for your meditation. Keeping a journal is a sure way of knowing this.

Tip #5. Exercise your body before starting meditation:

One big obstacle to meditation beside your wandering mind is your body. Sometimes you may be tense or tired and this may make your body twitchy and hard to find a comfortable and steady position. Most of my failures in meditation came from having a tense body.

Doing exercise before starting your meditation helps you immensely. Do some stretching, Yoga, Tai chi, waking or whatever gets your body moving. I found these 12 Qi Gong sitting exercises as particularly effective in improving my meditation.

Tip #6. Use Brain wave entrainment technology:

Brain wave entrainment uses sound waves with the same frequency as our brain waves when we are in particular states if mind (for example the alpha frequency when in a relaxed state).

These sound waves that are recorded on CDs, help the listener to automatically synchronize his brain waves with those frequencies and hence alter its states.

I use BWE myself for my meditation and I can attest to its efficacy. After a few minutes the mind starts ‘defragmenting’ and enters a more coherent state of mind. This drastically facilitates entering into meditative states.

Tip #7. Use the power of water:

Water has such a healing or revitalizing effect on the mind and body.

There are times when you find it difficult to meditate because you are too sleepy in the morning or too lax in the evening. In this case take a reinvigorating shower to lift up the spirit.

If on the other hand you are too tense and hyper-vigilant, take a warm bath with some bath salts to unwind your mind and relax your tense body.

Tip # 8. Do some breathing exercises to open up your lungs:

Good breathing in an essential practice in healthy living that we often overlook. It is also very important for good meditation whether you are focusing on your breath or not.

In ancient Yogic tradition, the working on the breath (Pranayama) has been considered to be an essential part of the journey to self-liberation.

Check out these breathing exercise here. I find these to have a very positive effect on my meditation when performed just before I meditate.

Tip #9. Choose a Mantra that sounds good to you:

If you use mantras for meditation, make sure that you choose a mantra that sounds good to you or you feel comfortable with. Traditionally, a mantra was chosen by a guru or master and then handed down to his student.

I have heard that a lot of people are given a mantra by their teacher or as suggested in a book but then find difficulty in using it. It somehow doesn’t click.

Since people have different tastes and dispositions I find it makes more sense to find a mantra that you feel comfortable with. After all a mantra is only an arbitrary tool that helps you anchor your mind.

Tip # 10.  Switch off electronic appliances around you:

If there are any electronic appliances within range (not just in your meditation room) such as PCs, TVs, mobile phones, etc, switch them off.

These appliances are not only a distraction because they emit audible noise but also because they emit radiation than can interfere with the coherence of our brain waves and hence with our meditation.

Related posts:

1. Mindfulness Meditation: My Path
2. 8 Ways To Improve Your Handwriting
3. The Fountain Meditation Technique to Replenish your Life Energy

Photo by premasagar

Your brain is the most precious and advanced thing you’ll ever own. Unfortunately it does not come with an owner’s manual. Nobody has one and it is nowhere to be found or purchased.

Still, even if we don’t have a technical manual explaining in detail how it works and how to maintain it in optimal condition, there are still ways to access it and reprogram it.

I am using computer-related metaphors here not because I am upholding the mind-computer analogy. That is so 70s and 80s. Yet the metaphor rather serves to  remind us that most of our beliefs, ideas, attitudes, perspectives and reasoning have been conditioned or programmed by our immediate experiences, society and circumstances. A good part of this programming might have taken place without an intention or design and some of it might be of no benefit for us but on the contrary limiting and hindering us from authentically growing.

Meditation is and has always been the best available method for reprogramming the human mind. It has been proven to work for thousands of years. Moreover it is free, always available, requires no resources and is highly effective.

The benefits are numerous and varied ranging from reducing stress, improving health, memory and concentration to enhancing creativity, curing depression and expanding one’s consciousness into higher states of being.

It always really boggles my mind how in our day and age meditation is not that wildly diffused in the western world and around the globe. It strikes me as so out of sync with our times that meditation is not universally recognized by humans as one of the most fundamental practices for a healthy society. Imagine every single individual on this planet learning meditation at school from a young age. Imagine the benefit on a planetary scale. How there would be balanced emotions, harmony, creativity and peace on a collective level. No more wars, atrocities, greed, famine, crime, domestic violence, over-spending in health, law and order. The possibilities are infinite.

Anyway let me stop here before I get too idealistic. I just wanted to express my personal opinion on how important meditation is. If you wish to start learning meditation or if you have already you might find the following resources useful. I have sifted through tonnes of material to select what I think is technically good quality material.

I hope you find them interesting and helpful. Please send me your thoughts and comments on whether you found the material useful or if you want to suggest more. Thanks!

1. Meditation for Beginners

• An article by Alan Wagener Showing the benefits of meditation and how it helps you cope with stress.

• Gil Fronsdal offers a 5 or 6 week instructional series for beginning meditators. Here is some handout material in PDFs and audio recordings from the beginners’ classes.

• Meditation for Dummies – A great comprehensive introduction to meditation from the ‘for dummies’ series.

• A blog article from Zen habits giving practical tips on meditation for beginners

• An article by Chris Joscelyne in which he gives a step by step guided meditation. This type of meditation is called light meditation in which light is visualized during the meditation.

• Meditation for Beginners –   an audio book by Jack Kornfield. Jack is a meditation master and teacher. He was  trained as a Buddhist monk and has travelled extensively teaching meditation around the world.

2. Online Meditation

• Online courses in meditation, Buddhism and practice in daily life.

• Free practical meditation tips on Posture, breathing, loving kindness, walking, mantra meditation, six element practice.

3.  Guided Meditation

• Other seriously  good resources from audiodharma.com this time giving a series of guided meditations.

• A nice guided meditation with Anusari Yogi Bridget Woods Kramer

• A series of short guided meditations lasting between 3 to 10 mins each from learningmeditation.com

• A full guided meditation 22:36 mins

4. Mindfulness Meditation

• A great Google talk by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a master in meditation and a Bio-medical science whose lifetime work was dedicated to bringing mindfulness into mainstream science.

• A guided mindfulness meditation from Angela Carole Brown -

5. Zen Meditation

• Introduction to Zen Meditation: Still Point with John Daido Loori, Roshi, Abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery

• A guided Zen Buddhist Meditation method

6. Transcendental Meditation

• The Transcendental meditation program offers a comprehensive course in meditation. The program is backed up by a high profile organization founded by David Lynch and based on the teaching of the world famous guru Maharishi Mahesh. The course fees are a bit on the high side but it is definitely worth a look.

7. Buddhist Meditation

• How to Meditate.com – A site dedicated to teaching on Buddhist meditation.

• In this series Tan Ajahn Jayasaro, gives an introduction to Buddhist meditation, being part of a path leading to profound happiness, inner peace and liberation from suffering.

8. Yoga Meditation

• A series of 5 videos from the documentary ‘Spiritual reality’. The videos are animations rather than real life filming. I had watched the full length film of ‘Spiritual reality’ once and it was very inspiring.

• Introduction to yoga meditation and the importance of breathing in yoga in this free how-to video on kundalini yoga and meditation training

9. Mantra Meditation

• Simple 7 steps on how to do mantra meditation

• A good article describing how mantra meditation works

10. Vipassana (Insight) Meditation

• A good video giving a clear and simple explanation of Vipassana or insight meditation

• Matthew Flickstein explains insight (Vipassana) meditation

11. Meditation and Health Research

• A very good site dedicated to scientific research on meditation

• An excellent  Google Talk by Philippe Goldin on the neuroscience of mindfulness meditation or in simple words the study of the effects of meditation on the brain.

12. Meditation on Twitter

• Meditation Room

• Heart Meditation

• Visit yourself

• Inner space

• 24hr Meditation

• Twit Meditation

13. Music for Meditation

My all time favorite meditation music – The Japanese artists known as Kokin Gumi in this album named Zen Garden. Probably the only music that still manages to shift my consciousness every time I hear it. Purely wonderful. Here are three tracks I found on youtube by someone who added them as background to his/her videos.

• Daylight

• Snow

• Feng shui

There are even better tracks in the album. I suggest you buy the CD for your meditations here: http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Garden-Kokin-Gumi/dp/B00004Y2DV (this is not an affiliate link)

I also loved the music from this 5 minute meditation video

14. Meditation accessories

• Meditation supplies and accessories – a list of suppliers

Related posts:

1. How to Meditate while Being Active
2. 10 ways to improve your meditation significantly
3. Mindfulness Meditation: My Path

Have you ever been grateful about something small or big that happened unexpectedly but has made a difference to your day, your mood or your life in general?

Go back to it with your mind and remember how it feels. How would you define it?  For me it’s a warm comforting feeling of love, reward, appreciation and happiness. You know those moments in our lives where we count our blessings and feel happy to be in the knowledge that life has been kind and good to us no matter how small or large that blessing was.

Just the awareness and recognition of it confers a moment of serenity and pleasure that brightens up our day and enlivens our souls.  It is like a brief opening in our hearts where for a moment we stop and peep outside of ourselves and realize that life is abundantly blissful and generous but we often obscure this fact with our everyday hectic routines, by giving more attention to negative thoughts and by being too sucked by our needs and wanting.

The Deeper side of Gratitude

Gratitude and appreciation are very often encapsulated by formal words such as “Thanks” or “I appreciate”. This is a way of showing our gratitude in words. Very often, however, this happens more out of politeness and social convention rather than by being emotionally convinced. I am not saying it’s a bad thing because after all good protocol is also needed where possible.

Yet the gratitude I would like to talk about is different. Being thankful to someone or something has different grades of personal meaning. On one hand it may come out of social etiquette and good manners as just mentioned or else it could have a much more authentic meaning attached to it.  For example being thankful to someone who just assisted us over the phone will have a different meaning that when some loved one has gone out of the way to make ends meet for us or when life has turned in a favorable way such as the disappearance of a long suffered illness.

This authentic meaning is what really drives our hearts to be truly in a state of harmony with ourselves and the world around us even if for a brief moment and even if for a small cause. It doesn’t really matter. No matter how brief and how small that feeling of gratitude is there is always a powerful burst of positive vibes going back into ourselves and our lives although we often fail to realize this. Most importantly we fail to realize the benefits and the power gratitude can bring to our lives.

If I had to list a number of important life-changing practices, gratitude would be on the top of the list. Why? Because it is so simple yet so powerful.

Being Aware of the little Miracles

I have been doing this thing lately. Being grateful to the little everyday things (and of course the big ones) that come my way no matter how insignificant they would have been on any normal day in my past. Of course there is one step that comes before gratefulness and that is awareness. You have to be aware of those little things before being grateful for them. You must turn your attention to them.

Awareness is such a key to everything I am coming to realize lately but that’s beside the point here…I have to keep it in for another article

So it all starts from putting our attention onto the little everyday miracles. This thing is immensely liberating, life-changing and therapeutic in itself by the way since it expands our awareness and makes us more mindful of our being and surroundings. Secondly it drives you in the habit of noticing positive occurrences rather than just fixate on the negative ones.

When we are aware and recognize the little gifts that come our way, our next step is to stop and be grateful for them. Yes but be grateful to who or what? you might ask.  Personally, I am grateful to the Universe. You might be grateful to God, life, fate, your guardian angel or whatever else suits your criteria. In the end it doesn’t make any difference because this is not an act of formality or politeness remember? It’s not a formality but a positive practice.

Gratitude Shapes your Destiny and connects you to the Divine

So what are the benefits of being grateful?

As a start you have an instant rush of positivity and good feeling. That already sounds great to me! Instant good vibes straight from the tap without having to work so hard for them!  Imagine you are in a downbeat mood or worried about something then you stop and look around you or ponder for a minute on what you have achieved, on your health, on your loved ones or yes, even on your material possessions if you like and be grateful for them in your heart. If you do this in a meaningful way your mood will immediately lighten up and you will feel good.

Secondly, doing it regularly will install a habit of thought. It’s like reprogramming your mind to be more receptive to positive things and respond equally positively. Now this is the thing. Thoughts have the power to change things. They can change our lives, our moods, our happiness, etc and that’s a fact (and not a small one if I may add).

Some, like myself, even believe that thoughts…well consciousness to be exact…can change and shape the events around you.  So by practicing gratefulness you are forming the habit to direct your conscious attention to the positive things in life and as a response your thoughts start turning increasingly more positive and once your thoughts become increasingly more positive than so will your life. It’s like a big positive feedback cycle which keeps on feeding on itself as it grows larger and larger.

Thirdly, gratitude brings us closer to what I like to call ‘the divinity in ourselves’.   It is that underlying sense of peace like an undercurrent of unchanging tranquility that rests beneath our more hectic and frenetic mode of thinking. If we manage to stay still for a minute or two and get into what some call ‘the gap between our thoughts’ (as in mindfulness meditation) then one can access a place of deep calm where anxious or worrying thoughts subside and one is left with nothing but his bare being which is less attached to thought and more connected to the source (or God or the Oneness of the Universe) .

Gratitude, Success & Happiness

Try it out for yourselves. It doesn’t take much effort or time anyway. It’s easy and what’s more it’s always available at all times. You can apply it immediately on the little things. You might be on your way home from work when you miss your bus or the car breaks down and someone you know stops by and gives you a ride or helps you with the car breakdown. It might be a little problem which was solved on its own or some happy news which came unexpectedly. Perhaps a happy day out with your family or just even something seemingly minuscule like finding a parking spot in a busy street.

Gratitude is an important key to success and happiness which is often clothed in simple and humble attire. We very often overlook its power and importance. I think of gratitude as being a simple and quick yet effective method which works wonders every time. Try it!

…and Yes…Thank you for appreciating the articles,  for supporting this blog and for sharing your comments! Thank You!

Related posts:

1. The little sacred rules of inner peace
2. 4 simple 2 minute daily practices that will change your life forever
3. The art of creating meaning into your life