What is brainwave entrainment and what does it have to do with meditation? Often referred to as binaural meditation, many people claim this technology can enhance your meditation practice and actually accelerate your mental, emotional, and spiritual growth.

In fact, there’s a body of research which supports these claims. Brainwave entrainment has even proved effective in helping to heal people with trauma, mental illness, and addiction.

Whether you’re new to meditation, or a long-time practitioner, you might want to consider adding brainwave entrainment to your transformational toolbox.

We recently featured an article on this topic, but to help you understand more about this fascinating contemplative technology, I interviewed one of the leaders in the field of brainwave entrainment meditation on the OneMind Meditation Podcast.

Meet the soulful and inspiring John Dupuy, founder of iAwake Technologies and author of the award-winning Integral Recovery.

John discovered the power of brainwave entrainment after tragedy struck and he lost his brother to suicide. That was the beginning in a series of painful and challenging events in his life.

Soon John was struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts. He was already an on-again off-again meditator, but after four years of hardship and struggle, he discovered a new depth of faith through his spiritual practice.

The catalyst for this change was brainwave entrainment meditation.

As John tells it, the technology had a huge effect on his meditation practice, enabling him to go deeper and farther than he had before. It was this spiritual breakthrough that initiated a deep and lasting healing process.

It also led John to found iAwake Technologies, a company dedicated to sharing brainwave entrainment meditation with the world.

John is passionate about the potential of brainwave entrainment to support healing and spiritual growth. But he never claims that this technology is a surrogate for meditation.

On the contrary, John is a firm believer in the power of daily practice. Instead, he asserts that brainwave entrainment can enhance and deepen your meditation practice, not replace it.

In that spirit, we wanted to invite John to share his expertise and his story with the About Meditation audience.

Also, don’t miss this complimentary 20-min brainwave entrainment meditation track from John and the iAwake team.

-How binaural meditation unites the body and mind

The post OM039: Can Brainwave Entrainment Meditation Accelerate Your Growth? appeared first on About Meditation.

What is tai chi? Is it true that this ancient martial art, often referred to as a form of moving meditation, can impact the health of your mind, heart, bones, nerves, muscles, and immune system?

In fact, the latest research out of Harvard supports these claims and more. Of course, Tai Chi masters have known this for hundreds of years. And the benefits, they say, go much deeper than physical and mental wellness.

Tai Chi is also a powerful and honored mindfulness practice. As Harvard’s Dr. Peter Wayne puts it, “I think of Tai Chi as a form of meditation or mindfulness on wheels!”

I had the pleasure of interviewing Peter for this episode of the OneMind Meditation Podcast. He authored The Harvard Medical School Guide To Tai Chi and serves as Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of Research for the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine jointly based at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Peter is passionate about the art and science of Tai Chi. When he’s not at his day job, researching and studying the health benefits of Tai Chi, he’s teaching and practicing with students at his Tree of Life Tai Chi Center in Somerville, MA.

To date, Peter has has led or collaborated on more than 15 peer-reviewed studies at the Osher Center. These studies include evaluation of the clinical benefits and physiological basis of Tai Chi for:

-Chronic heart failure

At the Tree of Life Tai Chi Center, the curriculum focuses on Tai Chi Chuan, qigong, meditation, and related healing and martial art. The Center also offers a teacher training program.

In this episode, we explore the art and science of Tai Chi with Dr. Peter Wayne and discuss:

Buy The Harvard Medical School Guide To Tai Chi by Peter Wayne, PhD

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Be grateful for adversity, for it forces the human spirit to grow. For surely the human character is formed not in the absence of difficulty but in our response to difficulty. ~Jim Rohn

Have you ever come back from death? There aren’t a lot of people on earth who can say they’ve died and come back to life. Hal Elrod is one of them.

Hal’s story, as he recounts it in his bestselling book, The Miracle Morning, captured my heart and mind a little over a year ago. But his story was just the beginning. In his book, Hal also introduced me to a unique morning routine that changed my own life. He calls it the Life SAVERS.

In this episode of the OneMind Meditation Podcast, Hal shares his story and the incredible events that have unfolded since his accident and how they led to his book, The Miracle Morning.

Today, Hal is at the forefront an impassioned movement of people who are changing their lives through a novel approach to their morning routines. This approach, which Hal calls Life SAVERS, includes a powerful blend of self-development practices.

I can personally attest to the transformative powerful of Hal’s approach to morning routines and have already recorded a podcast episode about it called How To Turn Meditation Into A Keystone Habit.

So what does all this have to do with meditation? I invited Hal onto the show because he places a strong emphasis on silence as part of his Life SAVERS routine. And beyond that, meditation dovetails elegantly with these other practices.

In time, the Life SAVERS become mutually reinforcing habits, enhancing one another. If you’ve struggled to hone your morning routine, I can’t recommend The Miracle Morning strongly enough.

It can change your life. It definitely changed mine.

The post OM037: Meditation & The Miracle Morning with Hal Elrod appeared first on About Meditation.

I have come to feel that nothing is more tonic more urgent, in fact than simply doing nothing. ~Pico Iyer

What is the art of doing nothing? Is it just a fancy spin on lazy navel gazing? Or is it, like many suggest, an important refresher for your brain and a profound contemplative practice?

These days “doing nothing” is getting some much-needed attention. In the past, you might have been chastised by your parents or your partner for sitting on the couch and staring into space.

Maybe it’s just me, but many an adult had to corral my do-nothing dream states into focused and productive attention.

Don't underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering. ~Winnie The Pooh

But now, you have distinguished business professors, psychologists, and award-winning authors touting the benefits of spending time focused on nothing in particular.

Doing nothing, they say, is important for your brain, and it helps stimulate the creative process.

In fact, brain researcher Marcus Raichle from Washington University discovered that idle time was critical for the activation of the brain’s default mode network.

The default mode network is the part of your prefrontal cortex responsible for, among other things, forging creative connections between seemingly unrelated ideas.

Many of the wisest voices in our tradition, from Whitman to Thoreau, have talked about the virtue of loafing. The less you struggle with a problem, the more it's likely to solve itself. The less time you spend frantically running around, the more productive you are likely to be. ~Pico Iyer

Of course the very idea of doing nothing raises red flags for those of us is the West, possessed as we are with our focus on hyper-productivity and rooted in the puritan work ethic.

But according to psychologist Dr. Colleen Long, other cultures view this idea more favorably. The Italians, for example, have a word for this called  La Dolce Far Niente, which translates as the sweet idleness.

Doing nothing has another related value with a rich and ancient heritage. You may not realize it, but doing nothing is what meditation is all about. You could even say that it’s the sweet spot of your practice.

In this episode of The OneMind Meditation podcast, we explore the art of doing nothing in meditation and why it’s so important. We explore:

The post OM036: Meditation And The Art Of Doing Nothing appeared first on About Meditation.

There are a lot of evergreen meditation tips. There are techniques and tricks you can learn along the way. But I’ve found that one lesson stands above the rest. After meditating for more than two decades, I’ve come to call it the Golden Rule of meditation.

The Golden Rule is simple. In essence, it tells us to never make a problem during meditation.

And the reason I wanted to share this with you is because it’s a cornerstone of any thriving meditation practice.

So, why is this so important? There are a lot of reasons. In this episode we touch on just a few of them. My primary goal is to impress upon you the simple fact that if you take the Golden Rule to heart, it will save you trouble, reduce inner friction, and spare you from getting stuck in some perennial meditation pitfalls.

In essence, the Golden Rule is about hewing to an inner posture where nothing is ever a problem during meditation. No matter what happens or doesn't happen, it's not a problem.

It’s simple, but it’s hard. Often you can break this rule, and not even know it. Here are a few examples where it can be especially challenging but helpful to practice the Golden Rule.

Scenario one, you sit down to meditate when you're really stressed out. You've got things going on at work, at home, or in your relationship and you're stressed. So you're sitting down in meditation to let go of that stress, calm your nerves, relax your body, and rest your mind.

But as you sit there meditating, you're all over the place. Your mind is link a ping pong ball going back and forth on this problem and that issue and on it goes in an endless loop…

In the end, you feel like you never really settle down, you never really relax, and you don't feel much relief or release from your mind and your stress.

This is exactly when the Golden Rule is so important.

In a moment like that, if you can be cool with all of it and not make a problem or feel like a failure then that's a victory.

Here’s another scenario. We all have that hyper-critical voice in our head that's just waiting for the opportunity to confirm our suspicions that we have failed in today's meditation session.

This is moment to invoke the Golden Rule. When you do, that the hyper critical voice doesn't stand a chance. Why? Because you aren't making a problem out of anything, that self-critical voice has no traction. It lives and thrives on problems.

However, during your meditation you’re asserting that there aren't any problems. In the process, you short circuit an entire mechanism in your mind that leads many people to give up or feel guilty or feel stressed out.

And here's another part of the golden rule. It's a sneaky strategy for letting go. If you can let there be no problem at all, you end up letting go of a lot of the things that undermine your practice. Here are some of the pesky question that tend to send us down the rabbit whole:

While meditating, you want to let all that go, because it focuses your attention on problems. When you follow the Golden Rule, you sidestep that business altogether.

So that's a brief lesson on the Golden Rule. I encourage you to make it a cornerstone of your practice. Before you know it, you’ll marvel as you cut through thorny issues that were holding you back.

The post OM035: The Golden Rule of Meditation (Everything You Need To Know) appeared first on About Meditation.

Be aware of yourself and know yourself. No matter how much you have learned and how much you know, if you don’t know yourself you don’t know anything. ~Zen Master Shosan

What does a modern-day warrior look like? Does being a warrior have anything to do with meditation? And when was the last time you heard a professional boxer talking about compassion for his opponent, much less himself?

These were some of the questions on my mind when I interviewed a professional boxer and former olympian. Enter Danny O’Connor, an Irishman from Framingham, Massachusetts who is blossoming into a Bodhisattva of professional boxing.

Against the odds, Danny discovered meditation. He began practicing it to improve his performance in the ring. However, he quickly realized there was more to this ancient art than he understood. Meditation was changing him on a deeper level.

In many ways, the depth of that change is just starting to reveal itself. In this interview, we explore the powerful role that meditation plays in Danny’s professional training and in his life.

In the East, there is an ancient and storied tradition where meditation and the ideal of the warrior fit hand in glove.

Think of Tai-chi, Kung-fu, Qigong, and other martial arts which include meditation as a baseline of training. To master the body, they suggest, we must first master our own minds.

Teachers from the East have long understood that the enemy within is often much more formidable than the enemy standing in front of us. The Buddhist-based Shaolin monks, Bruce Lee, and other popular martial arts icons have helped to popularize that idea in the West.

Growing up, I was captivated by movies like Revenge of the Ninja and anything that had to do with martial arts. I even took Taekwondo for a few years.

During my time at Yu’s Academy of Taekwondo, Master Yu would wedge an awkward period of silence in the middle of Taekwondo training. He made us sit still in perfect silence for 20 minutes.

I was ten years old at the time, so I considered this a uniquely pure and unfair form of torture. I watched every second tick by on the clock.

Of course, I had no idea that Master Yu was introducing us to a rudimentary form of meditation. It was my first real exposure to an ancient tradition that valued mastery over self before mastery over others.

Fast forward a few decades. I spent 14 years training in a spiritual ashram where I meditated for hours every day, performed prostrations, chanted mantras, and did extensive spiritual practice. Often we meditated from midnight to 6am to build our stamina and confidence on the meditation cushion. I once sat for 48 hours straight in a “meditation marathon.”

Our teacher was famously fierce and exacting. He was a former martial artist himself and was obsessed with groups like the Navy Seals and The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei who seemed to transcend the ordinary through near super-human feats of physical exertion.

I was never a real martial artist, but through my contemplative training, I came to understand the power of meditation to sharpen my mind and spirit. Remaining serene and still as you endure the slings and arrows of your own mind is no small feat.

Day after day, meditation confronts you with how things are, not how you want them to be. It is a mirror that shows you who you are, not who you want to be. It takes the spirit, will, determination, and energy of a warrior to engage in this kind of “confrontation.”

Until we start a discipline like daily meditation, most of us just aren’t aware that our thoughts are like wild stallions galloping over the plains of our minds. In the beginning, most of us are thoroughly outmatched. It takes time, practice, and a lot bruises to harness those wild horses.

In this light, I was excited to meet a modern-day warrior like Danny O’Connor. In 2008, Danny won the national golden gloves championship and represented his country in the 2008 Olympics as an alternate on the United States boxing team. His current boxing record is 26 wins and 3 losses.

When Danny is formally training for a fight, he often meditates for upwards of four hours each day. When he first started meditating, he saw immediate changes through his practice as his awareness sharpened, and he grew calmer and more focused in and out of the ring.

But perhaps even more significantly, Danny developed a lens of compassion for himself and his opponent. This is most visible in his changing relationship to the goal of his training and boxing in general. Winning and losing is no longer the main event.

After Danny’s first professional loss, he entered into a deep depression. This was before he started a regular meditation practice. These days, his perspective on winning and losing has changed completely. He recognizes both as part of a larger process. Losing is as powerful an opportunity to grow and move forward as winning.

And beyond that, Danny says that focusing on this larger process deepens his compassion for both himself and his opponent. He credits the self-knowledge he’s gained from meditation for this change.

The post OM034: Why This Pro Boxer Meditates Every Single Day appeared first on About Meditation.

We’re fascinated by the words. But where we meet is in the silence behind them. ~Ram Dass

Why do we need silence? That disarming question launched a recent conversation I had with a health reporter. The answer to that question has many parts.

Why? Because there’s inner silence and there’s outer silence. They’re related, but they’re not the same. Also, silence isn’t a static thing. It’s dynamic, and it weaves through our lives like an invisible umbilical cord, nourishing our minds and souls and connecting us to a vast inner and outer cosmos.

But the truth is, most of us don’t get nearly enough of it. We suffer as a result.

Historically, humanity lived with a great measure of silence in our lives. Recorded music was a complete novelty less than one hundred years ago.

Heavy machinery, construction, traffic, and the omnipresent drone of the modern age commenced just a few hundred years ago. And still, that only effected the relative few who lived in the cities.

In contrast, these days most of us live in a buzzing field of ambient noise. TVs, iPhones, booming car stereos, whaling sirens, honking horns, and shouting neighbors are a steady state experience here in the city.

If you live in an urban environment like I do, noise pollution is everywhere. What most of us don’t realize is how it slowly erodes our quality of life. Unseen, it seeps into us and disquiets our minds.

In fact, the American Psychological Association (APA) has started tracking the harmful effects of noise pollution on our health and cognition. According some recent studies, ongoing exposure to noise pollution, “may lead to higher blood pressure and fatal heart attacks.”

But what does this have to do with inner silence? So far, we’re just talking about silence at the superficial level. Of course there is a deeper layer of silence inner silence.

You see, that kind of silence is an integral part of who we are at our core. You could even say that it’s part of our nature.

At the center of you and me there is a reservoir of perfect stillness and silence. Meditation offers reliable passage to that ocean of calm that lies beyond the noise of your mind.

And here’s the thing. All of us need regular contact and communion with that part of ourselves. It keeps us sane, centered, and grounded in the best part of ourselves. It’s where we reconnect with the source of who we are. That’s one of the best reasons to make meditation a daily habit.

The good news is that silence is never far away. If you pay attention, you can notice moments of silence that slice through the noise like shots of sunlight through autumn leaves.

In this episode of the podcast, we explore the benefits of silence in meditation and in our lives. We also examine the effects of too little silence and the toll it takes on our physical, emotional, and psychological health.

According to Dr Paul Haider, the physiological benefits of silence include:

We explore a number of questions related to silence, for example: what lessons can we learn from silence? How can we get more of it? Can we nurture inner silence even while our minds are distracted? There is so much to glean from this vast topic, but at the very least, silence show us:

In this episode of the OneMind Meditation Podcast, we also spend time unpacking the value and benefits of silence in the context of stress, solitude, rejuvenation, creativity, health, noble silence, and presence.

The post OM033: Why We Need Silence Much More Than We Think appeared first on About Meditation.

Where do meditation and psychology intersect? For several decades, these two models of self-understanding one based in religion and the other in science have started to mingle and merge.

As mindfulness steadily develops a body of research to support it’s efficacy in treating stress, depression, anxiety, and emotional trauma, we’ve seen the simultaneous rise of mindfulness-based psychotherapy.

In this episode of the OneMind Meditation Podcast, we explore mindfulness-based psychotherapy with Ava Pommerenk (M.A. In Clinical Psychology), and the role of meditation in her own journey of healing and thriving.

According to the World Health Organization, over 350 million people globally suffer from depression. Over 40 million people in the US 18 years and older have some form of anxiety disorder. That number translates to a staggering cost of more than $42 billion a year in treatment.

Fortunately, we live in a unique moment when traditional psychotherapeutic modes of treating mental illness are co-mingling with new (old) forms like mindfulness and meditation to produce compelling hybrids.

At the same time, it seems the basic thrust of many therapy models is evolving from treating mental illness and emotional health as a static problem that needs to be fixed to a dynamic process of healing, growth, and thriving.

Signs of this evolution abound in the media. Phychology Today has a section of it’s website devoted to meditation, mindfulness, mindful eating, and a mindful life. The American Psychological Association (APA) cites extensive research that outlines the benefits of using mindfulness in the context of psychotherapy.

Popular self-help books like Radical Acceptance, from psychotherapist and Buddhist teacher Tara Brach, have further blended these two models while providing enormous support to countless people.

But what is mindfulness-based psychotherapy? The Therapy Center for Embodied Transformation offers this definition:

Mindfulness-based psychotherapy teaches one to learn to relate to their self, others, and environment in a more mindful way, and to practice greater self-acceptance and self-compassion in the process of continued healing and growth.

In Ava’s own work, she has seen her clients heal anxiety disorders, depression, eating disorders, chronic relational issues, and more.

And yet, meditation-based psychological models have a long history that predate the recent intersection with Western psychotherapy. Buddhist psychology, for example, has steadily evolved over the last two and a half thousand years from the moment when the Buddha first identified the essential source of human suffering as fear and desire.

If you remember that awareness of whatever occurs is meditation, then meditation becomes much easier than you think. ~Mingyur Rinpoche

It’s also important to remember, you don’t need to suffer from anxiety or depression to benefit from meditation and mindfulness. Just as exercise keeps our bodies in shape, so can meditation keep our minds balanced and healthy. Of course, it can also lead us on a deeper journey of learning, growth, and insight.

And as Ava likes to remind us, just because you aren't sitting on the cushion that doesn't mean you aren't practicing mindfulness. Once you understand the basics of mindfulness and meditation, you start to see that all of your life is an opportunity to practice mindful presence.

Ava practices as a Psychological Assistant (PSB: 37799) under Dr. Miguel Hidalgo-Barnes (PSY: 24974)

The post OM032: Growth & Insight Through Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy appeared first on About Meditation.

Meditation can be challenging. That’s especially true when you’re starting out. It’s easy to get lost, confused, frustrated, or just bored.

As you wade into the deeper waters of contemplative arts like meditation, it’s important to understand the terrain. For example, it’s helpful to know where you can expect challenges. Where (and when) are you going to have trouble meditating?

That kind of information is invaluable for any skill you’re trying to learn or master. But meditation has an added bonus. It’s a keystone habit, which means that it often triggers a cascade of other positive and transforming effects in your life.

That’s why I devote this episode of the the OneMind Meditation Podcast to breaking down five of the biggest challenges that every meditator is probably going to face in her practice.

What about you? Can you say what your top challenge is in meditation?

It’s good to know your pain points so you don’t get stuck there. If you don’t pinpoint those challenging aspects of your practice, and make them explicit, you might find yourself treading water.

With meditation, like most other skills or practices that you’re trying to master, it’s essential that you keep moving forward. Progress can look different for each one of us. But the important point is that you continue to grow and learn.

Recently I discovered a startling piece of data. Researchers found that many people would rather electrocute themselves than spend time alone with their own thoughts. Can you believe that?

It reminds me of the oft-cited quote from mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal who once said that, “All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.”

As a race, we humans have not yet demonstrated that we are well-acquainted with the deeper currents of our own being. It seems we’re often estranged from the core drivers of our behavior and choices.

This helps to explain why meditation can be challenging. If anything, meditation allows you to bear witness to the movement of your own mind. In the process, you start to see what makes you tick. Depending on how you look at it, that can be exciting, scary, or painful. Often it’s all three.

Either way, it takes time and patience to get used to being alone with yourself. Eventually, insight will dawn and so will understanding two great treasures that allow you to sit with quiet contentment in a room on your own. And you probably already know this, but there are so many more benefits to meditation.

Here’s one benefit I just learned about. According to Dr. Kelly McGonigal, author of The Willpower Instinct, neuroscientists discovered that meditation is one of the best things you can do to cultivate your capacity for self-control. People who meditate regularly, she says, have brains that are finely tuned willpower machines.

Regular meditators, it turns out, have improved focus, attention, stress management, impulse control, and self-awareness.

To gain these benefits and persevere in meditation, it’s good to know the territory and avoid some of the common pitfalls. In this episode of the OneMind Meditation Podcast, we discuss these five meditation challenges:

The post OM031: Having Trouble Meditating? 5 Common Challenges Every Meditator Needs To Understand appeared first on About Meditation.

Do you have a clear way to manage your stress? When your stomach drops out and your adrenaline kicks in, what do you do?

According to a mountain of scientific evidence, stress erodes nearly every significant system in our body. That’s why it’s important to develop some conscious tools to help you mitigate the effects of stress on your mind and your body.

Fortunately, it’s abundantly clear that stimulating your relaxation response is one of the best ways to combat, and even reverse, the negative effects of chronic stress. Can you guess one of the best ways to trigger your relaxation response?

Exactly, it’s meditation.

These days, we are used to living with stress, but let’s break it down for a second. What’s actually happening when our stress response kicks in? And why does chronic stress lead to hypertension, headaches, insomnia, irritable bowel syndrome and chronic low back pain, as well as heart disease, stroke and cancer?

First, stress is built on the idea, real or imagined, of scarcity. You don’t have enough time. You don’t have enough money. You don’t have the resources you need to get the job done. Stress has the effect of shrinking your world down to the size of a pea.

In essence, once your stress response has kicked in, it’s easy to feel like everything is a problem. And it feels bad, like you’ve got acid running through your veins. You’re nervous system is racing and red-lining like a high-performance sports car with smoke spilling out from the hood.

There’s a good reason for that.

In response to a perceived threat, your biological system has kicked into primitive survival mode and flooded your body with the kind of stimulants epinephrine and norepinephrine that give you the strength to fend off enraged gorillas.

Consequently, your ability to concentrate is impaired. Your breathing is shallow, your heart beat surges, and your blood pressure spikes. At the same time, your immune system is severely compromised.

At the biological level, the executive function in your brain is shutting down and your primitive amygdala brain the one designed to deal with lions and tigers and bears has seized the steering wheel. Tranlation? Say good bye to short-term memory, concentration, inhibition, and rational thought. So long to your social coordination too.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, your brain has also released an array of hormones and proteins that modulate stress by decreasing sleep and increasing alertness and anxiety.

Now here’s the problem. Most of us live with a measure of stress which is ok. But a lot of us live with chronic stress, and that’s not ok. In that case, the above scenario is happening as a baseline response to non life-threatening events, like criticism from your boss, bad traffic, or from watching the news.

See the problem?

Now think of your relaxation response. It’s the opposite. Your mind is clear, calm, and centered. Your body is supple and relaxed. You’re grounded in the present moment and you feel a sense of abundance and expansiveness. The world around you is a creative and dynamic space of relationship and ideas. You’re happy to be alive and you feel that life is good.

Physically, your blood pressure normalizes along with your heart beat and breathing. Your body returns to a homeostatic state. Since 1971, when Herbert Benson released the landmark book, The Relaxation Response, there have been numerous studies on the relaxation response which have highlighted the following short-term benefits to the nervous system:

For those of us who live in the West, stress is a normal part of our achievement-oriented culture. But is chronic stress an acceptable cost of our success?

In this episode of the OneMind Meditation Podcast, we discuss physical, emotional, and psychological costs of stress and some of the science around stress. Then we examine four mindful steps you can take to manage stress through meditation.

We explore stress in the context of:

The post OM030: 4 Mindful Steps To Manage Stress With Meditation appeared first on About Meditation.