June 2013 Audio Meditation

In a recent article entitled, “Your Brain Has a Delete Button—Here’s How to Use It”, the authors, Judah Pollack and Olivia Fox Cabane, talk about research that’s been done on the presence and function of the brain’s “microglial” cells that are the “gardeners of the brain”.  These cells prune and remove synapses while we sleep.  Most importantly, they remove those synapses we don’t use very much.  In fact, the brain marks the unused synapses with a protein that signals the microglial cells to go ahead and prune them.

Because all self-talk is self-hypnosis, and because where we focus our thinking activates the synapses related to these thoughts, it behooves us to be mindful about where we’re spending our internal self-talk time.  One example in the article is this:  

“If you’re in a fight with someone at work and devote your time to thinking about how to get even with them, and not about that big project, you’re going to wind up a synaptic superstar at revenge plots but a poor innovator.”

They go on to say:

“To take advantage of your brain’s natural gardening system, simply think about the things that are important to you. Your gardeners will strengthen those connections and prune the ones that you care about less. It’s how you help the garden of your brain flower.”

Read More “768th Week: More Reasons Why Tracking Your Self-Talk is So Important”

In this time of intense social and global activation and distress, it behooves each one of us to be mindful not only of our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, but also to keep in mind that, in a collective sense, our way of being in the world matters.  Here’s a quotation I recently posted on the Devadana Sanctuary page, and it got me to thinking about how we manage what becomes our contribution to the collective referred to:

“The world we are experiencing today is the result of our collective consciousness, and if we want a new world, each of us must take responsibility for helping create it.” 

~ Rosemary Fillmore

One of the most basic practices that can make a difference in the quality of our internal life is to notice what we orient to in our thoughts and feelings, and what “frequencies” we tune into as we move through the day.  For example, if you orient your self-talk and day-dreaming toward worry, you are—in a sense—dialing in the quality of “worry”, connecting with it not only in your own imagination but also in the collective worry carried by us all as a collective consciousness.

Read More “755th Week: Choosing Frequencies”

Note: At the bottom of this written practice there is a recording of it, if you would prefer to listen. In the practices that contain a guided meditation, please remember never to listen to these recorded meditations when driving or working with dangerous machinery.

As I sit in Central Park, one of the great gifts of this time is that I can soak in the steady and quiet presence of the large trees that surround me. Above and beyond the beneficial chemicals that the trees naturally emit, and above and beyond the oxygen they offer in the process of their own respiration, there is also the radiating quality of their steady stature and strength. Even though I’m sure that I project onto and into them qualities I imagine or need, I sense that the presence and qualities they exude are not all from my imagination. What I feel in my body is a deep response to the gifts offered by the trees, which include the physical and emotional nourishment I receive from the time spent with them.

This got me to thinking about all the different aspects of nature that we encounter all the time if we are lucky enough to either live in the country or to be able to spend time outdoors in parks, near lakes, the ocean, and more if we live in an urban setting. Because I live in New York City, Central Park has been an important resource for me, a place I can go and soak in the gifts of nature’s qualities. There are other parks, as well, and all of them offer gifts of healthy nourishment and well-being to those of us who are urban dwellers.

For this week’s practice, I invite you to become even more aware of the aspects of nature that support your sense of steadiness, grounding, upliftment, well-being, contentment, and more. For example, there may be boulders or other stone people in your immediate environment, perhaps in your backyard if you have a yard with your home. As you lean on them, or look at them, notice their steady presence, notice what it’s like soak in their solidity, their strength. Or, there may be birds and you find that you can imagine being one of them, flying over the landscape. Notice what you experience in your body as you do this. There may be bodies of water where you can find inspiration and where you may even be able to swim, kayak, or in other ways engage the water directly. You can even connect with clouds or with the wind currents that flow around the planet, imagining that you have that freedom of movement and then noticing what happens in your body.

Read More “888th Week: Drawing on Nature’s Presence”