Meditation Builds up the Brain

May 5, 2009 by  
Filed under Creativity

dragonflyred3

Meditating does more than just feel good and calm you down, it makes you perform better and alters the structure of your brain, researchers have found.

People who meditate say the practice restores their energy, and some claim they need less sleep as a result. Many studies have reported that the brain works differently during meditation – brainwave patterns change and neuronal firing patterns synchronise. But whether meditation actually brings any of the restorative benefits of sleep has remained largely unexplored.

So Bruce O’Hara and colleagues at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, US, decided to investigate. They used a well-established psychomotor vigilance task, which has long been used to quantify the effects of sleepiness on mental acuity.

Ten volunteers were tested before and after 40 minutes of either sleep, meditation, reading or light conversation, with all subjects trying all conditions.

What astonished the researchers was that meditation was the only intervention that immediately led to superior performance, despite none of the volunteers being experienced at meditation.

Every single subject showed improvement, says O’Hara. The improvement was even more dramatic after a night without sleep. But, he admits: Why it improves performance, we do not know. The team is now studying experienced meditators, who spend several hours each day in practice.

Brain builder
What effect meditating has on the structure of the brain has also been a matter of some debate. Now Sara Lazar at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, US, and colleagues have used MRI to compare 15 meditators, with experience ranging from 1 to 30 years, and 15 non-meditators.

They found that meditating actually increases the thickness of the cortex in areas involved in attention and sensory processing, such as the prefrontal cortex and the right anterior insula.

You are exercising it while you meditate, and it gets bigger, she says. The finding is in line with studies showing that accomplished musicians, athletes and linguists all have thickening in relevant areas of the cortex. It is further evidence, says Lazar, that yogis aren’t just sitting there doing nothing.

The growth of the cortex is not due to the growth of new neurons, she points out, but results from wider blood vessels, more supporting structures such as glia and astrocytes, and increased branching and connections.

NewScientist.com news service, By Alison Motluk

The QUANTUM MIND PROGRAM.A supercharged online training to create the actual brain states of self-achieved people like self-made millionaires in your own brain. An amazing, proven-effective experience.=> MORE INFO!

How to Feel Great Every Day

May 5, 2009 by  
Filed under Feeling Positive

elephant-and-bird-cassandra-gordon-harrisI’m about to show you how you can feel great starting right now. Sound too good to be true? Hang in  you’ve got a pleasant surprise coming. Let’s start with what makes us feel good. Well it’s not pain, right? So that leaves the logical opposite pleasure.

Hey, I can hear you protest. Where’s the big pleasure button in the sky that I can push to make me feel good? Life is not the so-called bowl of cherries.

That’s a fair question. Let’s explore it together. Remember the last time you had a really B-I-G laugh about something? Maybe it was a funny movie, hearing a really hilarious joke, or some unexpected life event just tickled your funny bone.

I’m not talking about a chuckle at some lame joke. I’m talking about downright, pxx-your-pants laughter. The kind where you slap your thighs, double-over, and tears squirt out your eyes because you are laughting so hard.

Now that’s laughter. And do you recall how good you felt afterwards? Know why we feel good after laughing really hard? Because intense laughter actually gives all of our internal organs an awesome massage. In fact, a really good gut-twisting laugh is the equivalent of 15 minutes of intense aerobics. How about that?

But you don’t have to pay $50 to get into a comedy club to get a good laugh although it may be worth it at times. I’d like to share a less expensive approach with you, because I think all of us can use a good laugh.

Get a Good Belly LaughOK.
Our goal is to get you into a good 5-minute belly laugh. Many of us have had laughter conditioned right out of us. But it’s OK if you have to jumpstart your laughter with a fake laugh. Yep, it’s silly alright. But that alone is worth a laugh.

Isn’t the promise of feeling great worth feeling a little silly? Besides, the aerobic exercise means you can skip the exercise bike today. Right? So go ahead and start with a fake laugh if necessary. No chuckles laugh as big as you can. Here’s where some amazing things come into action. You know how natural it is to laugh when someone else is laughing? That’s due to a natural brain response. Well your brain is going to respond to your own fake laughter by producing the laughter neurochemicals that tell you to laugh even more.

Hang in with your fake laughter. Very soon you’ll find you’ve gone from fake to genuine laughter. And this is really worth a good laugh.

Laughter-Based Problem SolvingNow here’s where the REAL fun comes in. In the middle of your uproarious laughter, think about a problem or something that is bothering you. Then go ahead and laugh about it. Remind yourself that you have survived up to this moment, and this too shall pass. It will, you know.

Know what you’ve just done?
You’ve just conditioned your subconscious mind into linking deep pleasure and confidence with your ability to solve your problem. You’re going to have the pleasure of feeling your attitude toward that so-called problem shift … helping a positive solution fall into place.

Done laughing?
Pull in a couple of deep breaths and appreciate the extra flow of oxygen into your brain. You are about to have a fabulous day — with stress running off of you like water off a ducks back. Quack, quack.

There you have it. A proven-effective BRAIN-SMART SECRET of how feel great every day for the rest of your life. Do it, and you’ll get hooked. Guaranteed.

By the way, are you aware of the huge health benefits of laughter? Remember Norman Cousins book Anatomy Of An Illness in which he described how he laughed himself free of a so-called terminal illness just by watching funny movies and laughing hard?

A Natural Swine Flu Remedy

May 1, 2009 by  
Filed under Life Mastery

Loren Thomas, MDWhat if you could self-administer a cure proven to prevent or remedy any disease – from the swine flu to cancer? Would it be worth 1½ cents a day?

The medical establishment blames viruses, microbes, germs and bacteria for causing everything from the flu to cancer. But research proves that although these are precursors to disease, they do NOT cause the disease. What they do is create a condition in your body that then results in disease.

More than 15,000 European doctors have healed millions of patients using a simple inexpensive cure, and over 6,100 articles have been published in European scientific literature hailing the success of this simple, inexpensive therapy.

Yet this information has been aggressively suppressed in the United States — and American doctors who have dared to use it to cure a wide variety of “incurable” and life-threatening diseases have come under heavy attack.

Why? Because this simple cure threatens the trillion-dollar earnings of the pharmaceutical and health care industries — not to mention the medical establishments that make huge profits providing expensive drugs, complex medical procedures and long hospital stays.

Come learn about this remarkable, scientifically-proven, totally natural therapy that can RAPIDLY enable your body to oversome practically any disease. Learn everything you need to know for less than the price (and the possible threat) of a flu shot!   Click Here!

« Previous Page