Fwd: Pay Attention To Your Liver. Here's Why.

2 Tips On Self-Care.

View this email in your browser Achieving Your Health, Wealth & Happiness By 10-Minutes Daily Thoughtless Awareness. Pay Attention To Your Liver. Here's Why. Dear Friend, When the garbage collectors go on strike, it's not a pretty sight. The rubbish piles up; there's a stink and the rats come out to party. Waste removal (garbage collection) in the human body is overseen by the liver, the second largest organ in the body (after the skin) and is situated below the rib cage on your right side. Your liver is looked after by your swadisthana chakra. Among the liver's important functions are: Production of bile, which helps carry away waste and break down fats in the small intestine during digestion Conversion of poisonous ammonia to urea (urea is an end product of protein metabolism and is excreted in the urine) Clearing the blood of drugs and other poisonous substances (source: Johns Hopkins Medicine)  These all relate to what we consume. But we 'consume' more than food. We consume experiences - that book you read; that movie you went to see ; that conversation you had or listened.  All of these experiences are 'digested' by your swadisthana chakra. Your liver/swadisthan is the 'seat' of your attention. What we pay attention to from moment to moment determines mood, happiness and quality of life. If the attention is allowed to become an unemptied garbage bin, then after a while there's an impact to both mental and physical health. The best way to look after your liver/swadisthan chakra is with a regular footspa described below. Also below: being kind to your liver by what you eat and a meditation to feed your inner light. Best wishes Peter PS. Photo collage of Sahaja yoga around the world, further down. Click Here For Monday 7:30pm Meditation (Zoom) Taking Care Of Your Liver With What You Eat. If you easily get angry about things; if you find it difficult to 'switch off' or fall asleep at night ; if you worry a lot or overthink things , then chances are that you have an 'overactive' liver . You can treat it by paying attention to what you eat or consume most often. If it tends to be in the left-most column of the picture on the right ,then cut down or eliminate for a week , and replace with cooling foods in the right column and see how you feel. Click on picture to expand... Eating The Light - A Meditation On Your Spirit. The carefree and uncomplicated days of childhood, when you could just be you, may seem a distant memory but you can still nurture your essential and authentic self by meditating on your 'atma'(spirit) which resides in your left heart chakra, secretly. For 5 minutes,let the person who you think you are take a backseat, so that the light of your spirit can shine in your awareness and give you the power of authenticity... Garbage Out - Clearing Your Liver With A Foot Spa. Remember how you felt after a day at the beach; just standing there and letting the sea water wash over your feet? Your head felt clearer; your body may have felt lighter. If you don't live in Miami or Sydney or some other place where a visit to the beach is a collective daily ritual , you can recreate the experience and benefit at home with a salt-water footspa to 'detox' your liver /swadisthana chakra. Popular Posts Others Are Reading. Quote of the Week   "When you are in 'war' with the[a] problem then you are disturbed. But when you become thoughtlessly aware [mentally silent / in meditation] through Kundalini awakening you see, you witness it. You see it clearly and you also know how to solve the problem because you can see it clearly. You are sensitive in the sense that you record it, like a barometer, and also you know the solution. So it is the state of your being which gives the dynamic force within you, that you can see everything as a witness as well as you can solve the problem. " October 26th 1987, Public Program, Rome (Italy). " I'm really excited to be moving into a new flat next week. It's bigger than the flat I'm in at the moment, with lots of natural light. The only thing I'm worried about is the vibes of the new place. I heard that the previous tenants quarrelled a lot and had money problems. Is there some way of 'cleansing' the flat so that I'm not affected by any lingering negativity? " In Reply: Invite your friends over for a 'house warming' party. All the loud talking, laughing, music and merry-making should banish any depressive feelings that may be hanging in the flat . Make friends with the neighbours. However, just in case any negative vibes there are more deep-seated, and are what was actually causing the troubles of the previous tenants, you can do a 'cleanse' with 4 coconuts and your meditation photo of Shri Mataji.  Here's how it works: Buy 4 fresh coconuts . Designate where in the flat will be your 'meditation space' and place your glass, framed meditation photo there. Leave the coconuts in front of the photo for a couple of hours to absorb vibes. Then position each coconut in the 4 corners of the flat ( I'm assuming the flat is not round :o) ). The coconuts should be placed on the ground. Leave the coconuts there until they either spontaneously crack - a sure sign that's they've 'caught' something - or the water in them dries up. Discard in an outside bin.  Remember too that having a photo of Shri Mataji, permanently sitting somewhere in your living space acts like a kind of lucky, protective talisman - as many people have discovered from personal experience. Click Here For Tues/ Thurs Live Group Guided Meditation & Music (Audio) Transforming The World - One Awakened Kundalini At A Time. Share Tweet Forward Resources:  Meditation Photo  Guided Meditation Playlist    Meditation Music Playlist    Self-care Chakras

 

Meditation, mindfulness and mind-emptiness

Mindfulness essentially involves the passive observation of internal and external stimuli without mental reaction. Image from shutterstock.com

Ramesh Manocha, University of Sydney

Ever been unable to sleep because you can’t switch off that stream of thoughts that seems to flow incessantly, mercilessly through your head?

When your mental noise distracts you from the task at hand, makes you forget why you walked into a room, or keeps you awake at night, you’re a victim of what is known in the East as “the monkey mind”. It is this thought stream that, according to Eastern tradition, is the source of much of our modern day stress and mental dysfunction.

So, what can you do about it?

Meditation

In the West, meditation has become a woolly term under which many different methods have found a home. Mindfulness is the latest, and certainly the most popular, addition.

Scientifically speaking, all approaches to meditation – be they relaxation, mindfulness, visualisation, mantras or otherwise – are associated with measurable but non-specific beneficial effects. So too are all stress management-style interventions even if they are not labelled as “meditation”.

So, does meditation have a specific effect or is it just another way to relax and de-stress? These are the questions that the scientific community continues to struggle with. Importantly, we can only answer this question if we have a clear understanding of what meditation is (or isn’t).

Our research shows that by defining meditation as “mental silence”, which is an evolution of the mindfulness concept, we can effectively answer the key scientific questions about meditation.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness essentially involves the passive observation of internal and external stimuli without mental reaction. It is most explicitly, but not exclusively, laid out in Buddhist meditation texts.

The Buddhist connection is one reason Mindfulness is so popular. Image from shutterstock.com

Mindfulness has become immensely popular for several reasons: its connection with Buddhism, which is very much in fashion; its secular style; and its suitability as an adjunct to many other mental health counselling strategies such as cognitive behavioural therapy.

There is no doubting that mindfulness has a useful role to play in preserving health and promoting wellness. But despite its hundreds of clinical trials, there is no consistent evidence of an effect specific to mindfulness itself.

In fact, the vast majority of evidence concerning mindfulness relates to clinical trials that do not control for placebo effects. This is something relatively few researchers seem to want to talk about, either because it’s too difficult or too politically incorrect.

Mental silence

Perhaps surprisingly, the oldest known definition of meditation predates both Buddhism and mindfulness by thousands of years. In the ancient Indian Mahabharata, the narrator states that a meditator is “… like a log, he does not think”. In other words, the earliest definitions describe the key defining feature of meditation as an experience of “mental silence”.

Many other explicit examples of this definition can be found in Eastern literature from virtually every historical period. Lao Tzu, for example, urged us to “Empty the mind of all thoughts” in the Tao Te Ching.

Yet Western definitions of meditation have consistently failed to acknowledge its significance. Perhaps this is because of the predominance of the Cartesian dictum “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am) that has come to characterise not only Western philosophy but the psyche as well.

This might explain why for most people in the West, including the academics and researchers on whom we rely to generate our scientific knowledge, mental silence represents both an alien concept and an illogical experience.

Yet the results of more than a dozen years of scientific research here in Australia tells us that mental silence-orientated approaches to meditation are in fact both achievable and associated with specific benefits above and beyond those seen in non-mental silence approaches.

Take, for instance, my 2011 Meditation for Work Stress Study, involving 178 full-time Australian workers; it’s one of the most thoroughly designed randomised controlled trials of meditation in the scientific literature.

Mental silence is responsible for many of the benefits of meditation. Carnie Lewis

Participants were randomly allocated to one of three groups: either mental silence meditation, a relaxation-orientated intervention (non-mental silence) or a no-treatment control group. Their stress, depressive feelings and anxiety levels were measured using scientifically validated measures before and after the eight week program.

While people in both intervention groups improved, those in the mental silence group manifested significantly greater improvements than the relaxation group and the no-treatment group.

A randomised controlled trial of meditation for asthma sufferers mirrored these findings by comparing mental silence-orientated meditation to a stress management programme promoted by the state department of health. Not only were the psychological improvements significantly greater in the meditation group but there was also a reduction in the irritability of the airways.

Although further work needs to be done to identify the mechanisms, this change is likely the result of the modulation of chronic inflammation pathways, presumably through altered signalling from the brain.

Other larger surveys as well as smaller trials also demonstrate promising outcomes – all pointing toward the idea that mental silence is the key defining feature of meditation, responsible for effects specific to meditation.

Brain studies report some interesting findings. First, the experience is associated with a characteristic pattern of brain electrical activity – increased alpha-theta activity at the front and top of the brain along the midline. This is associated with reduced anxiety and improved attentional focus.

There was also a strong correlation between these objectively measured electrical changes and the subjective experience of the quality of the meditation experience.

Second, meditators exhibit reduced stress responses in the brain compared with non-meditators. This implies that the benefits are occurring at a neurophysiological level rather than being just a suppression of emotion or of its peripheral features.

The effects of meditation seem to be beyond the ability to suppress emotional responses. Flickr/premasagar

Meditators, therefore, seem to be fundamentally modifying the way they generate negative emotions in response to the environment.

Reduced negative emotional reactions to stimuli should logically lead to reduced stress and an improved sense of well-being. But until studies where the brain changes are simultaneously measured alongside clinical changes, we can’t definitively state that these brain changes are the cause of the specific effects uncovered in our clinical studies.

Mind-emptiness

So how does this all fit together?

The mental silence paradigm is both complementary to and a progression of the mindfulness concept. While mindfulness involves the passive observation of stimuli with the aim of reducing mental reactions, mental silence involves progressing this experience to, and attaining, a state of no-mental-content-at-all, while remaining in full control of one’s faculties.

The original intention of mindfulness is as a method to facilitate the attainment of mental silence rather than being an ends in itself.

This shift in our understanding resolves many of the paradoxes that were hitherto insoluble – while at the same time offering consumers and clinicians a practically useful way to understand and benefit from meditation.

You can try the evidence-based techniques that we have evaluated for yourself by going to www.beyondthemind.com.

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Ramesh Manocha is the author of Silence Your Mind, published by Hachette.

Ramesh Manocha, Senior Lecturer, CADE Clinic, Department of Psychiatry, Sydney Medical School-Northern, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Fwd: Sahaja Yoga Meditation San Diego list: "A meditation goal for 2021?"

Vikram Chandna (Co-Organizer) sent a message to the Sahaja Yoga Meditation San Diego mailing list

A meditation goal for 2021?

Dear Meditation Practitioners and Learners,

 

New Year brings new hopes and noble desires.  Do consider meditation as a goal for 2021 for yourself.

Sahaja Yoga Meditation is always free and founded in 1970 and has grown to be practiced in over 100 countries with help of volunteers like you who lead daily lives as engineers, doctors, accountants, teachers, students etc but at same have established in routine and habit of meditation and apply it to enrich their lives and that of others.

Sahaja Yoga grew with the untiring efforts of the founder Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi and who shared knowledge in simple motherly fashion. Following was shared with respect to New Year.

"Every year comes a new year, and the last year gets completed. For Sahaja Yogis every year is a new year because they stay in present. They stay neither in the future, nor in the past. Every moment for them is a new year, a new hope, a new wave."

 

Link to join:

https://zoom.us/j/9181716151  

 

When to join?

8:45 AM PST

Other time zones- use following to convert

https://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/  

 

We recommend joining by laptop for better experience.
You can join up to 30 minutes before the start of the event if you have some queries or would like some 'one to one' help before the meditation session starts. If you need more help or a nearby mentor, please ask at the end of the session.

Look forward to seeing you. More session information attached for your reference.

For online meditation team

-Vikram

Fwd: [SY-USA] Fwd: New Research Article on Sahaja Yoga

We have the great joy to inform you that a new article on the effects of meditation in Sahaja Yoga has been published on 29-12-2020 in the prestigious scientific magazine Plos One. This research article is a continuation of the one already published, in 2016, about the grey matter in the Sahaja Yogis. The research team was led by our brother Sergio Elias Hernandez, the original article is accessible at the following link:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0237552

By the grace of Shri Mataji, the published results are extraordinarily good, we are talking about the largest published difference in gray matter between healthy groups of similar ages and circumstances. More details in the press release from the Communication Office of the University of La Laguna, attached to this message.

We take this opportunity to convey our congratulations and thanks to all participants, both scientists and volunteers who have made this study possible.