Music for Relaxation

Medwynn Goodall – Palace of Dreams

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Meditation And The Brain

Is it possible to teach yourself to be more compassionate? A study whose results came out in 2008 makes just that seem possible. The research was done at University of Wisconsin-Madison. This study employed functional magnetic resonance imaging. This imaging suggested that emotions like compassion could be learned.

The scans showed that the brain circuits that detect emotion were extensively increased in people that had meditated for many years. The director of the study, Richard Davidson, said that basically everyone could find meditation useful for depression, to stop being a bully or for other emotional reasons. Davidson is a professor of psychiatry and psychology.

The researchers have a continuing study going on of some Tibetan monks and lay adherents and this particular researcher is an arm of that work. The people studied have to have at least 10,000 hours of meditation practice under their belts. This particular study included 16 monks that have developed compassion meditation practices. It also involved 16 controls that learned compassion meditation for two weeks prior to the study.

They requested that the controls focus on feeling compassion for their loved ones. When they had gained a little practice they asked them to cultivate the feeling of compassion towards people in general. The scans showed an increase in the activity of the insula, which is part of the frontal brain that is important in detecting feelings. It helps to map the body’s reaction to feelings like blood pressure and heart rate.
In 2006 researchers at Harvard, Yale and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discovered the initial evidence that meditation can change the brain’s structure. They did brain scans that showed that the part of the brain that handles attention, focusing, and sensory input was larger than normal in meditators with a lot of experience.

One part of the gray matter that was thicker was in a section where it becomes thinner with aging, but it was thicker in the older meditators. Sara Lazar, the studies leader stated, “Our data suggest that meditation practice can promote cortical plasticity in adults in areas important for cognitive and emotional processing and well-being.” (Harvard Gazette, William J. Cromie)

It is interesting to not that she said “These findings are consistent with other studies that demonstrated increased thickness of music areas in the brains of musicians, and visual and motor areas in the brains of jugglers. In other words, the structure of an adult brain can change in response to repeated practice.” (Harvard Gazette, William J. Cromie)
The comparison was made between 20 seasoned meditators and 15 people that didn’t meditate. Some of the mediators had practiced for years and others only about a year.

It is amazing to find that the brain actually increases gray matter when people meditate, especially for decades. It is also fascinating to learn that brain activity increases when people are concentrating on compassion, but more so that compassion can be cultivated.

We are just starting to understand what meditation can do and how adaptable to the brain is and the wonders of the brain and meditation are yet to be fully discovered.

About the Author
Jane Michael is the head writer at the Center for Meditation. Brain and mental exercises are her practice and her passion. Goals of Meditation is a great way to start your life and patience.Read some of her articles about other amazing brain practices here.

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The effects of Subliminal sound vibrations are profound!

I have meditated for 20 plus years, and knowing that it keeps me grounded and serves as my gratitude time to the higher power, God, higher self, whatever you want to call it.

I have studied and practiced different types of mediation over the years. Starting with, one of the techniques of focusing on my body, from head to toe with ever so relaxing music to total silence. I have used the candle focusing technique. Which, I feel works great for the visual focus technique. When you find the right practice or technique that works for you, it becomes easier and easier to meditate.

I think sometimes, my quiet time is just great for reading selected scripture and other spiritual profound words and contemplate those words. With all the negative and tragic events that bombard our minds, eyes and ears every day, it is so vital, in keeping our balance mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. I believe it is and must be a part of everyday living, like exercising and eating healthy. It should become an automatic behavior like breathing.

I feel that, it is that important for all or us to do this to keep our reality and peace of mind and body. We only live once on this earth. To my knowledge and don’t you want to be happy, healthy and joyful? Life is too short, to spoil and corrupt it with perpetual negative and unhealthy habits.

I am acknowledging how meditation is absolutely, necessary for our well being, and I have found an added bonus that assists us further in this process, with my research. There has been a huge amount of research done on how subliminal music and sounds affects our conscious and subconscious mind. I think we all need stress reduction in our lives, whether you live in the urban, suburban or rural place.

The news and internet blasts more than enough negative and bad images and messages to us every day. We all need more tools and ways to circumvent these detrimental influences in our everyday lives. My research has uncovered another approach that I find is extraordinary in facilitating in our stress release. This technique reaches the waves and currents in the brain. It assists the engineering of how we feel about certain activities and thoughts and satisfies the calming and tranquility that we all want to feel.

The music on these CD’s are created for many applications of what you want to accomplish relaxation and energy. I love the tranquil music CD. I felt calm and peaceful after listening. I listen to it as much as I need to. The only way you can experience this feeling is to try it for yourself.

Thank you for reading ! If you want more information and have comments on this subject, please contact me @ Cheryl Scheurer – http://www.secrets2thebesthealthandfinancialwellness.com Copyright 2009

About the Author
Cheryl has been in the Business world in the corporate and entrepreneurial environment for 30 years. She holds an MBA in Finance and is a Universal Life Minister. She is finishing her first book – Open at the Top. She has been a single Mom for 20 years. Her writing is intellectually spiritual from the heart and mind.

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Music Therapy: 8 Ways to Enjoy Your Healing

If you’re suffering anxiety and stress, know that you are not alone. With the financial crisis going on a global scale, plus, the onset of the flu pandemic, we can only worry more. There are so many pain relievers out there that will take out the pain from migraine. What an instant relief, and before we know it – we become addicted to these little miracle pills.

Surely, there are many alternative ways in feeling much better and becoming healthier: from healthy diets, exercises, meditation techniques, aromatherapy, to the very music you listen to. Healing from music may be frowned at by some people who have an innate dislike for classical masterpieces like those of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and many others.

There are innovative ways in getting relief from music therapy. In fact, modern sound therapy is not only relaxing, but it is infused with alpha wave frequencies that are simply soothing. You may not hear it, but your brains can feel it. As defined by the American Music Therapy Association, Music Therapy is an established healthcare profession that uses music to address physical, emotional, cognitive, and social needs of individuals of all ages. Music therapy improves the quality of life for persons who are well and meets the needs of children and adults with disabilities or illnesses.
Music doesn’t only heighten your senses, but it can help your mind focus and stay sharp. Rhythm has a calming effect that can promote relaxation and healing, down to the cellular level. When you’re worry-free, your body feels like floating in cloud nine. Such wonderful positive feeling is a gift that you can enjoy.

Here are Tips on How to Get the Most Out of Your Music Therapy:

1. Choose the right music that makes you feel calm and make sure you will love listening to it.
2. Play music that will gradually lift up your spirits, especially when you’re feeling depressed.
3. You can choose inspirational or motivational music with a speaker who is guiding you on how to reach a deep state of relaxation.
4. Make sure you’re well-prepared to listen. This means you are in a comfortable place and clothing, minus the outside distraction.
5. Listen – without Interruption!
6. Don’t just listen to the music, but feel it. Let the sound fill the very core of your being. Imagine energy filling you with each beat, reaching your very cells, healing every damage.
7. Pause and bask in moments of silence after having listened to a great piece.
8. Keep an inspirational journal where you can write your thoughts and feelings after a profound, relaxing session with sound.

Always remember that when you feel good, your body will feel the same. Let the power of music heal you from within.
Love Music… Love Health..

About the Author
by issa
Passion to live life to the max have made me want to spread the word on healthy living… besides, living life to the fullest is all about getting your dreams and sharing it with your loved ones, and making sure you have all that energy in keeping fit for that tough ride we call LIFE.
Your Key to Natural Health: www.co-creatinghealth.com

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Kundalini music in yoga paradise

Waves lapped against the gentle beach in the darkness as I listened deeply to the ocean, and the lingering exhalations of the other sixty people around me. The moon was rising over the water behind Snatam Kaur, GuruGanesha Singh and Manish Vyas, who watched us silently with light in their eyes as the music slowly faded. They had just finished leading another evening of beautiful kirtan (call and response singing) during their sacred chant retreat in Mexico.

After a few moments, Manish gently broke the silence, “Listen to the waves, and then listen to the space between the waves. Find yourself in that space.” This is where the kirtan had carried us, to this space, this deep silence between the waves. As Manish spoke to us, I could still feel the mantra coursing through my bloodstream with each heartbeat, Snatam’s voice carrying on into the silence. I felt such a sense of joy, my heart wanted to burst.

I looked around and saw my emotions mirrored in the expressions of the people surrounding me. And suddenly, there was no space between the person next to me and me. We became so deeply connected by that shared experience, that there was an intimacy created beyond explanation. I did not know these people before we arrived at this kirtan event, but we left as family.

This experience of deep connectedness and community is being expressed by people attending kirtan gatherings and concerts all over the world. For many, kirtan has become their favorite practice of devotion, but for some, kirtan is a completely new experience. The idea of chanting in a group is completely foreign to them.

Akasha, a yoga teacher in Birmingham, Alabama, went to a David Newman (a.k.a. Durga Das) concert earlier this month. “I brought a bunch of my students to the concert,” he said. “They all had strong physical Yoga practices, but had never been to a kirtan event before. We don’t get kirtan artists touring through Birmingham. There were some people who came who had never chanted in their lives. Half-way through the night, I saw them rocking back and forth with their eyes closed, singing their hearts out.

My students said that they felt electric afterwards. The experience of devotion towards oneness and towards each other was so strong. It didn’t matter if you could sing or not, everyone was chanting along.” And that’s the thing about kirtan; we are carried by the group energy to an exciting exploration into whom and what we are.

Kirtan is a new kind of concert experience here in the West. It’s not so much a performance as a journey into the self through the practice of listening and singing. And while there might be leaders at a kirtan concert, everyone is a part of the music. In kirtan, everyone sings. Snatam Kaur calls her concerts “coformances” rather than performances because she says the audience is an equal part of the music.

Kirtan is a practice that started in India thousands of years ago, but in the last decade has become a phenomenon across the United States and has transformed musically to appeal to the ears of American audiences. Two recent books chronicle this movement and interview and track the evolution of some of the most popular kirtan musicians including Krishna Das, Deva Premal, Bhagavan Das, Snatam Kaur, Ragani, Jau Uttal, Dave Stringer and Wah! Linda Johnsen, author of Daughter of the Goddess and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hinduism, recently released a book called Kirtan! Chanting as a Spiritual Path and Journal of Vaishnava Studies editor Steve Rosen’s (Satyaraja Dasa) The Yoga of Kirtan also includes an audio CD of the music.

There is a theme that runs through the unique stories I hear from people who attend all of these various musicians’ kirtan events. People feel like they become a part of something bigger than themselves. Even after having gone to kirtans for years, I will sometimes find myself in the midst of an entirely new energy at a kirtan concert. The first time I saw Dave Stringer perform, I was seriously blown away by it. It was a packed house, and he carried us with him in the progressively building nature that is the trademark of kirtan.

In addition to the deeply peaceful feel of some of the kirtan concerts I had been to, at Dave’s I got up to sing and dance at the back of the room with a group of strangers – and through that experience, we really connected. It was such a different experience of kirtan for me that I realized I wanted to experience them all. I wanted to feel the uniqueness that each kirtan artist brings to the group.
It didn’t matter if you could sing or not, everyone was chanting along. And that’s the thing about kirtan; we are carried by the group energy to an exciting exploration into whom and what we are.

I asked Hargobind, my business partner, about Krishna Das’ last concert. “Krishna Das is hilarious,” he said. “He tells these hysterical stories about India and his Guru and chanting. Through his humor and stories, you feel connected to him, like he’s just a guy you might hang out with. And then he starts singing, and his chants are so rich and upbeat and simple, that you feel relaxed and comfortable enough to join in, and so energized once you start chanting that you are really pulled into it. So you chant, even if you didn’t expect to.”

For a lot of people, this unique experience of feeling comfortable singing in public is in itself a feat. Our western sensibilities have been so tuned to the performance aspect of singing that the act of singing is accompanied by fear. Overcoming this fear alone can be life-changing. And once the fear disappears, the practice of chanting as a group brings with it layers of transformation that unfold the more we chant.

GuruGanesha Singh, a touring kirtan artist and an accomplished guitarist says, “In chanting, there are no bad sounds. In Kirtan, everyone’s voice is nectar.” While sitting in the audience at a kirtan concert, singing along, you can really experience just that: your own voice becomes as beautiful as the performers’. All of the voices merge together to become one voice.

When I asked Mahan Rishi, who has been organizing many kirtan concerts over the last few years in Philadelphia about this experience of community at the events, he said, “Kirtan concerts evoke a sublime, beautiful sense of heart. The kirtan environment creates softness where people can let go and feel a part of a mass flow of compassion. In the 1970s, I went to a Neil Young concert at Madison Square Garden. Neil Young walked off the stage in the middle of the concert and announced, ‘The Vietnam War is over.’ This wave of love went through the stadium. Kirtan is like that. People feel love within themselves that is universal and open when they chant. And the kirtan environment feels so safe and caring that they feel free enough to share it.”

“Each musician holds a different energy. They help to infuse something unique through their own way of chanting,” he continued. “Deva Premal and Miten hold an amazing energy. They know how to really create that inner dance between themselves and the community. There is such a depth that comes from them that it allows people to really connect with the profoundly soulful part of their heart. They combine that with a playfulness that gives it a universality that emanates from their music. Their concert in Philadelphia was unbelievable. We all felt it for weeks afterwards. So many people reached out to us feeling so moved by the event that they wanted to carry that connection forward.”

“The real reason I do these concerts is for Philadelphia: to help build the community consciousness. The kirtan events connect the Yoga centers and the Yoga students and create community in ways that nothing else does. They dissolve the boundaries that can’t be dissolved in other ways.

The chanting blends the different Yoga traditions as well and has brought a lot of people beyond the separateness to a much greater state of harmony.” Listening to him, I realized that what kirtan does for the individual, it can also do for groups, bringing communities together.

Manish Vyas, who grew up in India studying classical Indian music, says, “Kirtan in India is a very ancient spiritual phenomenon. It was known as a layman’s way of connecting to the divine. Not everyone is a scholar or has had a chance to practice a path, so the simple men and women had kirtan as a tool to dissolve and merge with the divine.

My teacher, Osho, said that kirtan is one of the simplest and most powerful techniques of meditation. It is so effortless and joyful at the same time that the kirtan participants just have to allow the music and rhythm to take over and simply flow with it. What happens next is a huge whirlpool of energy generating from the phenomenon of group singing and dancing. And in a group, one’s separation from the other dissolves. In that space, one is finally ONE, even for a few moments. We use so many methods and techniques to find this union, and through kirtan, it is accessible effortlessly.”

That is the amazing thing about the group chanting experience. It just happens. You feel your voice emerge almost without intent. And it feels perfect.

Markus Sieber, who is half of the band Mirabai Ceiba, says, “Chanting can be like a light in the darkness. You can sing for your pain, for your sadness, and it can transform you. Singing and playing music together is a way of subtle communication beyond words.” When you hear Mirabai Ceiba in concert, you feel all of those things and more. You are sharing those songs of longing with everyone around you and breaking through to a new place together.

Valerie Ortiz, who saw Snatam Kaur’s concert in Virginia last year said, “Snatam’s concerts just open your heart wide open. And then all you are is love.” And in a room full of people, that love has plenty of places to land.

Karan Khalsa is devoted to sharing sacred music and technology through her writing and her business, Spirit Voyage: spiritvoyage.com

About the Author
Karan Khalsa is the CEO of Spirit Voyage Records which is engaged in yoga music and healing meditations . The company practices various forms of Kundalini Yoga and meditation music.

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