Meditation Archives - Page 18 of 27

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The Meditation Experience – a free online course

Sounds True — April 29, 2014

Have you been curious about meditation and how it helps to reduce stress and anxiety? Or how it might help you to relax, sleep better, or improve your relationships? Or how it has been shown to stimulate healing of mind and body, and bring about profound new levels of joy, peace, and well-being?

Though you may have often heard of the many benefits of meditation, perhaps you’ve not had the time or resources to learn more and to actually start a meditation practice of your own. Or even if you’ve dabbled a bit in meditation, perhaps you did not have the support to continue or to find a meditation practice suitable for you and your unique approach to life?

If any of this sounds familiar, we’d like to welcome you to The Meditation Experience, a free, eight-part online course designed for those new to meditation, as well as for those with some experience who are looking to deepen their practice or learn about other kinds of meditation. The goal of our course is to help you start meditating right away and to teach you a variety of meditation practices, so that you may experience for yourself the profound benefits of meditation in your daily life.

In addition to written material, questions for reflection, and weekly homework, each session of our course will include one or more guided meditations on audio or video, allowing the course material to come alive in your own personal experience.

*Access The Meditation Experience, a free online course, here*

The Meditation Experience was created to help you learn to meditate right now, and you can join the many millions around the planet whose lives have been radically transformed through learning the inner art of meditation.

The practice of meditation has been used for thousands of years by people in all cultures and of all religions (or no religious inclination at all) to reduce stress, to bring about relaxation, and to experience expanded states of consciousness and well-being. You need not have any background in spirituality, prayer, or religion to benefit from the practice of meditation, nor take on any new beliefs or ideologies. Meditation is a scientifically proven technique that can be applied by anyone, regardless of their religious or spiritual affiliations. Begin your own exploration of this revered art today, with The Meditation Experience.

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Noah Levine’s Revolution of Kindness

Noah Levine — April 10, 2014

Noah Levine is someone whose name I was familiar with long before I had the opportunity to record with him last fall in Los Angeles. I’d been intrigued by his story. He was someone from my own generation, 20 or 30 years younger than the most prominent American-born Buddhist teachers. He had a punk sensibility and a made-for-movies backstory of anguished teen years filled with drug use, incarceration, and suicide attempts—all chronicled in his first book Dharma Punx.

Through Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, which he founded, Noah has worked to bring the dharma to inner city youths, prisoners, and many others. With his shaved head and tattooed torso featuring a giant OM symbol over the heart, he seemed like the quintessential outsider.

Yes, he was also an insider, inheriting a rich lineage through his father, Stephen Levine and his teacher Jack Kornfield. As I headed west for our recording, I wondered how those two strands would weave together.

Effortlessly, as it turns out. Noah’s desire to make the tools of meditation available to all certainly stems from his own experience as an outsider, and the sense of rebellion that fueled his teen years has not diminished—but now it’s turned inward, toward an inner revolution whose goal is ultimate freedom.

His teachings—especially on lovingkindness practice and what he terms “kind awareness”—fall squarely within the tradition, but have a flavor and energy that I find really resonate for me.

My usual meditation practice, such as it is, is simply to sit and see what arises. The more formal structure of lovingkindness practice took me a little while to get used to, but, while editing the program I recorded with Noah last fall—Kind Awareness: Guided Meditations for an Inner Revolution—I took time to work with all the guided practices, and I found them to be extraordinarily powerful.

In particular, I was moved by the practice of asking for forgiveness from those I’ve harmed, and in turning compassionate acceptance toward myself. Doing so, I discovered a tenderness just beneath the surface—one that, when I softened, brought me to a new sense of openness and quietude. If you haven’t done a guided lovingkindness practice recently, give it a try—especially if you ever find your meditation practice becoming dry or detached. There’s an emotional sweetness to be found here—right on the other side of our vulnerability.

Footsteps of Buddha, United States, 2005

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Relieve Anxiety and Depression – a free audio do...

Sounds True — April 8, 2014

Millions around the world suffer from anxiety and depression, and seek relief from the many challenges associated with these difficult conditions. Over the last few decades, both scientific research and clinical reports have pointed to the power of meditation to lessen the challenging symptoms of anxiety and depression, and to aid living a more healthy, productive, and stress-free life.

With this collection of seven guided meditations, Sounds True brings together seven respected psychiatrists, psychologists, and bestselling authors who offer exercises designed to help bring immediate—and potentially lasting—relief from the troubling symptoms of anxiety and depression. Each of these guided exercises can be undertaken in the comfort of your own home, and require no prerequisite knowledge or training.

Receive free access to Relieve Anxiety and Depression: Seven Guided Meditations; simply select the format (“Audio Download”) and click “Add to Cart”. From there, click on your shopping cart in the top right corner, enter your details (no credit card information needed), and this product will be delivered to your Digital Library!

Tracks include:

1. “Soft Belly Meditation” with James Gordon, MD

The author of Freedom from Depression speaks about the role of meditation in the treatment of depression and leads a guided practice for balancing the emotions, body, and spirit.

2. “Body Scan” with Erin Olivo, PhD, MPH

Dr. Erin Olivo, psychotherapist and author of Free Yourself from Anxiety presents a guided body-scan exercise to reduce anxiety and open us to the wisdom of the body.

3. “Guided Relaxation Visualization” with Mark Hyman, MD

The bestselling author and co-medical director at Canyon Ranch in the Berkshires Health Resort in Lenox, Massachusetts, shares a guided relaxation visualization designed to reduce anxiety, lower stress, and cultivate deep relaxation in both body and mind. Excerpted from the audio learning program UltraCalm.

4. “Guided Mindfulness Meditation” with Daniel J. Siegel, MD

Psychiatrist Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, author of The Mindful Brain, offers a guided mindfulness meditation to help bring us into the present moment, thereby allowing us to access a natural and creative healing response to whatever distressing symptoms arise in our lives.

5. “Coming Home to Happiness” with Rick Hanson, PhD

The next guided meditation is from Dr. Rick Hanson, neuropsychologist, bestselling author, and creator of the audio program Meditations for Happiness. Here, Dr. Hanson teaches a guided meditation to help us access our “true home,” finding rest and acceptance in whatever comes our way.

6. “A Pause for Presence” with Tara Brach, PhD

Clinical psychologist and bestselling author of the audio learning series Radical Self-Acceptance Tara Brach teaches us a way to pause in our daily lives, ground ourselves, and start fresh in the midst of any difficult situation.

7. “Healing Lake Meditation” with Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD

The founder and director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and bestselling author of Mindfulness for Beginners guides us through what he calls the “healing lake meditation” to relieve anxiety and stress, helping us contact a place of deep relaxation within that is available at any time.

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The Future is a Thought, with Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle — March 25, 2014

One of the great gifts a spiritual teacher can offer is to shine a new light upon beliefs we take for granted. In this short video teaching, excerpted from Creating a New Earth: The Best of Eckhart Tolle TV Season 1, Eckhart Tolle examines our idea of the future. We spend a lot of time thinking about it, planning for it, and worrying about it . . . yet is the future really what we believe it is?

With plain-spoken wisdom and gentle humor, Eckhart offers the seed of a deeply radical idea—one that could transform the way we relate to the future, the past, and the present moment.

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Do One Thing More Consciously, with Caroline Myss

Caroline Myss — March 20, 2014

Does transformation have to be a complete life makeover? Do you have to radically alter everything you do in the search for authentic spirituality? Caroline Myss says that the opposite is true.

In this short teaching, Caroline offers a way that you can take just one minute to make a profound change in your life—and deepen your connection to an essential part of who you are.

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The Truth of Our Existence – with Pema Chödrön

Pema Chödrön — March 13, 2014

Friends, we are very happy to be releasing this new collection of teachings from Pema Chödrön entitled The Truth of Our Existence: Four Teachings from the Buddha to Illuminate Your Life.

What would happen if we looked with fresh eyes at the struggles and “impossible situations” that we face every day—and found there four gifts that changed everything?

For decades, Pema Chödrön has brought clarity and heart to the core teachings of the Buddha, helping to make them relevant and useful in our everyday lives. With The Truth of Our Existence, she immerses us in one of Buddhism’s essential distillations of written wisdom known as The Four Marks of Existence. These marks that shape all of us, teaches Pema, are like forgotten gifts waiting to be found. And while they may ring familiar to some, they hold vast layers of often unrealized understanding to both new and seasoned ears alike.

Please enjoy a free video teaching from Pema on Embracing Intensity, a core teaching how we can turn towards even the most difficult experiences in our lives—and how these experiences can serve as the doorway to our awakening.

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Category: Meditation

The Meditation Experience – a free online course

Noah Levine’s Revolution of Kindness

Relieve Anxiety and Depression – a free audio do...

The Future is a Thought, with Eckhart Tolle

Do One Thing More Consciously, with Caroline Myss

The Truth of Our Existence – with Pema Chödrön

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