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2014 Wake Up Festival! – early-bird discount thr...

EARLY BIRD PRICING EXTENDED!!!

$200 OFF until May 8th
http://bit.ly/1dumEVN

#WakeUp2014

Join Sounds True authors & teachers for a 5-Day Experience of Transformation at the 2014 Wake Up Festival, August 20 – 24th.

www.WakeUpFestival.com

Watch the latest videos here:
Tami’s Invitation: http://bit.ly/1fauJyN
Presenters http://bit.ly/1eYqvve
Testimonial 1 http://bit.ly/1g9kYqW
Testimonial 2 http://bit.ly/1e1GP0t
Testimonial 3 http://bit.ly/1jKmgH3

Featuring:
k.d. lang
Jack Kornfield
Elizabeth Gilbert
Jill Bolte Taylor
Snatam Kaur
Rick Hanson
Seane Corn
Mark Nepo
Joseph Marshall III
Malidoma Somé
Robert Peng
Tami Simon
And many more!

wufearlybird

Your unlived life is always appearing before you

What is it that you have disowned in yourself? What is it that you will avoid feeling at all costs? What parts of you have you relegated into the shadows?

When you were a little boy or girl it was intelligent to split off from overwhelming experience and pieces of yourself that you could not integrate at the time. But these pieces are looking for you. They only want to show you their light and their wisdom, and be allowed back inside. They will continue to search for you, and will appear as your friends, your children, your emotions, your lovers, your life circumstances, and even in the most precious orange leaves that are looking up at you in the morning.

Look carefully as your unlived life is always appearing before you.

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our most precious San Juan mountains, in the glory of Autumn

 

Digitization – Friend or Foe?

We have an ongoing debate in our house about how digital our world is becoming and whether our increasing digitization is a benefit or a curse. You’ve also likely seen studies about how use of mobile devices is causing us to become disengaged from one-on-one interactions, how 66 percent of people suffer from nomophobia (fear of being without a cell phone), or how “face time” is now better known as an iPhone app than a tangible experience.

As a high school English literature teacher, my husband is very much in the camp of those who are concerned about the potential detriments of digitization. It’s often hard enough to get students to put down their cell phones during one class, much less to get them to read an entire book. And, these trends don’t just start in high school—there are three and four year olds out there who could teach me a few things about iPhones and iPads! While there is no wrong or right answer, this trend has caused many to question the impact that this world of instant gratification and constant connectedness will have on the attention spans of future generations.

As a member of the publishing industry—and a company that is currently forging its way into the digital frontier by way of ebooks, apps, and downloadable everything—and a wife who always loves a good debate, I can’t help but think of all of the benefits that digitization has afforded us. I’m not saying that I disagree with the negative aspects of technology addiction, mind you, but I do believe that the digital world has afforded some profound and unparalleled opportunities that simply cannot be ignored.

For instance, many organizations, such as Now Clinic, allow people to connect with physicians and other medical professionals through the internet and outside of traditional business hours. The National Voices Project has similarly been exploring ways to provide mental health services via Skype to those who would otherwise be unable to access such resources. On a personal level, we’ve been able to remain in constant contact with family and friends all over the world—and we’ve seen their children grow between visits. We’ve partaken in talks and concerts and festivals from across the globe. We’ve accessed mindfulness practices and meditation bells directly from our iPhone apps. We’ve engaged with the teachings of spiritual teachers far and wide (try it for yourself and watch our free Refreshing Our Hearts live stream with Thich Nhat Hanh on 10/26).

Finally, as someone who is currently learning to speak Portuguese, technology has unlocked an invaluable world of tools and resources. I take lessons via Skype from a woman in Lisbon, have an iPhone app that acts as a deck of flashcards (complete with proper pronunciation!), I stream Portuguese radio throughout the day, and there are online communities like The Mixxer designed specifically for people who want to practice speaking new languages with one another via the internet—none of which would exist without the digital world.

The bottom line is that things are always evolving. In fact, change is one of the only constants in our lives, so why not embrace this new frontier with an open heart?  It comes to this: Can we be grateful for it as well as cautious of it?

So, what is your opinion? And, how does technology act as a benefit or a burden in your own life?

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Short on Time? Try Mindfulness

A new study suggests that just 10 minutes of mindfulness meditation changes our experience of time. A great way to learn the practice of mindfulness, requiring no previous experience, is through the groundbreaking new book from Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mindfulness for Beginners, and also through the new online course in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.

From our friends at the Greater Good Science Center

Short on Time? Try Mindfulness

Bogged down with responsibilities at work and at home? Many of us wish we had more time to get it all done—and still steal time to relax.

While adding more hours to our day may not be possible, a recent study suggests a little mindfulness meditation can help us at leastfeel like we have more time in our lives.

Researcher Robin Kramer and his colleagues trained students at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom to link different shapes to either a short and a long period of time. Shapes shown on a computer screen for 400 milliseconds represented a short duration, while shapes shown for 1600 milliseconds represented a long duration. Next, all of the participants were presented with shapes held on the screen for a variety of durations and had to determine whether the duration was more similar to the short or the long period of time.

Half of the participants then listened to a 10-minute mindfulness meditation exercise, which guided them to concentrate on the movement of their breath throughout their body. The other half listened to the audiobook version of The Hobbit for 10 minutes. Immediately afterward, the researchers again presented them with varying durations of time.

The results, published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, show that the meditators were more likely to report that durations of time were “long” after they had meditated. In contrast, participants didn’t report any difference in time duration if they had listened to theHobbit recording. The researchers conclude that mindfulness meditation made participants experience time as passing more slowly. Remarkably, they saw this effect after just a single 10-minute meditation, among participants who had no prior meditation experience.

Though more study is needed to explain this finding, the researchers suspect that the mindfulness meditation altered time perception because it induced people to shift their attention inward. In the paper, the authors write that when people are distracted by a task in the world around them, they have less capacity to pay attention to time passing, and so experience time as moving more quickly. Because the mindfulness meditation exercise cued participants to focus on internal processes such as their breath, that attentional shift may have sharpened their capacity to notice time passing.

Kramer thinks that this finding could be used in everyday situations, to help people gain control over their experience when they feel short on time. “If things feel like they’re running away,” he says, “slowing things down might help you deal with them more easily.”

Kramer also speculates that while a mindfulness exercise that shifts attention to internal events extends one’s experience of time, a mindfulness exercise that shifts attention to an external event could potentially make time feel like it’s passing more quickly. If this were true, mindfulness could have clinical applications for people who feel like time is moving too slowly, such as those experiencing depression, who tend to overestimate the duration of negative events.

Though Greater Good has previously reported on many positive effects of mindfulness, as well as on how experiencing awe can alter how we perceive time, this study is one of the first to investigate the relationship between mindfulness and time perception. In the future, the researchers aim to uncover how long mindfulness meditation’s effects on time perception last, and to explore further the precise causes of this shift in time perception.

bluelakespass

Shaking it Up

Tami Simon speaks with Bradford Keeney, an internationally renowned scholar, therapist, speaker, and teacher. In addition to being the author of several classics in the field of psychotherapy, including Aesthetics of Change and Shaking Medicine, Brad has a deep connection to elders of numerous indigenous cultures and is a recognized spokesperson for the old ways of ecstatic shaking. He is the author of the Sounds True audio learning course Shaking, and the book Shamans of the World. In this episode, Tami has an intriguing and surprising conversation with Brad about being “struck by lightning” on the path to awakening, the value of both arousal and relaxation in our practice, and the vital role of absurdity in our spiritual journey. (55 minutes)

Mainstreaming Meditation

Dan Harris is a correspondent for ABC News, an anchor for Nightline, and a co-anchor for the weekend edition of Good Morning America. After experiencing a panic attack on live television in 2004, Dan turned to mindfulness meditation for help—a journey chronicled in his book Ten Percent Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works—A True Story. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Dan and Tami Simon discuss his previous skepticism of meditation and how the practice has a branding problem among a generation raised in “the Age of Irony.” They also talk about how Dan deals differently with the world since taking up meditation. Finally, Dan and Tami speak on the real, quantifiable benefits of a regular mindfulness practice. (57 minutes)

Photo Credit Ida Mae Astute/ABC

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