Heal Thyself : Meditate

Written by ::seeward::. Posted in Integral Life

[from New Scientist]
Monks have been meditating on mountaintops for millennia, hoping to gain spiritual enlightenment. Their efforts have probably enhanced their physical health, too.

Trials looking at the effects of meditation have mostly been small, but they have suggested a range of benefits. There is some evidence that meditation boosts the immune response in vaccine recipients and people with cancer, protects against a relapse in major depression, soothes skin conditions and even slows the progression of HIV.

Meditation might even slow the ageing process. Telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes, get shorter every time a cell divides and so play a role in ageing. Clifford Saron of the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, and colleagues recently showed that levels of an enzyme that builds up telomeres were higher in people who attended a three-month meditation retreat than in a control group (Psychoneuroendocrinology, vol 36, p 664).

As with social interaction, meditation probably works largely by influencing stress response pathways. People who meditate have lower cortisol levels, and one study showed they have changes in their amygdala, a brain area involved in fear and the response to threat (Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, vol 5, p 11).

One of the co-authors of Saron's study, Elissa Epel, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, believes that meditation may also boost "pathways of restoration and health enhancement", perhaps by triggering a release of growth and sex hormones.

If you don't have time for a three-month retreat, don't worry. Imaging studies show that meditation can cause structural changes in the brain after as little as 11 hours of training. Epel suggests fitting in short "mini-meditations" throughout the day, taking a few minutes at your desk to focus on your breathing, for example: "Little moments here and there all matter."

Attention as an Art Form

Written by ::seeward::. Posted in Integral Life

[from Daily Good] 185 billion bits of information. In an average lifetime, this is what the human brain is capable of processing; according to the famous psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: "It is out of this total that everything in our life must come -- every thought, memory, feeling or action. It seems like a huge amount, but in reality it does not go that far." With any limited resource, the fact that it's in short supply can quickly create a feeling of scarcity. But it can also snap us back to attention and foster wise use. In what "Time Magazine" dubbed as one of the best commencement speeches ever, the late author, David Foster Wallace, went as far as to say that honing this skill is the truest purpose of education. He said that "learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to, and to choose how you construct meaning from experience." It comes down to working with the core property of human experience -- attention, which can be broken down into four key aspects:

1. Awareness: As I sit here, I see the wind rustling through the leaves, remember a pleasant memory of camping in the woods, hear the faint sounds of jazz music float in from next door and feel the slight tension in my hamstring ease. All of these things are happening simultaneously. To some extent, I'm aware of them, but when I consciously tune into them, more things keep bubbling up. In a sense, my experience in any moment is totally defined by my level of awareness. "The unconscious parts of the mind are most of the mind," David Brooks writes in his book "Social Animal." "[And these parts have] a processing capacity 200,000 times greater than the conscious mind." That line between conscious and sub-conscious isn't fixed. By sharpening my ability to notice all that is happening around and within me, I can make more and more things conscious. This sharpening is like using a muscle -- the more I use it, the stronger it grows. 
2. Choice: With the things I am conscious of, am I actually taking them into meaningful account, learning from them and willing to make more informed decisions based on them? Attention is part intention and part habit. We tend to think of freedom as being the ability to choose our actions, but at a subtler level it's about choosing what we pay attention to and how. The trick is to maintain a cool and fluid objectivity that allows us to move on from moment to moment, without getting bogged down by any aspect of our experience. So on the one hand, a conscious cultivation of awareness results in heightened perception, but then we also recognize that we have the ability to both engage with something or seamlessly move on. As the movie "Waking Life" suggests, "The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure, while always arriving."
3. Engagement: Paradoxically, the more consciously our attention can flow unimpeded, the deeper our ability to engage, since we're no longer compelled by the siren song of distraction. Microsoft Ex-Vice President, Linda Stone, coined the term "continuous partial attention," referring to a state in which we constantly and impulsively fragment our attention. In this state of fragmentation, we gain breadth at the cost of depth, and trade in quality for quantity.  But we can flip the pattern at any time. As we invest more fully in our present experience, we move from a passive interest to an active curiosity to full engagement and finally to enchantment. We've breathed magic into everyday moments, realizing that, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, "To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts."
4. Flow: Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Once we are aware, have explicitly made a choice to tune in meaningfully and have infused a fullness into the experience, we can actually string together a bunch of such moments. As activist Lynne Twist says, "what we appreciate, appreciates" -- so the more we concentrate on something, the more it expands in our consciousness. Take a simple example of listening to a friend. Just by continuously pouring our attention into that experience, I perceive the words more richly, I see her reality more clearly, and consequently can interact in the conversation more effectively. So this continuity of attention allows me to more deeply experience and value what is already in front of me, and immerse myself into the actual flow of reality.

Every moment affords an opportunity to start paying attention, and as I do, I realize its gift. First and foremost, it is a gift to my own self, bringing me back to a place of inner alignment. Then, as I start to benefit from it, I can gift it to others. And finally, it is a gift that takes me beyond my own limited notions of identity and self-interest.

It can all begin right now, just with an intention to be aware. That increased awareness opens up windows of choice, and as I start to make more informed choices, I deepen the quality of my experience. In making this a continuous effort, I evolve from unconscious processing, to subconscious registering, to conscious awareness, to engaged learning; or, from data to information to knowledge to wisdom. Instead of just going with the flow, I can actually grow with the flow.

25 Reasons Criticism is Good for You

Written by ::seeward::. Posted in Integral Life



[from dailygood] “Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” ~Aristotle

At the end of the day, when I feel completely exhausted, oftentimes it has nothing to do with all the things I’ve done.

It’s not a consequence of juggling multiple responsibilities and projects. It’s not my body’s way of punishing me for becoming a late-life jogger after a period of cardiovascular laziness. It’s not even about getting too little sleep.

When I’m exhausted, you can be sure I’ve bent over backwards trying to win everyone’s approval. I’ve obsessed over what people think of me, I’ve assigned speculative and usually inaccurate meanings to feedback I’ve received, and I’ve lost myself in negative thoughts about criticism and its merit.

I work at minimizing this type of behavior—and I’ve had success for the most part—but admittedly it’s not easy.

I remember back in college, taking a summer acting class, when I actually made the people around me uncomfortable with my defensiveness. This one time, the teacher was giving me feedback after a scene in front of the whole class. She couldn’t get through a single sentence without me offering some type of argument.

After a couple minutes of verbal sparring, one of my peers actually said, “Stop talking. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Looking back, I cut myself a little slack. You’re vulnerable in the spotlight and the student’s reaction was kind of harsh. But I know I needed to hear it. Because I was desperately afraid of being judged, I took everything, from everyone as condemnation.

I realize criticism doesn’t always come gently from someone legitimately trying to help. A lot of the feedback we receive is unsolicited and doesn’t come from teachers—or maybe all of it does.

We can’t control what other people will say to us, whether they’ll approve or form opinions and share them. But we can control how we internalize it, respond to it, and learn from it, and when we release it and move on.

If you’ve been having a hard time dealing with criticism lately, it may help to remember the following:

The Benefits of Criticism:

Personal Growth

1. Looking for seeds of truth in criticism encourages humility. It’s not easy to take an honest look at yourself and your weaknesses, but you can only grow if you’re willing to try.

2. Learning from criticism allows you to improve. Almost every critique gives you a tool to more effectively create the tomorrow you visualize.

3. Criticism opens you up to new perspectives and new ideas you may not have considered. Whenever someone challenges you, they help expand your thinking.

4. Your critics give you an opportunity to practice active listening. This means you resist the urge to analyze in your head, planning your rebuttal, and simply consider what the other person is saying.

5. You have the chance to practice forgiveness when you come up against harsh critics. Most of us carry around stress and frustration that we unintentionally misdirect from time to time.

Emotional Benefits

6. It’s helpful to learn how to sit with the discomfort of an initial emotional reaction instead of immediately acting or retaliating. All too often we want to do something with our feelings—generally not a great idea!

7. Criticism gives you the chance to foster problem solving skills, which isn’t always easy when you’re feeling sensitive, self-critical, or annoyed with your critic.

8. Receiving criticism that hits a sensitive spot helps you explore unresolved issues.Maybe you’re sensitive about your intelligence because you’re holding onto something someone said to you years ago—something you need to release.

9. Interpreting someone else’s feedback is an opportunity for rational thinking—sometimes, despite a negative tone, criticism is incredibly useful.

10. Criticism encourages you to question your instinctive associations and feelings; praise is good, criticism is bad. If we recondition ourselves to see things in less black and white terms, there’s no stop to how far we can go!

Improved Relationships 11. Criticism presents an opportunity to choose peace over conflict. Oftentimes, when criticized our instinct is to fight, creating unnecessary drama. The people around us generally want to help us, not judge us.

12. Fielding criticism well helps you mitigate the need to be right. Nothing closes an open mind like ego—bad for your personal growth, and damaging for relationships.

13. Your critics give you an opportunity to challenge any people-pleasing tendencies.Relationships based on a constant need for approval can be draining for everyone involved. It’s liberating to let people think whatever they want—they’re going to do it anyway.

14. Criticism gives you the chance to teach people how to treat you. If someone delivers it poorly, you can take this opportunity to tell them, “I think you make some valid points, but I would receive them better if you didn’t raise your voice.”

15. Certain pieces of criticism teach you not to sweat the small stuff. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter that your boyfriend thinks you load the dishwasher “wrong.”

Time Efficiency

16. The more time you spend dwelling about what someone said, the less time you have to do something with it.

17. If you improve how you operate after receiving criticism, this will save time and energy in the future. When you think about from that perspective—criticism as a time saver—it’s hard not to appreciate it!

18. Fostering the ability to let go of your feelings and thoughts about being critiqued can help you let go in other areas of your life. Letting go of worries, regrets, stresses, fears, and even positive feelings helps you root yourself in the present moment. Mindfulness is always the most efficient use of time.

19. Criticism reinforces the power of personal space. Taking 10 minutes to process your emotions, perhaps by writing in a journal, will ensure you respond well. And responding the well the first time prevents one critical comment from dominating your day.

20. In some cases, criticism teaches you how to interact with a person, if they’re negative or hostile, for example. Knowing this can save you a lot of time and stress in the future.

Self Confidence

21. Learning to receive false criticism—feedback that has no constructive value—without losing your confidence is a must if you want to do big things in life. The more attention your work receives, the more criticism you’ll have to field.

22. When someone criticizes you, it shines a light on your own insecurities. If you secretly agree that you’re lazy, you should get to the root of that. Why do you believe that—and what can you do about it?

23. Learning to move forward after criticism, even if you don’t feel incredibly confident, ensures no isolated comment prevents you from seizing your dreams.Think of it as separating the wheat from the chaff; takes what’s useful, leave the rest, and keep going!

24. When someone else appraises your harshly, you have an opportunity to monitor your internal self-talk. Research indicates up to 80% of our thoughts are negative. Take this opportunity to monitor and change your thought processes so you don’t drain and sabotage yourself!

25. Receiving feedback well reminds you it’s OK to have flaws—imperfection is part of being human. If you can admit weakness and work on them without getting down on yourself, you’ll experience far more happiness, peace, enjoyment, and success.

We are all perfectly imperfect, and other people may notice that from time to time. We may even notice in it each other. Somehow accepting that is a huge weight off my mind.