ABC of Meditation News Feed

Meditation Help for Alcohol Addiction

The Bright Path Ishayas were able to offer their teaching and meditation practices to alcohol addiction patients, teaching them to find peace from within instead of turning to liquor. Through the Bright Path, alcohol addicted people are able to find a solution they have never tried before, a series of mental techniques called Ascension Attitudes.

The Bright Path Ishayas teach using the Ascension Attitudes, which are teaching truths based on praise, gratitude and love. Because alcohol addicts typically turn to liquor to help them through every situation, introducing an alternative method of help seemed to ensure a �new solution,' and renewal in their lives. The Ascension Attitudes are deeply rooted in finding a cure within one's self, and the meditative practices can be practiced with one's eyes opened, or closed. This means alcohol addicts can have a new help as they carry on with daily activities, turning to meditation instead of liquor to help with their problems.

"We are very happy to introduce our Ascension Attitudes techniques to those addicted to alcohol,� said The Bright Path. "We feel confident that addicts who are struggling to keep from the bottle can turn to the teaching of The Bright Path Ishayas and ultimately find a cure, as they search deeper within themselves to find help.�

Since the Bright Path teaches attitudes of peace, love, gratitude and compassion, alcoholics can turn to the Ascension Attitudes to find a cure to their addiction. The Bright Path helps alcohol addicts begin the road to recovery, by connecting them with their inner selves to find help and peace.

About The Bright Path Ishayas

The Bright Path Ishayas are a group of people dedicated to increased peace and joy in the world. Their mechanical meditation techniques are based on praise, gratitude and love, found from teaching truths called the Ascension Attitudes. The meditation is simple, effective and easy enough for anyone to do, without a religion. The Bright Path offers techniques that allow participants to move beyond the chaos of the mind and into an experience of everlasting peace and joy within. For more information, visit www.thebrightpath.com.

Change The World with Positive Music, Healthy Life

The Feel Good Music Project (FGMP) is a non-profit musical tour and compilation CD from 10 up and coming positive music artists, which aims to change the lives of thousands of at risk youth with positive music and healthy lifestyle choices including yoga, fitness and healthy food. FGMP is the brain child of musician and yoga instructor Chad Scott from San Diego California who has brought together 10 music artists who will perform in a 20 date live music tour called the Feel Good Festival and release a compilation CD that will be sold to the public and donated to at risk youth programs like the Boys & Girls Club of America and United Roots Oakland. Artists include Chad Scott, Steve Gold, Avasa & Matty Love, Summer Mencher, Todd Herzog, Singing Bear, Inner Prisms, Larisa Stowe & Shakti Tribe, Ash Ruiz of Here II Here and Earth Amplified.

Why Feel Good Music Project?
According to The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine "the average teen listens to 2.5 hours of music every day and is exposed to 35,000 references to substance abuse every year.� "These references have a noticeable impact on their behavior, mood and personal identity." In another study of university students, The American Psychological Society published a report stating, "Research has definitively proved the link between youth violence and violent music."

According to these reports "Music has a greater impact on human behavior than any other form of media including TV, Movies and Video Games." As such, the goal of the Feel Good Music Project is to impact this behavior by providing a platform for up and coming positive music artists to be heard by the masses and encourage healthy lifestyle choices, which will reduce violence and drug abuse as well as boost confidence and self-esteem in our youth.

FGMP plans to achieve this through an ongoing effort, which includes a 20 date live music tour called the Feel Good Festival as well as a compilation CD that will be released and sold to the public and donated to at risk youth programs like the Boys & Girls Club of America and United Roots Oakland. The Festival, in its 4th year of successful operation, aligns itself with health conscious sponsors to expose more people to positive music and healthy lifestyle choices including food & beverage, acrobatic yoga demonstrations, ice breakers and crowd interaction games.

Tour Dates
The tour will kick off on Feb 4th featuring Chad Scott and Steve Gold at The Griffin in San Diego then pick up this Summer on June 21st at House of Blues also in San Diego. The tour will move across Los Angeles to San Francisco and into Arizona with final dates to be announced in February. Artists include Chad Scott, Steve Gold, Avasa & Matty Love, Summer Mencher, Todd Herzog, Singing Bear, Inner Prisms, Larisa Stowe & Shakti Tribe, Ash Ruiz of Here II Here and Earth Amplified.

Sponsor and Community Funding
The project and its artists are currently reaching out to both the community and corporate sponsors for funding in this crucial endeavor. Corporations can sponsor the event and receive advertising as well as a tax write off through FGMP's fiscal sponsor Fractured Atlas, a 501c3 dedicated to supporting the arts. Individuals interested in getting tickets and the compilation CD can support through a crowd funding effort at www.Indiegogo.com. All donations, purchases and sponsorships are tax deductible. For more info please visit www.FeelGoodFestival.net.

Meditation Helps Students Focus, Overcome Stress

A recent survey of over 200,000 incoming college freshmen shows emotional health of students at its lowest in 25 years. Due to pressures of classes, financial issues, and worries of poor job prospects, student stress and anxiety levels are at record highs and climbing. Meditation and yoga may provide relief for many anxious students, helping them calm down, stay balanced, and even perform better in classes. Recent studies on a specific meditation practice offered by Isha Foundation show improved mental and emotional health, as well as creativity and focus, for those who practice regularly.

Isha Foundation's signature program is called Inner Engineering, in which participants learn a powerful 21-minute meditation. In a 2010 survey of 536 participants who practice the meditation regularly, 86% reported reductions in stress and anxiety with 80% of respondents saying they experienced improved mental clarity. 87% of practitioners in the study also felt they had increased emotional balance, and 70% reported increased concentration and productivity.

A separate EEG study* of the brain activity of meditators demonstrated dramatic changes in electrical wave patterns in the brain after just 21 minutes of the practice. These results included marked increases in the slow frequency delta and theta wave patterns characteristic of deep relaxation, and increased activity in areas of the brain important for alertness and focus. The study also found marked increases in synchronization of wave patterns in the right and left sides of the brain. Referred to as 'whole-brain synchronization,' this phenomenon is commonly associated with more efficient and effective mental processing capabilities, including heightened mental clarity and sharper discrimination, better learning ability, and increased creativity.

The Inner Engineering practices have benefited students at colleges and universities across the country, including UCLA, Penn State, USC, University of Michigan, Dartmouth, Stanford, Wright State, Northwestern, and Vanderbilt. Some students have even started meditation clubs at their universities to help support each other and continue their practices to relieve stress on campus. Pragyan Sharma, an Inner Engineering participant and recent graduate shares about his meditation, "I enrolled for IE when I was six months into a masters program at NYU. Inner Engineering empowered me with an unshakable inner balance and an enhanced mental clarity that helped me prioritize and manage my studies, internships, health and relationships effortlessly. I noticed that I became more productive and focused because of IE than I ever was.� Sharma adds, "Today I have the job that I wanted and I am even preparing for my second masters!�

Sadhguru Vasudev, yogi, visionary humanitarian and founder of Isha Foundation, explains about stress, "Your work is not tension, your work is not stressed; it is your inability to keep your system, your body, mind, your energy and your emotions in a certain way. It is your inability to keep yourself in a certain level of comfort and wellbeing. So, what we are referring to as meditation is not only a remedy for this, it is also an opportunity for a person to move into a dimension where there is no such thing as stress within you.�

Meditation for clarity, health and joy is called Isha Kriya and can be accessed at www.BeBreatheBlossom.com.

Gyuto Monks Sculpting For Peace

The Gyuto Monks return to Crystal Castle for the next stage of the World Peace Stupa - Sculpting the symbolic signs, patterns and traditional emblems on to the exterior levels of the throne.

The size of the project and the sophisticated moulding technique being utilized in the construction process means the monks will work with the large moulds in situ on the ground before they are placed in position on the stupa base.

Tashi Gyaltso, chief stupa artist will work with a couple of monks on this part of the task while other the monks continue to work in the Discovery Room preparing the other items still to be placed in the upper levels of the stupa. More texts are arriving from the monastery in India for inclusion and more tsa tsas and statues need to be dressed and wrapped for placement in the stupa. Meanwhile Gen Lama Thupten Phuntsok will keep a vigilant eye on all the activity to ensure all is being carried out according to sacred ritual as it has been for hundreds of years.

In between this more physical work, the monks will offer their usual program of morning chanting, children's activities, lunchtime meditation sessions and talks. Gen Lama will also conduct the popular and powerful Jab Khru ceremony for effecting change and on alternate days, he is willing to perform �Mo' divinations by individual request. As always, the Gyuto Monks aim to help people to rise above their difficulties be they mental, emotional, spiritual or physical, through harnessing the power of the heart and mind.

Sonam Rigzin will conduct �The Miracle of Nothingness' Meditation sessions based on Interconnectedness, the 12 Links of Buddhist teachings that explain the process of life and rebirth.

Gen Lama's Public Talk Series � The Paradox of Expectation' on weekends cover the series title plus topics on Connectivity, Relationship and Sustaining Contentment.

DAILY PROGRAM SCHEDULE
10.30 - 11.00 Morning Meditation
11.30 - 12.30 Culture for Kids � hands on art each day
1.00 - 2.00 Meditation Series
2.00 - 3.00 Stupa preparations ( weekdays)
Public Talk ( weekends)
3.00 - 4.00 Jab Khru Ceremony ( Saturday and Sundays) By appointment & offering
Mo Divinations ( weekdays) By appointment & offering

Harmonic Chanting Performance
A fundraiser for the World Peace Stupa - Saturday January 28th, 6pm
The monks will also offer a Harmonic Chanting Performance on Saturday January 28th. Trained over many years, each monk has developed the extraordinary capacity to chant in three octaves at the same time. The deep, stirring sounds produced have been called the �sound of heaven' are reputed to have a transformative effect on the physical as well as the emotional body.

Snacks, cakes and vegetarian meals will be available from the Crystal Castle Lotus Cafe from 6pm with the chanting performance starting from 7.30pm. Please bring a cushion and a shawl or light blanket.

All proceeds go to the Stupa, a project which has been blessed by his Holiness the Dalai Lama.

source: www.crystalcastle.com.au

Attaining Mental Clarity & Joy through Meditation

Practitioners and teachers have long described the numerous mental and physical benefits of yoga and meditation practice. A recent scientific study measuring the electrical activity in the brain of those practicing a specific meditative practice, taught in Isha Foundation's Inner Engineering program, provides scientific evidence to support some of these claims. The self-realized yogi and the founder of Isha Foundation, Sadhguru Vasudev, will be visiting Houston May 4-6, 2012 to conduct this Inner Engineering yoga and meditation program, which offers a powerful possibility to balance and align one's inner energies, leading to enhanced joy as well as improved physical and mental well-being.

The Inner Engineering program includes interactive discussions, guided meditations, a set of simple, gentle asanas (yoga poses) and the transmission of Shambhavi Mahamudra kriya. Shambhavi Mahamudra is a 21-minute practice that greatly accelerates spiritual transformation and can have powerful physiological benefits as well. The kriya is an ancient internal energy process that functions as a catalyst for spiritual growth. When practiced regularly, the Shambhavi Mahamudra kriya will support health and inner wellbeing the rest of one's life.

The study* of the brain activity of meditators demonstrated dramatic changes in electrical wave patterns in the brain after just 21 minutes of Shambhavi practice. These results included marked increases in the slow frequency delta and theta wave patterns characteristic of deep relaxation, and increased activity in areas of the brain important for alertness and focus. The EEG study also found marked increases in synchronization of wave patterns in the right and left sides of the brain. Referred to as 'whole-brain synchronization,' this phenomenon is commonly associated with more efficient and effective mental processing capabilities, including heightened mental clarity and sharper discrimination, better learning ability, and increased creativity.

In a 2010 survey of 536 practitioners of Shambhavi, 86% reported reductions in stress and anxiety with 91% of respondents saying they felt a deeper sense of overall peace. 80% of practitioners in the study also felt they had improved mental clarity and 70% reported increased mental concentration.

Participants of Sadhguru's Inner Engineering program not only report feeling much happier as a result, they also commonly express greatly reduced levels of stress and anxiety, increased mental-alertness, enhanced focus and self-awareness. "I am happier with life and more accepting, I am more responsible and somehow more in tune with everything,� shared a recent participant of the Inner Engineering program. "I've become a much more confident and positive person, able to think clearly and deal with complicated situations and emotionally sensitive issues,� explained another.

According to Sadhguru, the 10,000-year-old science of yoga understands the human system not just as a physical body, but as five layers of body. These five layers are the physical body, mental body, pranic energy body, etheric body and bliss body. It is alignment of the bodies, the koshas, that allows a yoga practitioner to experience the bliss at the core of human life.

"The reason why most people in the world do not know joy is that the physical, the mental, and the �pranic' or the energy-body, are not in alignment. The core of you is joy; over that there are four layers. If they are properly aligned, a natural expression, an overwhelming expression of joyfulness will naturally happen within a human being," explained Sadhguru in a recent introductory talk. "People may achieve this state in so many ways. Someone is listening to music and at a certain moment he experiences joyfulness because in that moment his physical body, mind, energy, everything is focused in one direction, and suddenly, a burst of joyfulness happens within. Maybe somebody is dancing, it happens with him. Maybe somebody is looking at something beautiful, it happens to him. These are all different ways that it may happen. Now (in Inner Engineering programs) we are looking at the technology of keeping these three bodies constantly aligned so that joyfulness is not an accidental happening; joyfulness becomes a normal condition, a natural way of living for you."

� Manveer Bhatia et al. Neurophysiological and Biochemical evaluation in practitioners of Isha Yoga. World Conference- Expanding Paradigms: Science, Consciousness and Spirituality February 2006

For more information on Inner Engineering May 4-6 in Houston, contact houston@ishafoundation.org.

source: www.prweb.com