You searched for meditation - Page 42 of 51

blog

Free mindfulness gifts!

Sounds True — September 21, 2013

Friends, please enjoy two free downloads featuring teachings and guided practices from some of the most respected voices in the fields of mindfulness and healing, including Jon Kabat-Zinn, Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Kelly McGonigal, Dan Siegel, Sharon Salzberg, Rick Hanson, and Shinzen Young.

Stream or download The Science of Mindfulness and The Practice of Mindfulness now!

The Science of Mindfulness: How Changing Your Brain Changes Your Life

To be mindful is to pay attention to whatever arises in the moment. Whether in response to thoughts, feelings, emotions, or bodily sensations, when we are present to our experience in an open and nonjudgmental way, we are practicing mindfulness. With The Science of Mindfulness, you will join five Sounds True authors for an introductory program exploring the ways that science has begun to validate what the world’s wisdom traditions have said for centuries: mindfulness practice has the power to transform every facet of our lives.

Tracks include:

1. “What Is Mindfulness?” from Mindfulness for Beginners by Jon Kabat-Zinn

The teacher who brought mindfulness meditation into the mainstream of medicine and society describes the many benefits of daily practice.

2. “Mindfulness and the Brain” from The Mindful Brain by Daniel J. Siegel, MD

Dr. Siegel explains the effects of mindfulness practice on our mental health and physiology.

3. “Happiness, Enlightenment, and the Brain” from The Enlightened Brain by Rick Hanson, PhD

We know more about the brain today than ever before. Dr. Hanson discusses how we can use this knowledge to cultivate lasting experiences of happiness and fulfillment.

4. “The Perception of Separation” from Meditation and Psychotherapy by Tara Brach, PhD

Tara Brach explains how the practice of mindfulness can help us break through the false sense of separation that so often leads to suffering.

5. “Mindfulness and the Experiencing Self” from The Neuroscience of Change by Kelly McGonigal, PhD

Dr. McGonigal describes an alternative state of mind known as “the experiencing self,” a positive alternative to harmful default states that we can cultivate through practice.

The Practice of Mindfulness: 6 Guided Practices

Mindfulness is a simple yet profound practice that transforms lives. The Practice of Mindfulness invites you to join six Sounds True authors who are each considered leaders in bringing the many benefits of mindful living into our personal and professional lives. Enjoy six beginner-friendly guided meditations aimed at increasing harmony in mind and body in order to open us to the fullness of our experience from one moment to the next.

Tracks include:

1. “Breathing Meditation” from Meditation for Beginners by Jack Kornfield

2. “Meditation for Relaxation” from Meditation by Shinzen Young

3. “Mindfulness Meditation” from The Neuroscience of Change by Kelly McGonigal

4. “A Pause for Presence” from Mindfulness Meditation by Tara Brach

5. “Meditation on Compassion” from Guided Meditations for Love and Wisdom by Sharon Salzberg

6. “The Healing Lake Meditation” from Meditation for Optimum Health by Jon Kabat-Zinn

blog

Post Views: 16,351

What Are Your Five Healing Music CD Picks…That Don�...

Sounds True — September 18, 2013

by Andrew Young (Writer at Sounds True)

Can you help me out here? I need more great “background” music for de-stressing and sparking my creativity.

The skinny: I review healing and meditation music CDs for Sounds True and other retailers and labels and have listened to well over two hundred over the years. Most of them are, uh…just okay. Some totally suck the pranic wind. Of course, you’ll find none of those at soundstrue.com (nudge nudge, wink wink).

I play this kind of music for relaxing, writing, and drawing, so I don’t like distracting melodies, in-your-face vocals, cheesy synthesizers, or stuff that I’ll get sick of after a few weeks of frequent play. Recommendations please!

In the meantime, here are five of my faves:

1. Sampradaya – Pandit Shivkumar Sharma (Real World Recordings). Great for when I’m feeling mentally sluggish or “stuck.” Not marketed as a healing music CD—but incredibly effective as one. The Indian hammer dulcimer (santoor) master plays here with his son Rahul and tabla wizard Shafaat Ahmed Khan. These are traditional ragas, but sound nothing like the familiar sitar/tambour offerings: uplifting, resonant layers of bell-like melodies and jaw-dropping overtones arise independently from the actual struck notes and float beyond the room. Joyful and mind-expanding, sparkly and fresh like cool sunlit rain.

2. Crystal Bowl Sound Healing – Tryshe Dhevney (Sounds True). This is my favorite CD to play when writing, drawing, or photoshopping piles of photos. 100% organic (no synths), beautifully recorded in a giant natural cave (seriously). Tryshe uses rare customized gemstone bowls perfectly tuned for expanding consciousness via the Om frequency and other well-tested resonances. It’s so good that when I first got the 8-minute sample track for writing the CD package copy, I set it on “repeat” and listened to it looped for hours. Tip: if you download this album, don’t “re-rip” the tracks to make them smaller. You’ll want the highest sound quality to fully experience the effect of the pure, subtle harmonics.

3. Aural Resonance Astral Harmony – Simeon Hein (Mount Baldy Press). Yes “astral harmony” sounds really new-agey, but this recording is not, and it is amazing. My massage therapist played this for me during a session years ago. It’s just a sustained, multi-layered perfect-fifth harmonic chord that goes for 70 minutes. Made with 100% synth, but works so well that I grant it full amnesty. This CD is my sure-fire last resort for insomnia and clearing writer’s block, BUT it is not for everybody: the effect is so intense that the first five times I used it, I would sometimes hear it resonating in my head for hours after turning it off.

4. Relax – David Ison (Sounds True). I play this album on my iPhone so often that if it were an old-fashioned LP, it would be worn out. What makes it so good? For one, David doesn’t use brainwave frequency entrainment—he builds his compositions using healing principles based on sacred geometries and proportional tonal relationships and rhythms from ancient Greece, Egypt, and his own intuition and rigorous experimentation. He also uses some very unique studio sound production tools to create tuned ambient spaces that have a clear and calming somatic effect. Even more relevant though is that the music on this album is simple yet incredibly beautiful. The first time I played it, it gave me the chills. The primary “voice” on this album is Ison’s guitar (a massive dreadnought Martin acoustic I think). David has been using this music program to help war veterans in the healing process with powerful results. For maximum effect, play this on a good stereo speaker system or with high-quality headphones.

5. Audio Serenity (iAwake Technologies). These folks are at the far event horizon of brainwave entrainment research. For example, they’ve addressed the problem of frequency habituation—your brain adapting to sound entrainment so that it no longer syncs to beneficial effect. Problem solved here (don’t ask me how, but it works). And they use a suite of other acoustic technologies to massage your brain, nadis, meridians, and positronic circuits (if you’re a Star Trek android). Sound-wise, this program does in fact use synth, but it’s very gentle. Get ready for an extremely quick and deep calming effect. My only caveat is that it’s pricier than a conventional music track (iAwake’s first-hand research takes time and resources). That said, I can tell you that this program is as effective as the awesome MindSpa [http://avstim.com] audio-visual entrainment device that we reviewed here at Sounds True a while back—at a fraction of the cost.

Okay your turn: please recommend some of your favorites so we can all have more relaxation and creativity music options!

blog

Post Views: 321

The Psychology of the Awakened Heart – an online...

Jack Kornfield — September 9, 2013

Friends, we’re happy to let you know of a new online video training with our dear friend Jack Kornfield, on The Psychology of the Awakened Heart: A Training in the Four Essentials of a Healthy and Joyful Life. The course will be made available starting October 1st, however you can sign up and join at anytime, working through the material at your own pace, from the comfort of your own home.

The meditation practices passed down from the Buddha are beautiful, time-tested ways to awaken a compassionate, joyful, and loving heart. Buddhist psychology and research from modern neuroscience both show enormous benefits from using these methods as a regular practice or in conjunction with conventional therapy. With The Psychology of the Awakened Heart, master teacher Jack Kornfield invites mental health professionals and meditators alike to an eight-session online video course on the Buddhist psychology of well-being. Each session, Jack will present life-changing practices, wisdom teachings, and healing stories—offering a rich mix of practical and scientific information and experiential exercises based on the timeless principles of Buddhist psychology.

Learn more about this special online training opportunity, watch a video sample, and register here.

psychologyawakening

blog

Post Views: 596

Embodied Awakening Practices in the Vijnana Bhairava

Sally Kempton
Sounds True — September 5, 2013

So often, we compartmentalize our lives, with the spiritual stuff over here and everything else over here. The more I’ve noted this tendency in myself, the more I’ve tried to bring the same open awareness to tasks such as shopping, work, and doing the dishes that I bring to reading sacred texts and meditation.

I’m always on the lookout for teachings that understand the essential unity of all existence, whether it manifests as the transcendent or the banal. When I first read a translation of the Vijnana Bhairava—one of the key texts of non-dual Kashmir Shaivism, the tradition from which Indian Buddhist Tantra evolved—I was delighted to find that its 112 dharanas, or practices, ranged from the subtle and obscure to the sensuous and embodied. In other words, its techniques for meditative awareness encompassed all of life.

Earlier this summer, I had the pleasure of working with one of my favorite Sounds True authors, Sally Kempton, to record a new program called Doorways to the Infinite: The Art and Practice of Tantric Meditation. In this program, to be released next spring, Sally explores the practices of the Vijnana Bhairaiva, unpacking the deeper meanings of the dharanas and offering guided meditation practices that evoke their unique flavors.

Each of the Vijnana Bhairava’s verses—which are presented as a conversation between the supreme lord Shiva and his consort Parvati—offers a doorway to expanded consciousness. Some are concerned with the space between breaths, the ascent of kundalini, and mantra practice—familiar subjects for spiritual practitioners. Other dharanas focus on the taste of food, on touch, on sexual ecstasy.

Still others point toward immediate realization of the Self as pure consciousness.

These dharanas prove that the ancients knew what we are rediscovering today—that spirituality is not something apart from all the other aspects of our lives. In Tantric teachings, the human body is a mirror of the cosmic body. When we have a felt sense of this unity of body and spirit, there’s no more gap between our spiritual lives and our ordinary lives. All life is spirit, and everything is our path to awakening.

mitchell_blog_sally

blog

Post Views: 376

The new Sounds True online community

Sounds True — August 21, 2013

Friends, I want to let you know about the new Sounds True online community, a space that we’ve dedicated to meaningful conversation with you, our listeners from around the world. Through the community, it is our intention to support you to connect with fellow journeyers on the path in a way that is meaningful and transformative for you. As part of the community, we’ll be initiating book clubs and practice groups (which you can initiate as well!), sharing our experience with certain titles and authors, dialoguing about the journey of awakening and healing, discussing practices of meditation and prayer, facilitating local meetings with like-minded people, and whatever you might be drawn to share or discuss.

Of course, the community is totally free. We’d love to have you!

podcast

Post Views: 4,015

Tara Brach: Radical Acceptance

Tara Brach — August 13, 2013

Tami Simon speaks with Tara Brach, an author, clinical psychologist, and founder and senior teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC. She’s the author of the Sounds True audio learning program Radical Self-Acceptance: A Buddhist Guide to Freeing Yourself from Shame and Meditations for Emotional Healing. In this rebroadcast of one of the most popular and well-received Insights at the Edge interviews, Tami and Tara have a revealing discussion about what radical acceptance is and how we can use this practice in the face of difficult emotions. (56 minutes)

Search Results for: meditation – Page 42

Free mindfulness gifts!

What Are Your Five Healing Music CD Picks…That Don�...

The Psychology of the Awakened Heart – an online...

Embodied Awakening Practices in the Vijnana Bhairava

The new Sounds True online community

Tara Brach: Radical Acceptance

Categories

Menu

Listen to Sounds True playlists on

Connect With Us