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Originally posted by CHAS:

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Originally posted by piqaboo:
I've been trained in both TM and mindfulness.
Mindfulness to me only helps in a specific moment if I remember in that moment. TM puts me where I have a better chance to remember the other stuff in the moment.
The making of lists etc, its all part of it, just notice and go back to the meditating.

My personal experience of TM is that there is a bucket full of stress and when the meniscus level of stress breaks, all hell busts loose. TM lowers the level of stress in the bucket, even w all the wandering thoughts, worrying, list making etc that comes while I'm doing it. When I meditate consistently, I notice, but more disturbingly, so do other people; after a week or so of consistent TM, people start saying things like I sound happy.

That is why I have continued TM with the bit I learned. Will take a local $10 class on mindfulness meditation. Have been reading about it and expect to prefer TM afterward.

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For those of you whose minds wander, one of the things my counsellor told me that really helped me was to think about it like floating down a river. Think of those intruding thoughts like other floating objects coming toward you. Gently push them away and watch them float down the river.

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An Effortless Way to Improve Your Memory
A surprisingly potent technique can boost your short and long-term recall – and it appears to help everyone from students to Alzheimer’s patients.

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Originally posted by wtg:

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An Effortless Way to Improve Your Memory
A surprisingly potent technique can boost your short and long-term recall – and it appears to help everyone from students to Alzheimer’s patients.

https://getpocket.com/explore/...source=pocket-newtab

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One Skeptical Scientist’s Mindfulness Journey

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Eight weeks ago, I started meditating every day.

I knew I’d be going home to visit my family at the end of December, and well, I have a bad habit of regressing into a 13-year-old whenever I’m around them. All my old immaturities and anxieties get activated. I become a more reactive, less compassionate version of myself.

But this holiday season, I was determined to avoid fighting with my family. I would be kind and even-tempered throughout the visit. I knew that in order to have a chance in hell of achieving this, I’d need a secret weapon.

That’s where the meditation came in.

Starting in 2005, Harvard neuroscientist Sara Lazar began to publish some mind-blowing findings: Meditation can literally change the structure of your brain, thickening key areas of the cortex that help you control your attention and emotions. Your brain — and possibly, by extension, your behavior — can reap the benefits if you practice meditation for half an hour a day over eight weeks.

Just eight weeks? I thought when I read the research. This seems too good to be true!

I was intrigued, if skeptical. Above all, I was curious to know more. And I wasn’t the only one. By 2014, there had been enough follow-up studies to warrant a meta-analysis, which showed that meditators’ brains tend to be enlarged in a bunch of regions, including the insula (involved in emotional self-awareness), parts of the cingulate cortex and orbitofrontal cortex (involved in self-regulation), and parts of the prefrontal cortex (involved in attention).

A host of other studies showed that meditation can also change your neural circuitry in ways that make you more compassionate, as well as more inclined to have positive feelings toward a victim of suffering and to see things from their perspective.

Further research suggested that meditation can change not only your internal emotional states but also your actual behavior. One study found that people made charitable donations at a higher rate after being trained in meditation for just two weeks. Another study found that people who get that same measly amount of meditation training are about three times more likely than non-meditators to give up their chair when they see someone on crutches and in pain.

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Originally posted by Nina:
The most basic thing that I try to do, and what directly impacts my mental state, is get enough sleep.

Sometimes it's just the basics.