CD Relaxation

I found a wonderful book on teaching meditation to children entitled … guess what? Yup …”Teaching Meditation To Children” by David Fontana and Ingrid Slack. It’s a practical approach to teaching meditation to children from 5 to 18 years old, written by psychologists who have worked extensively with children, and who have experience teaching meditation to all age groups. This book is aimed at teachers, parents, and other adults who work with young people. The book is filled with practical exercises that young people can enjoy. There are also tips on how to use meditation for specific problems, such as:

One of my partners, iamplify, offers meditations that you can download as an MP3 file, yoga videos, and other stress reduction audios & videos. Also check out the free downloads which include Marianne Williamson’s Death & Grieving audio series as well as audio books on all aspects of Mind, Body, & Spiritual health. I’ve found some very interesting and inexpensive information available there. Please give me feedback about anything that you experience through my recommendations.
Thanks,
Dan
Download inner peace. Save 10% at iAmplify.com. Code iamp10

Biofeedback is a great training tool to gain control over your heartrate and mental activity levels. It’s what it sounds like … feedback from your bodily signals (in this case, your pulse rate and skin resistance) to help you attain a certain level of consciousness and control over your body. There are some great biofeedback machines available, but how many of them make the process fun? There is a company that focuses on using biofeedback as an interactive control in a fantasy game. Your non-dominant fingers are connected to sensors that detect your heartrate and skin resistance to control elements of the game and your dominant hand controls the mouse to navigate. In other words, you control the game through learning to consciously control your body through your breathing, thoughts, and feelings. Is that cool or what?? This is cutting edge technology! I have tried the first game, Journey To The Wild Divine - The Passage, and really enjoy the feeling of moving elements on the screen with my mind. Some tasks require increasing your energetic state, and some require reducing your heartrate with your breathing and peaceful thoughts. Check out this game first since the second, Wisdom Quest, builds on what you learn from the first one.

I heard a radio article this morning on NPR about Jon Kabat-Zinn using a simplified version of a Buddhist mindfulness meditation back in 1979 to help patients at the University of Massachussetts reduce their pain. Here’s another example of the power of the Mind used to focus consciousness on healing. Here’s a link to the article and to a method of scanning the body with the Mind on NPR’s website… Crash Course in Body Scan Meditation

About a year ago I received an e mail from a close friend about a new film that was only available from a website in Australia. I checked out the website and was immediately hooked by the many teachers and their credentials of expertise in the subject. I bought the film and have been showing it and recommending it to my friends and spiritual community since Spring of last year. It is a documentary about The Secret which turns out to be a powerful film containing instructions and demonstrations on how to create the life that you want through the “Universal Law of Attraction”. I have seen it’s popularity soar since it first became available and some people that I know have been watching sections of it frequently to help them focus on practicing the principles and techniques daily. Recently, Larry King dedicated two consecutive hour long weekly shows interviewing the teachers in the film. This coming Thursday (Feb. 8th, 2007), Oprah Winfrey will have some of the teachers and the producer of the film on her tv show. I highly recommend The Secret as a tool to train your Mind to create the life that you desire.

At the time that I heard of The Secret, it was only available from the website, but now it can be found almost everywhere. Check it out … The Secret

I’m often asked what music I am playing during my guided meditations each week. One of my favorite musicians for meditative music is the multi-instrumentalist C.G. Deuter. He’s an interesting guy…… bee keeper and Zen master living in New Mexico. He has a studio in his house and plays all of the instruments himself. He records & mixes each album and gives it to his record company for duplication and distribution. His music is always interesting, whether it is upbeat and joyous like Sun Spirit or more laid back like Sea & Silence. He has put out over 30 albums in as many years, although most of the older ones don’t seem to be available anymore. Besides the two that I mentioned above, I also like to use Wind & Mountain very much.

I was just reading an article by a doctor whose opinion I respect. His name is Dr. Joseph Mercola. In this article he talks about getting enough sleep and what time of night is best to sleep. I know that I personally don’t get to sleep early enough according to Dr. Mercola. He says that sleep deprivation is a form of stress on the brain and body and that it ages us prematurely. Since we are concerned with reducing stress for relaxation, this is valuable and pertinent information. For the article click Too Little Sleep May Accelerate Aging.

Music is the universal language that we all understand. It transcends communication barriers and gets right to the heart of feelings. There has been a great deal of research into the power and effects that music has on our minds and bodies. I remember reading about an experiment with plants 20 or 30 years ago. The researchers played different kinds of music and watched the reactions of the plants in the experiment. Melodic Baroque music from composers such as Mozart and Bach elicited a flourishing response where hard rock caused them to wilt and draw back from the speakers. Now, I’m not saying that rock music doesn’t have it’s positive uses. After all, I AM a musician who likes almost all forms of music. But for the purpose of relaxation, more laid back music is needed. It might be performed with synthesizers, acoustic guitar, flutes, violins, or piano ….. whatever music is played, the purpose is to let go of stress and calm the body and mind down. Nature sounds are also very soothing to the Human Instrument. Check out these relaxation CDs for Nature sound recordings.