Transform your life with Mindfulness and Meditation
The Power of Your Amazing Brain
95% of who we are by the time we are 35 is driven by unconsious thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. Only 5% of our day is done with conscious awareness! (Dr. Joe Dispenza)
Your brain is 2/3 fat! Eating good fats like wild fish, extra virgin olive oil, avocadoes, chia seeds, nuts, and flax seed helps restore your brain cells.
We have 70, 000 thoughts per day! What are you focusing on?
Meditation boosts your brain power by relieving stress, regulating emotions, increasing IQ and much more!
Thoughts are real
Thoughts cause a biological and physiological effect like they are physically real. Example: if you visualize that you are being chased, your heart rate increases, you breathe faster, and cortisol gets dumped into your bloodstream, just like if you were actually being chased!
Are you easily distracted? Have you ever taken the first bite of a candy bar and before you know it you are left with an empty wrapper? How about been driving somewhere and arrived at the destination without remembering how you got there? This is a common pattern in our busy lives where our brains go mindlessly on autopilot.
In autopilot, we are unable to notice the good things in life, we miss important information our bodies are telling us, and we are susceptible to poisoning ourselves with toxic thoughts. The problem is that when we are on autopilot we are reacting from a part of the mind that is coloured by our past experiences and we may not be consciously in control of our actions. Thus, we are at risk of re-creating the past over and over again. Mindfulness is here to help! Join our mindfulness group!
What is mindfulness?
It is being aware of your experience in the world: thinking, emotions, behaviour.
Observing your experience, with a neutral mind, without judgement.
You experience that you are the consciousness observing the program. When you are aware, you can
make changes to better serve your well-being.
When you are aware, you can begin to know yourself better. You notice your reactions. You begin to
understand where your automatic reactions are coming from: the healthy ones that are aligned
with your values, and unhealthy ones that take you away from your best self.
When you are aware of your automatic thoughts, emotions, and behaviours you can create a buffer
between the reactions and then choose how to respond. Awareness brings you empowerment and the
flexibility of choice; so when you respond you can do so in accordance with your values and higher self.
The more you respond in accordance with what serves you, them more you live a happier and fulfilling life!
What is meditation?
Meditation is a form of mindfulness.
It is about making a choice to focus your mind on something.
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Listening to music is a meditation
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Reading a book is a meditation
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Thinking about the pile of work waiting for you at the office or about the argument you had with your spouse is a kind of meditaiton.
However, it's what you choose to put your mind on that makes the difference. If you are constantly thinking about that argument you had you can become upset, cortisol levels can rise, you may even get physically sick. If you follow along to your favourite music, you may liberate good feelings and a sense of ease.
What you focus on (pleasant or unpleasant) shapes your brain and transforms your mind and life. Your internal and external reality constantly fluctuates. Within every second you are creating your reality by the content of your thoughts and how you respond to your environment. So what are you focussing on? And, how does that serve your well-being?
Awareness, Change, Liberation!
Who you are today is a record of your past experiences (they are conditioned, automatic reactions). This conditioning influences your thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. Most people try to analyze their problems while they are living in these automatic reactions (e.g. try to figure out how to not be sad when they are overwhelmed by sadness). However, the solutions are beyond the conditioned reactions. You must step outside this autopilot to find the answer.
Mindfulness/meditation moves you beyond this autopilot so you are not affected by the external environment and past experiences and conditioned reactions. With practice, the brain becomes organized and works more harmoniously so that you can see things with a neutral mind, as they really are, without being coloured by the past. We observe our thoughts, pay attention to our behaviour, notice how we feel, so we can become aware of our unconsious mind. You can go inside the mind/body and modify your operating system of your subconsious programs. Mindfulness allows for conscious choice and change. You can shape your brain and control your thoughts to create the life you want.
So how do you become free from your past conditioning?
Pay attention, separate, and accept your feelings, images, and mental/verbal dialogue of the moment without reacting to them. Take a neutral and non-judgmental stance on the thoughts, emotions, and behaviours you experience. Practice mindfulness!
Why practice mindfulness or meditation?
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For better health
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To sharpen your mind, make better decisions
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Feel calm, feel good
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To be more aware of your body and mind
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To balance your emotions
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To heal psychological challenges
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To explore the mysteries of life
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To experience yourself as an infinite soul having a finite, human experience. Therefore connect to your divine self and feel the peace and love that go along with it.
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So you know yourself as the fabulous, amazing being that you are and live your life that way!
Don't take it from me, come and experience it. It's all about the experience!
Stop and smell the roses!
"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly." —Buddha
The Tale of Two Brains
Neuroscientists have recently discovered two primary default mechanisms in the brain. The "conceptual self", which is the story making part of the brain that contains descriptions of events, memories, attitudes, and evaluations of people and things.
The "experiential self" is a mode of awareness that is not based on the stories and concepts we have of our past experiences. It is active in experienced mindfulness meditators and enhances their awareness of the constantly changing feelings, thoughts, and things going on in the environment in a neutral way so that it doesn't identify their reality. In this way mindfulness meditation allows you to not identify with your complexes and negative stories about yourself. Meditation helps you release unhelpful emotions and thought patterns by strengthening 3 brain structures:
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1) Insula- so you can become aware of how emotions feel in the body (when you can feel emotions and name them, then you can work through them so they do not control you).
2) Somatosensory cortex- strengthens how you process somatic information so you have a full sense of what is happening in your body in the present moment. Then it is less likely that emotions become unconsciously lodged in your body.
3) Lateral Prefrontal Cortex- strengthens your attention to what is happening in your body and thus decreases mental chatter.
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With practice you will be able to think about your experiences without judging them. We are trained to see experiences in a neutral way instead of through the lens of our past conditioning.
These areas of the brain become thinker and it becomes more automatic for us to experience life neutrally instead of from our inner conditioned dialogue. Then we life can hear the guidance of our "soul" or "essence" instead of seeing the world through our past experiences that have conditioned our attachments, compulsions, and complexes.
Then we have more choice.