Silva Method and the Ultimate Mind

If there’s an activity that could unequivocally be described as low-tech, meditation is it. All it consists of, after all, is sitting quietly as you clear your mind and concentrate on nothingness. Believe it or not, however, your Apple tech can help you on your journey toward nothingness—or “mindfulness” as practitioners prefer to call it. But before we detail the specific Mac- and iPod-based meditation tools, here’s a short introduction to the concepts involved.

Mac-Side Meditation. Jeffrey Brantley understands the urge to smash a misbehaving office printer as much as anyone. But as a student of meditation, he has a coping mechanism that most people don’t—mindfulness.

Brantley, a medical doctor and author, describes mindfulness as being present, or “paying attention in a friendly, nonjudging way.” Buddhist monks have practiced mindfulness meditation for millennia. The most basic mindfulness exercises focus attention on the breath for a few moments at a time, gently reclaiming attention as it wanders.

In a lot of ways, Brantley says, mindfulness is the opposite of the anxious, distraction-prone, multitasking state that so many of us experience daily. Multitasking becomes a difficult habit to break because it creates a feedback loop in the mind, he says. As the brain grows accustomed to that level of stimulation, it seeks it everywhere. We find ourselves checking our email when we should be enjoying our evening.

But here’s the good news: The mind is plastic. It learns new skills with practice. A little bit of mindfulness each day encourages the ability to be present and aware. And moments of mindfulness can be cultivated anywhere.

“It’s kind of like cross-training. You want to practice, not multitask,” he says.

Get Fit - In Mind & Body by Johnaton Williams

(Via Mac|Life Magazine.)

Most people would agree that stress increases your risk for illness and this is particularly true for severe long-term stresses, such as caring for a family member with a chronic medical illness. However, we still have a relatively limited understanding of exactly how stress contributes to the risk for illness. In the August 15th issue of Biological Psychiatry, researchers shed new light on one link between stress and illness by describing a mechanism through which stress alters immune function.

In a very promising preliminary study, Miller and colleagues found that the pattern of gene expression differed between caregivers of family members with cancer relative to a matched group of individuals who did not have this type of life stress. They found that among the caregivers, even though they had normal cortisol levels in their blood, the pattern of gene expression in the monocytes, a type of white blood cell involved in the body’s immune response, was altered so that they were relatively less responsive to the anti-inflammatory actions of cortisol, but relatively more responsive to pro-inflammatory actions of a transcription factor called nuclear factor-kappa B, or NF-κB. Gregory Miller, Ph.D., corresponding author, explains more simply that, although “caregivers have similar cortisol levels as controls, their cells seem to be ‘hearing’ less of this signal. In other words, something goes awry in caregivers’ white blood cells so they are not able to ‘receive’ the signal from cortisol that tells them to shut down inflammation.”

Entire article here Elsevier

(Via Elsevier.)

ScienceDaily (Aug. 28, 2008) — Although the idea that instrumental learning can occur subconsciously has been around for nearly a century, it had not been unequivocally demonstrated. Now, a new study published by Cell Press in the August 28 issue of the journal Neuron used sophisticated perceptual masking, computational modeling, and neuroimaging to show that instrumental learning can occur in the human brain without conscious processing of contextual cues.

“Humans frequently invoke an argument that their intuition can result in a better decision than conscious reasoning,” says lead author Dr. Mathias Pessiglione from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at the University College London. “Such assertions may rely on subconscious associative learning between subliminal signals present in a given situation and choice outcomes.” For instance, a seasoned poker player may play more successfully because of a learned association between monetary outcomes and subliminal behavioral manifestations of their opponents.

Entire article here Subliminal Learning Demonstrated In Human Brain

(Via Cell Press and EurekAlert!.)

Because she was planning to get pregnant, Janelle (who preferred not to give her last name) decided last year to go off powerful medication for stress-induced migraines in favor of a more fetus-friendly therapy. With sensors attached to her fingertips, neck, and abdomen, she spent 20 sessions learning to relax her muscles and slow her breathing and heart rate while watching a computer monitor for proof of the desired result. Eventually, she was able to do the work on her own. “The migraine pain doesn’t go away completely,” says the 39-year-old from Bethesda, Md., who has remained off medication since her son’s birth two months ago. “But it’s been greatly reduced, and I’m able to deal with it better.”

Like meditation and yoga, the biofeedback method that Janelle now swears by is enjoying a sort of renaissance; while it’s been around for some 40 years, a growing body of research has brought it to the mainstream, indicating that it can relieve some hard-to-manage conditions exacerbated by stress. Many major hospitals and clinics, including Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Duke University Medical Center, now offer biofeedback to people with hypertension and jaw pain as well as headaches, for example. And new pocket-size gadgets have hit the market that let you do it yourself.

More on The Benefits of Biofeedback

(Via US News and World Report.)

You’re about to leave work at the end of the day when your cell phone rings: it’s your spouse, asking that you pick up a gallon of milk on the way home. Before you head out the door, though, your spouse calls again and asks you to stop by the hardware store too. Based on your knowledge of the area and rush-hour traffic, you decide to get the milk first and the toilet plunger second. But whoops! The phone rings again. This time, it’s your boss, asking you to work late. That means another change of plans.

Adjusting our behavior to such changing circumstances enables us to achieve our goals. But how, exactly, do our brains switch so elegantly and quickly from one well-entrenched plan to a newer one in reaction to a sudden change in circumstances?

Entire article here How memory deals with a change in plans

(Via News-Medical.Net.)

Is your hacking cough due to the common cold or a terminal disease? Just type your symptoms into any of the 2,265 health information Web sites to find out.

These sites –which have doubled in number since 2005, according to Web tracker Hitwise– offer up a host of possible conditions, medical advice, treatments and doctor referrals. The most popular sites include WebMD (nasdaq: HLTH - news - people ), Steve Case’s Revolution Health and MayoClinic.com. All told, health sites had 69 million U.S. visitors in the month of July, according to comScore.

The entire article is here Health Tips On Your iPhone.

(Via Forbes.com)

This excerpt is from an article published in the magazine Biofeedback by the Association for Applied Psychophysiology & Biofeedback. You can download the entire article from the link at the bottom of this page. Enjoy!

Special Issue: The Emergent Science and Practice of Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback

Editor in Chief: Donald Moss, PhD
Guest Editors: Paul Lehrer, PhD, and Richard Gevirtz, PhD
Biofeedback
Volume 36, Issue 1, pp. 1–4

This special issue overviews the rapid development of research and clinical applications for heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback. This is one of the most promising newer areas of biofeedback, with applications to the treatment of medical conditions, the enhancement of human performance, and the achievement of higher-level health. The cover of this special issue shows the Cardiosignalizer biofeedback instrument, developed by the Russian firm Byosvyaz about 1990. This photo reflects the Russian origins of HRV biofeedback.

The Russian physiologist Evgeny Vaschillo began research on HRV in 1975 in the Department of Ecological Physiology at the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). His initial goal was to investigate the mechanisms of heart rate regulation. He learned that his subjects could not consistently decrease or increase heart rate using biofeedback but could produce high-amplitude oscillations in heart rate. He also learned that oscillations at certain frequencies had much higher amplitude. He already had some understanding of the close relationship between the structure of HRV and human health from research conducted for the Russian space program in the 1960s.

Vaschillo began several courses of research, showing that the production of higher variability in heart rate could improve task performance in human operators, and developed protocols to treat cardiovascular dystonias, neuroses, asthma, and heart failure. In order to increase HRV, he trained patients to produce larger-amplitude oscillations in heart rate. Over time, he developed a model that emphasizes identifying a resonant frequency, the frequency of heart rate variations at which total variability is greatest. This resonant frequency is also the frequency of heart rate fluctuations that is optimal for each individual’s overall health and functioning. Typically, breathing diaphragmatically at a rate somewhere between five and seven times per minute serves to produce this optimal frequency in heart rate variations, although the exact frequency varies from person to person.

A private firm, Byosvyaz, developed a commercial HRV biofeedback device, the Cardiosignalizer, in 1990 and pioneered larger-scale treatment of patients with asthma, producing significant reductions in asthma symptoms.

©Association for Applied Psychophysiology & Biofeedback

Read the entire article here Special Issue: The Emergent Science and Practice of Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback

(Via Association for Applied Psychophysiology & Biofeedback)

This gold medalist in the 10 meters air rifle, Abhinav Bindra, demonstrated at the Beijing Olympics “how biofeedback training can be an integral part of performance optimization at the highest level.”

Biofeedback is not only used for the treatment of medical disorders, but also as a tool for relaxation and visualization. The popular Wild Divine Project games, like Healing Rhythms help users focus and relax in such a way that they can see the long term benefits right away. And using biofeedback daily may turn you into a gold medalist too.

Read the complete article on Medical News Today, Biofeedback Contributes To Gold Medal Performance, here.

(Via AAPB, Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback)

Small business owners in Detroit are now learning how to increase their sales using hypnosis. “We all have blocks in achieving our goals,” said Dr Husain, hypnotherapist.”I help (business owners) remove their blocks and change negative thoughts into positive ones.”

The Silva Method helps us also change limiting beliefs that stop us from reaching our goals in life. I recommend that individuals first work with what they learned from the Silva Method about beliefs. It may be difficult but with time, one comes to realize where and what is the blockage. If this fails, then hypnosis is the next best thing.

To help you with changing limiting beliefs, I suggest that you check out the CD presented by Dr George T. DeSau about “Changing Limiting Beliefs” and “Achieving Goals and Outcomes” here. It is truly a great tool to start with if you want to change your life.

Until then, have a better and better day.

To read more about “Hypnosis may boost sales goals”, click here.

(Via The Detroit News.)

I love learning, and you probably do too if you’re also reading this blog. I found many websites that help learning and discovering our world, but this site in my opinion, tops them all. It’s the HowStuffWorks website. Unlike WikiPedia, another excellent tool for learning, or the new Google Knol, HowStuffWorks is full of useful concepts and tools in all subjects from lock picking to psychology, geography, health and history.

Today, the new topic on HowStuffWorks website is “How Geniuses Work“. There the main topics are Genius and the Brain, Genius and Intelligence, Creativity and Genius, plus more information and link on genius and the brain.

I hope that you find the time to look over this article. It is well worth it and it is a definite eye opener on the power of our brains.

José Silva was right. “The difference between genius mentality and average mentality is that a genius uses Mind in a special manner”, and the Silva Method teaches us how to use Mind in that special manner to “receive and send information and energy at objective and subjective levels.”

(Via How Stuff Works.)