Mindfulness Meditation Enhances Sexual Desire in Women, Study Shows

A new study discovered another reason to meditate: mindfulness meditation dramatically enhanced sexual desire in women.

Is mindfulness meditation going to be the new pillow talk?

A recent study found that mindfulness meditation practices positively effect sexual desire in women. This study—the first of its kind—looked at the effects of mindfulness practices on a group of 117 women in a range of ages, from 20s to 60s. The study employed exercises derived from cognitive behavioral therapy, as well as meditation in four 90-minute sessions, in addition to nightly homework assignments for participants. Read more

A 5-Minute Breathing Meditation to Cultivate Mindfulness

Reduce stress, anxiety, and negative emotions with this five-minute breathing mediation.

How do you cultivate mindfulness? One way is to meditate. A basic method is to focus your attention on your own breathing—a practice simply called “mindful breathing.” After setting aside time to practice mindful breathing, you’ll find it easier to focus attention on your breath in your daily life—an important skill to help you deal with stress, anxiety, and negative emotions, cool yourself down when your temper flares, and sharpen your ability to concentrate. Read more

9 Easy Ways to Feel Calm and Content Using Mindfulness

Do you feel tired, stressed, and depressed? An expert reveals nine easy ways to feel calm and content using mindfulness.

Many of us are tired, angry, stressed and depressed.

But suggestions of taking a relaxing holiday or getting up at sunrise to meditate seem entirely unrealistic.

Instead, incorporating mindfulness into the day can help us relax and improve our wellbeing, according to Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and spiritual leader.

Mindfulness - a form of meditation in which people concentrate on noticing their breathing and paying attention to sensations in their body - teaches us to exist in the present. Read more

Mindfulness Better Than Morphine for Pain Relief

A study has found that mindfulness meditation can be more effective for pain relief than powerful drugs like morphine.

Meditation can be a more effective pain relief that morphine, researchers have found.

A study claims that just 20 minutes a day of meditation training can reduce pain more effectively than powerful drugs like morphine. Read more

Mindfulness Meditation May Make You Dream Up False Memories

Mindfulness meditation has helped many people reduce stress, but like anything, it's not a panacea. Researchers found that it can make you "remember things that didn't happen.

Mindfulness is the fashionable form of meditation that fans say makes you feel less stressed.

But scientists have discovered one potential drawback – it can lead you to ‘remember’ things that haven’t happened. Read more

Is Mindfulness Just a Fad?

Even good things can be over-hyped, says Max Pemberton. Nothing works for everything or for everyone.

Mindfulness — a form of meditation and therapy based on Buddhist teachings — is the latest craze to sweep the medical world.

Everyone's talking about it, and some would have us believe it's the answer to all our problems. Read more

Research Shows Meditation Can Positively Change Your Brain

Research shows that meditation really can positively change your brain, and it only takes a month.

Scientists studying the Chinese mindfulness meditation known as integrative body-mind training (IBMT) say they've confirmed and expanded their findings on changes in structural efficiency of white matter in the brain that can be related to positive behavioral changes in subjects practicing the technique regularly for a month.

In a paper appearing this week in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists Yi-Yuan Tang and Michael Posner report improved mood changes coincided with increased axonal density -- more brain-signaling connections -- and an expansion of myelin, the protective fatty tissue that surrounds the axons, in the brain's anterior cingulate region. Read more

10 Ways Meditation Can Change Your Life

If you're looking for a breakthrough in your meditation practice, MeiMei Fox gives her top ten reasons for attending a Vipassana mediation retreat.

"One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself." -- Leonardo da Vinci 

I'm sure you're aware what meditation is. But have you ever tried it for 10 minutes? An hour? A day? How about 10 full days? And during those 10 days, by the way, you're not allowed to speak to anyone else (trust me, you'll speak incessantly to yourself), nor are you permitted to read a book, write in your journal, exercise (beyond slow walking), or listen to music. All you do is hang out at the private party in your head. Read more

Evidence Builds That Meditation Strengthens the Brain

Evidence builds that meditation strengthens the brain.

Earlier evidence out of UCLA suggested that meditating for years thickens the brain (in a good way) and strengthens the connections between brain cells. Now a further report by UCLA researchers suggests yet another benefit.

Eileen Luders, an assistant professor at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, and colleagues, have found that long-term meditators have larger amounts of gyrification ("folding" of the cortex, which may allow the brain to process information faster) than people who do not meditate. Further, a direct correlation was found between the amount of gyrification and the number of meditation years, possibly providing further proof of the brain's neuroplasticity, or ability to adapt to environmental changes. Read more

Rewire Your Brain for Love

Psychologist Marsha Lucas explains how to change your brain in ways which support healthier, more satisfying relationships.

As a psychologist, I see people in my practice all the time who complain that the thrill of sex dies down after awhile. It gets, well, routine. Same-old, same-old. Going through the motions. Sometimes, they get around to asking what they can do to spice things up.

"Yes, there is," I say.

Their eyes get a little wider, their hearts jump a bit.

They're not always thrilled when I tell them they need to change their brain structure. And sometimes even less thrilled when I tell them one of the best ways to change their brain for better sex, is mindfulness meditation. Read more

Study Says Meditation Increases Brain Size

Researchers have found evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. People who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don't.

So if you want to develop bigger muscles and stronger bones, you pump iron. But what do you do to build a bigger brain? Meditate.

Research has confirmed the beneficial aspects of meditation. In addition to having better focus and control over their emotions, many people who meditate regularly have reduced levels of stress and bolstered immune systems. But this new research is about much more than stress management... it's about meditation changing the actual structure of the brain.

First, in an article in the Jan. 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, researchers report that those who meditated for about 30 minutes a day for eight weeks had measurable changes in gray-matter density in parts of the brain associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress. Previous studies have also shown that there are structural differences between the brains of meditators and those who don’t meditate, but this was the first to document changes in gray matter over time through meditation. Read more

The 4 Myths about Meditation

If you resist meditation, you may be buying into one of four common myths about it, says Ronald Alexander.

The majority of my clients resist mindfulness meditation at first, although the time commitment is small and the payoff is enormous. One insisted that it wasn't necessary and that she didn't have enough time in her day to devote to a regular practice. Then she went through the loss of a parent, and had such trouble coping that she couldn't even drag herself out of bed. After missing work 10 days straight, she called me for my advice. I told her to mindfully meditate while in bed. Terrified and bewildered, my client did and, in a few days, found that she could face going to work again. After that, whenever she was in an overwhelming state of grief or so distracted that she couldn't focus, she would close her door, tell her assistant to hold all her calls and do a five minute meditation. Slowly, her grief lessened.

Typically, those who resist meditation are buying in to one of the following four common myths from my book, "Wise Mind, Open Mind" that create resistance to regular mindfulness meditation practice. Read more