Michael_vx blog

You sit at your desk, drumming your fingers nervously.  It’s Tuesday morning and you’re fifteen minutes early (as usual).  You pull up your calendar for the week and it’s booked solid.  You have files due today, tomorrow, and Friday and appointments at every available time and meetings in-between all of them. Your palms start to sweat.  Your heart begins to race. You slowly wipe your hands on your skirt and instinctively you start biting your fingernails.  You think, “How can I get all this done?”  Your mind feels like its being pulled in ten million directions. You can’t get your thoughts straight and your hands start shaking. 5 Minute Meditation Stress happens.  Sometimes we just need a break and 5 minute meditation a day can be enough to get our minds on the right path.  As we focus on taking deep breaths, we can clear our minds.  With 5 minute meditation daily, we can keep our minds clear and work more efficiently.  Scientific studies show that daily 5 mi

While it may seem obvious that a good hike through a forest or up a mountain can cleanse your mind, body, and soul, science is now discovering that hiking can actually change your brain… for the better! Hiking in Nature Can Stop Negative, Obsessive Thoughts Aside from the almost instant feeling of calm and contentment that accompanies time outdoors, hiking in nature can reduce rumination. Many of us often find ourselves consumed by negative thoughts, which takes us out of the enjoyment of the moment at best and leads us down a path to depression and anxiety at worst. But a recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that spending time in nature decreases these obsessive, negative thoughts by a significant margin. To conduct this study, researchers compared the reported rumination of participants who hiked through either an urban or a natural environment. They found that those who walked for 90 minutes in a natural environment r

Numerous studies have proven the many physiological benefits of meditation, and the latest one comes from Harvard University. An eight week study conducted by Harvard researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) determined that meditation literally rebuilds the brain’s grey matter in just eight weeks. It’s the very first study to document that meditation produces changes in grey matter over time. Study senior author Sara Lazar, of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School Instructor in Psychology, explains: “Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day. This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing