If you want to build a successful career, get through school, or run a business, you probably won’t be able to limit mentally-draining tasks or escape making tough decisions, but you can take steps to keep your mind as focused and sharp as possible in spite of the challenges it faces.

How Can I Improve My Mental Acuity?

According to Dr. Jim Afremow, a mindset coach to Olympians, co-creator of the Champion’s Mind app, and former sports psychologist for pro sports teams such as the San Francisco Giants, the route to better focus, concentration, and understanding is recognizing the interplay between what’s going on around you and what’s happening inside your brain.

“Your mental state is dependent on both internal and external factors,” Afremow says. Here’s an example: “In the 90s, it was so hard to get a reservation at a famous restaurant in New York that [the restaurant] started getting a lot of complaints. So they had psychologists come in to find ways to get people in and out faster. They found that the two biggest difference makers were installing brighter lights and playing faster music, which shows how our external environment subconsciously shapes our mental state.”

The trouble is, says Afremow, “when we allow outside factors like 24/7 email, fast-paced work environments, and constant stimuli to speed us up too much, our performance suffers. That’s when we have to work on our inner [mental] game to slow things back down. Conversely, when we’re feeling sluggish, we need a toolkit of techniques that can energize us so we can perform well even when conditions aren’t ideal.”

Certain foods and supplements, along with daily practices such as meditation, “brain breaks,” and better sleep habits can all alter your mental state significantly, allowing you to speed up or slow down as needed to find the level of mental sharpness you require to be more focused and productive.

Can Natural Ingredients Really Affect My Mental Sharpness?

Everyone knows that caffeine/coffee can help with alertness and focus, but there’s another natural compound that, when combined with caffeine, may be even more effective for supporting a sharper mental state.

L-theanine is an amino acid found in green and black tea, and a trial published in Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior concluded that it helps lower the body’s stress response to stressful cognitive tasks. In other words, it may be able to help chill you out when you’re working on something frustrating. This calming effect could help to balance caffeine’s stimulant properties.

A study in Biological Psychology looked at the effects of caffeine and L-theanine in isolation and in combination, discovering that the two compounds together boosted cognitive speed, memory, and alertness better than when either nutrient was taken alone. Another study in Nutritional Neuroscience noted that while caffeine by itself boosts alertness, when teamed with L-theanine, it helped promote speed and accuracy on attention-switching tasks and reduced susceptibility to distraction.

Finally, British researchers found that L-theanine may help attenuate the spikes in blood pressure that are associated with caffeine use. This doesn’t necessarily mean it can counter the jittery and restless feelings that often accompany caffeine, but L-theanine seems to help you harness caffeine’s stimulatory effects, leaving you feeling alert but not overly revved up.

L-theanine is available as a supplement, but if you want to keep it simple and stick to coffee, at least get the dosing right, which can minimize the risk of caffeine’s side effects. “The sweet spot for caffeine appears to be between two and three milligrams per kilogram of bodyweight a day,” says Dr. Marc Bubbs, ND, CISSN, performance nutritionist for the Canadian men’s basketball team and author of the book Peak. So, if you weigh 180 pounds, you should aim for 160–245mg of caffeine—about one-and-a-half to three cups of coffee. “This is a level that provides most of the benefits while limiting the drawbacks of excessive caffeine intake,” says Bubbs, “like restlessness, anxiety, and inability to focus.”

Another natural ingredient worth experimenting with is Huperzia serrata (club moss). It’s been shown to help people with cognitive deficits, potentially by way of regulating oxidative stress and supporting nerve growth factors and receptors. It also acts to help promote acetylcholine concentrations, allowing for neuron communication. Lastly, lemon balm shows promise as a brain booster. British researchers writing in Neuropsychopharmacology noted its ability to promote both calmness and memory.

Tips for Achieving Mental Clarity

Here are four simple ways to boost your mental state fast.

1. Follow a Low-Carb Diet

Lowering your carb intake has been shown many times over to help people lose weight and reclaim their health, but one of the first noticeable benefits is improved thinking and concentration. This is because low-carb eating helps you avoid blood sugar spikes that rob your energy and fog your brain. Taken a step further, a low-carb diet becomes a ketogenic diet, where the lack of carbohydrate intake causes your body to run on ketones (compounds made from fat) for fuel.

A team of psychiatrists and neuroscientists from the University of Cincinnati divided adults with mild cognitive impairment into two groups. The one that followed a low-carb diet for six weeks showed improvements in verbal memory performance.

As Shelly Fan reported in Scientific American, a ketogenic diet may benefit the brain by inhibiting stress on neurons, increasing the number of mitochondria (energy-producing structures in brain cells), and regulating neurotransmitters to ensure a balance between excitation and inhibition.

“One of the biggest ‘rocks’ for achieving and sustaining a high level of mental acuity is optimal blood glucose control,” Bubbs says. “With half the US population struggling with pre-diabetes or diabetes, it’s perhaps not surprising that mental performance seems to be on the decline. Chronically high blood glucose levels wreak havoc on the brain, entangling neurons and increasing your risk of dementia and depression. Reducing carbohydrate intake can be an effective strategy for improving glucose control, especially in those with pre-diabetes or diabetes, as a reduction in carbs significantly reduces your post-prandial glucose response. So, if you find yourself falling asleep at your desk after lunch, reducing your carb intake can be a great tool for supercharging your brain game.”

For specific guidelines on following a low-carb or ketogenic diet, see our free e-book HERE.

2. Get More High-Quality Sleep

At the risk of sounding too harsh, lack of sleep is making you stupid. One of the nation’s leading sleep researchers, William Killgore from Harvard Medical School, wrote in Progress in Brain Research that sleep deprivation not only slows response speed and compromises alertness, attention, and vigilance, but also affects “more creative, divergent and innovative aspects of cognition.” Said another way, if you don’t sleep well, your brain just won’t work right. And no matter how many extra shots you get your favorite barista to put in your morning joe, they can’t overcome the detrimental impact of a bad night’s sleep.

“Even a single night of bad sleep reduces your inhibitory control, making you more likely to react emotionally to conflicts and engage in risk-taking behavior,” Bubbs says. “In fact, even after you catch up on your sleep, there’s a major lag time before your full cognitive performance is restored. If you’re serious about your mental performance, prioritize increasing total sleep time and quality above all else.”

So how can you start sleeping better? Get all the electronics out of your bedroom, keep it dark with blackout shades and cool with air conditioning, a fan, or a chiliPAD, and trade your tablet or eReader for a good ol’ fashioned paper book to help you wind down before bed. You might also want to consider taking a supplement that contains magnesium, which may help you avoid delayed sleep onset and early wakefulness, as well as improve sleep efficiency, according to a trial in the Journal of Research in Medical Sciences. Get more sleep tips HERE.

3. Take Brain Breaks

If you remember the restaurant example from above, playing up-tempo music and sitting in bright lighting helps you move faster. As we showed in our report on forest bathing, taking a leisurely stroll outside can help you relax significantly. In both cases, the environment you surround yourself with creates changes in your brain.

“If you’re in a mental slump—which hits a lot of people mid-afternoon—then step away from your desk and take a quick walk outside,” says Afremow. “Or, if you’ve got a meeting coming up, just take a stroll around the building and have a chat with a colleague. The change of scene will give you a mental lift. Don’t think of it as time wasted, but rather an investment that will provide greater clarity and focus. The more consistent you are with any mindset practice, the bigger the benefits you’ll experience.”

Findings published in Mental Health and Physical Activity noted that just 12 minutes of activity helped promote mental performance in 10 year-old kids.

4. Schedule Meditation

While walking in nature can be a form of meditation, the value of sitting quietly with your eyes closed can’t be overstated. A 2018 study that spanned seven years concluded that meditation practice can help promote improvements in attention span, as well as prevent age-related mental decline.

“If you only have a few minutes,” says Afremow, “then fire up a guided meditation on an app like Champion’s Mind, or do a little single-point meditating by focusing on your breath. Picture yourself inhaling relaxation and exhaling stress. You could also do color breathing, in which you picture yourself inhaling a calming blue and exhaling a warning color like red.” For a step-by-step guide to how to meditate effectively, go HERE.

A group of researchers led by Mark Krasnow, a professor of biochemistry at Stanford University, found that calm breathing impacts a group of nerves that are directly tied into the arousal centers in the brain. The more control you have over your breath, the more you have over your mind. One journal found that yoga breathing techniques improved performance on mental testing.

Can Blue Light Help Me Focus?

Blue light is a color in the light spectrum that travels at short wavelengths. It’s produced by the sun, but also artificial lights, and scientists believe that exposure to it can help us focus and learn. A study published in the Journal of Neural Transmission concluded that, “a significant increase in alertness and speed of information processing could be achieved by blue light.” Furthermore, a team from the University of Arizona College of Medicine’s psychiatry department determined that subjects who were exposed to blue light for 30 minutes after a learning exercise improved memory retention compared to the placebo group.

According to Bubbs, one of the best ways to get exposure to blue light is to simply go outdoors. “Getting outside is hugely important for cognition and mental health, particularly during fall and winter months. If you’re bold enough to tackle the elements with a morning walk to work or to your favorite coffee shop, your brain will be exposed to over 100,000 LUX of light intensity, even on cloudy days, which will kickstart circadian rhythms and cognition.” A brightly-lit office, by comparison, puts out only a paltry 20,000 LUX. “Get outside to burn off the brain fog and clear your mind before work, or add outdoor morning workouts to further increase the benefits.”

However, there can always be too much of a good thing. Certain biohackers will warn you that blue light can mess with your sleep, as it suppresses the release of melatonin. It can delay the onset and reduce the quality and duration of sleep. For these reasons, it’s a good idea to wear glasses that block blue light when you’re watching TV or using electronics at night. Also, cut off your exposure to as much artificial light as you can at least two hours before going to bed (dim the overhead lights, turn off the TV, etc.). But don’t think you have to live in a cave just to be able to sleep at night.

For more tips on using blue light to your advantage—and avoiding it when it’s disadvantageous—pick up Onnit founder Aubrey Marcus’ book, Own The Day. 

The post The Best Ways to Support Mental Acuity and Sharpness appeared first on Onnit Academy.

You Are Not Your Thoughts 

Life evolves from circumstance. What we experience is a series of situations. We do one thing and that leads us to the next. Although it is seamless, most of what happens in our lives comes together by chance. Let’s say you found a lucky “heads-up” penny while you were walking down the sidewalk. That’s a lighthearted and fun momentary feeling that happened by chance. There was no plan that brought this experience into your life. At no point did you call up a friend and ask them to leave a heads-up penny at a specific location and time for you to “stumble upon.” You found it by chance. That’s what made it lucky and exciting.

Much of life works like the lucky penny. All the parts of the world follow their own little narratives as they unfold through time. There are so many story lines going on that they can’t help but bump into each other. Randomness serves each of us exhilarating wins, deflating losses, and a lot in between. But this chance woven through our daily walk is a big part of what gives life its magic. We never know what could happen next. And that’s what makes us want to keep following our story and watching for that next lucky moment. 

The mystery of chance isn’t only out in the world. It’s also in our mind. The random thoughts that pass through our minds can lead us down all sorts of interesting paths. Think of how many times you made what felt like a basic choice that ended up leading to the unexpected. There is a potential for surprise waiting in everything. Even in the thoughts that arise in our mind. And this brings up a valuable point. You are not your thoughts. You are the thoughts you turn into action. 

Each of us has an endless supply of thoughts that form in our mind, which then move along and disappear. Remember, we have a new thought almost every second of the day, so there is plenty to go around. Each of the thoughts that form, whether good or bad, comes with a certain amount of potential. A large part of mindful living is being able to recognize thoughts as they appear and respond to them, not react. Responding and reacting might sound similar, but there is an important difference: When you react to your thoughts, your actions are based on reflexes. When you respond to your thoughts, you are self-aware and able to act in a mindful way.

Intentionally choosing the thoughts you decide to turn into actions is what builds who you are. Inside the privacy of your mind, you’ll get stuck on a negative thought sooner or later. We all do many times a day. But, if you engage with the present, you can recognize that thought as negative and choose not to express it. This is a simple and powerful way to reduce suffering. By letting that negative thought pass, you kept yourself from expressing it to the world. 

This means that the only place the negative thought existed for a short time was in the privacy of your mind. You then allowed it to evaporate and move on. When you chose not to turn the negative thought into action, it kept the negativity from becoming part of who you are. This allows the reflexive snarky comment, defensive verbal jab, or unfair judgment to move by without hurting anyone. 

Being mindful and aware of how we express our thoughts also gives us the power of potential. If we can face the chance of our day with a present mind, we’re less likely to get into situations with negative potential. When we are aware of the thoughts that are arising, we are prepared for almost anything. It enables us to be patient, make compassionate choices, and reduce the suffering in our lives. 

One of the ways that we get lost in a momentum of distraction is by getting pushed around by what is going on in our life. Each of us feels like we have a bit more than we can handle showing up on our plate each day. The stress of making sure we do what we need to do to make our lives happen can be draining and make us frantic. What if we have so many meetings at work that we have to eat lunch walking from one meeting to the next? What if we’re stuck in traffic when we’re supposed to be meeting our partner for a special dinner? Life happens, but we can set up for success by building things into our day that help us stay engaged with what is before us. 

Giving some sort of shape to your day makes a remarkable difference in how you feel. Even though this is a simple thing, building a gentle daily structure is something that many people miss out on. It isn’t their fault for missing it. They are simply too overwhelmed by the frenzy of their grind to have the space to think about anything else. And that is what adding shape to your days will give you. Space. Breathing room. Steady rocks to step on as you walk across the bubbling river. 

Pick up the book, Now Is The Way, available in hardcover, audible, and Kindle, on Amazon.

The post You Are Not Your Thoughts appeared first on Onnit Academy.

We investigated the Reiki phenomenon to determine what’s fact, and what’s wack.

What is Reiki Meditation?

Pronounced “ray key,” the term Reiki is a combination of the Japanese words rei, meaning spirit, divine, or mysterious, and ki, the word for one’s vital energy, consciousness, or, as the Japanese say, “breath of life.” Similar to Chinese acupuncture, the premise behind Reiki is that if your ki levels are low or blocked, you’re more susceptible to stress and illness. A Reiki practitioner will lay his or her hands on areas of your body that need a ki adjustment, and that supposedly reduces stress and promotes relaxation and healing. That’s right: they touch you and you feel better. Reiki treatments are called meditations.

Reiki practitioners don’t recommend Reiki as a replacement for Western medicine practices—especially for those diagnosed with serious conditions—but claim it serves as a useful adjunct to more conventional therapies. Anyone can learn Reiki, as it’s not really a skill that’s taught, but rather an ability that’s passed on via a transfer called an “attunement,” in which a Reiki master allows his/her student to access ki.

Still with us? It gets weirder…

What are the 5 Principles of Reiki?

While Reiki is a spiritual practice, it doesn’t come with a particular religion or well-defined dogma. Practitioners say you don’t even need to believe in it for it to work. However, like other Eastern philosophies, Reiki does encourage being a good person and living in harmony with your surroundings.

To ensure that Reiki meditations have a lasting effect, practitioners insist that clients live by five principles. Boiled down and translated, they are:

1. Don’t get angry

2. Don’t worry

3. Be grateful

4. Work hard

5. Be kind to others

Where Does Reiki Come From?

On the surface, it seems like Reiki might be ancient, as other mystical practices tend to be. In actuality, it’s anything but.

Reiki is relatively new on the wellness scene, coming to fruition only about 100 years ago. In 1914, Matiji Kawakami, a Japanese therapist, created a healing practice that he called Reiki Ryoho, and, five years later, published a book explaining it called Reiki Healing and Its Effects. Kawakami professed the idea that one could transfer energy through different hand placements on the body.

Another Reiki practitioner, Mikao Usui, gained fame in the 1920s. Usui developed the practice of Reiki that endures in Japan today and made it to the West—via a Hawaiian woman of Japanese descent named Hawayo Takata. In 1935, while visiting family in Japan, Takata fell ill and was diagnosed with various problems. (Just what she suffered from is not clear, but rumors include ailments ranging from asthma to a tumor). She sought treatment at a Reiki clinic, was cured (allegedly), and was so inspired by Reiki practice that she studied to become a Reiki master herself. Upon her return to Hawaii, Takata opened several Reiki clinics—the first of their kind outside of Japan.

What differentiated Reiki at this time from other spiritual practices, and what probably did more to encourage skepticism about it than any other factor, was the price Takata charged aspiring Reiki students—$10,000 (in the 1930s!). According to William Lee Rand, founder of the International Center for Reiki Training, the enormous fee was used to “instill respect” for Reiki practitioners at the Master level, but, of course, limited Reiki’s appeal and growth. Over time, wise Reiki teachers lowered their prices, and the art spread. Nowadays, Reiki is seen as an alternative therapy that’s especially popular among celebrities (Ellen DeGeneres and Gwyneth Paltrow have endorsed it) and athletes (including the New York Giants). Some medical doctors even allow Reiki practitioners to work with their patients before, during, and after surgery to speed recovery.

What are the Benefits of Reiki Meditation?

Reiki sessions are purported to help with stress and pain, and some claim they can even help treat serious illness. Despite controversy over whether it really works, Reiki has found its way into mainstream medical practices. A 2014 Washington Post article revealed that 60 US hospitals offer Reiki as an adjunct therapy (the Center for Reiki Research lists them HERE, if you’re interested), and Reiki education is available in 800 hospitals nationwide. More than one million American adults have tried Reiki therapy at some point. However, Reiki’s growth has largely been driven by patient demand—not research affirming all the claims associated with it.

Nevertheless, the research is promising. According to the University of Minnesota’s Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing, “Overlapping data from some of the stronger studies [on Reiki] support the ability of Reiki to reduce anxiety and pain, and suggest its usefulness to induce relaxation, improve fatigue and depressive symptoms, and strengthen overall wellbeing.”

A 2004 study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine noted that participants who received Reiki treatment had significantly lower blood pressure and heart and respiration rates afterward than those in the placebo group. Therefore, the authors wrote, it’s reasonable to believe that “Reiki has some effect on the autonomic nervous system.”

A meta-analysis in May 2018 evaluated four studies that looked at Reiki’s impact on subjects’ perception of pain, and concluded that Reiki was effective for relieving pain. This result was further supported by a Brazilian review, whose authors wrote that “Reiki and prayer meditation might be associated with pain reduction”—though they noted a high risk of bias in the studies they assessed.

“The biggest thing my clients tell me they get from Reiki is stress relief,” says Olivia Kenyon, Reiki Master Teacher at The Healing Chakra in Denver, Colorado. “Some people tend to be reactive and worry about the little things, but once they start a Reiki practice, they tend to handle their stress better and be more conscious of what’s depleting their energy. It’s also a great way to start a meditation practice, once people can see how beneficial it is to quiet the mind.”

How Do I Do Reiki Meditation?

The best way to begin a Reiki practice is to seek out a practitioner near you. However, just as with any other form of coaching or therapy, choose wisely. “There are several levels of Reiki training, so ask which one somebody is at before you book a session,” Kenyon advises. “If they’re still at level one, they shouldn’t be practicing yet. Once they’ve reached level two, they should be a capable practitioner. And once they’re at level three, they’re considered a master. Also ask how they got certified and how much training they’ve had. You don’t want to go online and end up with someone who got their certification in a single weekend, or paid $20 for it.” Reiki sessions can cost between $40 and $300 each, but in some cases the cost is covered, in part, by medical insurance.

Reiki givers may ask you to fill out an evaluation form or sign a consent waiver before beginning the meditation. Reiki can be done anywhere, with soft music playing (if you prefer), or in silence. Treatments can be done to affect the whole body or one specific area. In any Reiki session, the practitioner typically places his/her hands on the front and back of your torso, but Reiki should never feel invasive or inappropriate. The hands only touch, or hover above an area; no pressure is applied to the body, and no joints are manipulated. Some people feel a warming sensation in the areas that are touched, while others report feeling cooler. Sessions can last anywhere from 15 minutes (more common in hospitals, nursing homes, or hospice care) to 90 minutes (private practice), although patients generally report feeling some positive benefits within the first few minutes. A practitioner may suggest multiple Reiki sessions to work on a particular problem, or you can book Reiki appointments as needed, just as you would massages.

You won’t be asked to ingest anything along with Reiki, so treatments won’t affect any medications you may already be taking. There have been no reported side effects of Reiki meditation. The amount of ki the Reiki practitioner gives you isn’t controllable—it’s automatically customized to your needs, Reiki masters say—so you can’t get too much or too little. Just to be safe, wait 45 minutes after getting Reiki before you go swimming, and have a designated driver take you home. (Just kidding; we couldn’t resist.)

If you want to supplement your Reiki meditations by practicing Reiki on yourself, you can do so. “You can take charge of your own self-care,” says Kenyon, by taking a level one Reiki course, where they’ll “attune” your body into a lean, mean, ki-blasting machine. You’ll also want to research where “the seven chakra points” are on the body [areas where energy channels converge], and what each one is associated with, Kenyon says. She also recommends combining Reiki with other self-care practices like daily meditation and taking walks in nature (see our piece on forest bathing).

Is Reiki Real?

As of now, there just isn’t enough scientific evidence to say for sure that Reiki treatments do what they’re supposed to or have any great effect on the body—aside from, perhaps, a placebo effect. With that said, there’s no reason to think that they’re harmful or a total waste of money, either. Think about it: if you’re feeling sick, stressed, or anxious, it might feel good to have someone lovingly rest his/her hand on your shoulder. That may not be medicine, or divine intervention, but it doesn’t suck.

Interestingly, Reiki has been shown to help with cancer—at least as far as facing the disease with a healthy attitude. As a Reiki research review in Advances in Mind-Body Medicine concluded: “The best reason for a patient to receive a Reiki treatment is simply because people report that Reiki helps them feel better, frequently within minutes, relieving symptoms such as anxiety, pain, fatigue, nausea, and insomnia, and imparting a sense of centeredness. Additionally, research supports anecdotal reports that Reiki can help patients recontextualize their illness in a way that empowers them to heal. Reiki treatment can enhance the patient’s ability to address the challenges and uncertainty of a cancer diagnosis with a clearer mind and a stronger sense of self.”

The post Is Reiki Real? A Guide To Reiki Meditation and What the Science Says About It appeared first on Onnit Academy.

You may choose to meditate to sharpen your mind for the day ahead, or merely to calm it down, but sneaking in even a short session in the middle of a busy morning can pay more dividends than you imagine.

Why Meditate In the Morning?

Science is beginning to prove what yogis, monks, and Kung Fu masters have known for centuries: that meditation can help to relieve stress and even serious medical conditions.

A 2014 review of 47 trials that observed more than 3,500 people concluded that meditation practices reduced subjects’ anxiety, depression, and pain. Another study that same year demonstrated benefits for patients with chronic insomnia.

According to Cory Allen, a meditation coach in Austin, TX, and the author of the upcoming book, Now Is The Way, meditation is beneficial at any time of day, but he personally does it in the morning in order to prepare himself for a more productive day. Doing it in the morning, he adds, will also increase the likelihood that you do it at all. Get it out of the way early, and you won’t forget to meditate later, or blow it off.

“People often tell me they want to meditate,” says Allen, “but it never ends up happening because they look at it as a chore.” To establish meditation as a habit, you have to build it into your schedule just as you do showering, drinking coffee, and brushing your teeth.

Exactly when you do it is entirely up to you, but Allen suggests treating meditation like an appointment and keeping it. “Make it a non-negotiable,” he says. Aim to meditate at the same time every day. If you think it will be easier to do it first thing upon waking up, before your day starts getting hectic and rushed, simply sit up in bed and do it right away. “The more you do it, the more the benefits will compound,” says Allen. Some meditation is much better than none at all, but if you can, aim for five sessions a week (varying lengths each session is OK). “If you can do it Monday through Friday, by the time Friday rolls around, I bet you’ll feel way different,” says Allen. The more consistently you meditate, the more you’ll get accustomed to it, and the more you’ll want to keep doing it. Meditation will become something you desire to do, and not another task you feel obligated to complete.

“I meditate in the morning because I want to have the most clear-focused and present mind I can have for my day,” says Allen. (See “The Best Morning Meditation Routine for Clearing Your Head” below for step-by-step instructions for a great meditation.)

How Long Do I Need to Meditate For?

According to Allen, any amount of meditation is beneficial. If five minutes is all you can spare, that’s fine. Of course, longer sessions will allow you to relax more and get into a deeper meditative state. “When people ask me how long to meditate, I just say, ‘Until the peace comes,’” says Allen. If you’re rushed, set a timer for as long as you can spare, but, ideally, you’ll meditate until you feel your body and mind let go. “I like 20 minutes,” says Allen, “which can let you get a really deep meditation, but still doesn’t take that long.”

If 20 minutes seems like a lot, and more time than you can spend “doing nothing,” take a moment to consider how much time you already spend scrolling through pictures on Instagram (of people you don’t even know…).

The Best Morning Meditation Routine for Clearing Your Head

Allen’s morning routine is as follows: Wake up, drink coffee, run three to four miles, shower, dress, and meditate. Contrary to what you might believe about coffee, Allen says it helps him meditate. “People think you shouldn’t be wide awake when you meditate, but don’t confuse sleeping with meditation,” he says. “You can have a present and energized mind while being relaxed and dialed in—and that’s the state you’ll find you get to with practice. Your mind is very active and present, sharp and clear.”

Allen says that using caffeine to aid meditation is a practice that long predates Starbucks. He points to a legend of a bodhisattva whose monk disciples kept falling asleep while meditating. “So he ripped his eyelids off and threw them on the ground, and from them grew green tea leaves,” says Allen. The bodhisattva then brewed tea from the leaves and served it to the monks before they meditated so that they stayed awake and focused.

Of course, it goes without saying that Allen doesn’t advise drinking tea made from eyelids, and cautions that caffeine (er, from any source) may not work for you as well as it does for him, so pre-meditation coffee is optional.

At any rate, when you’re ready to meditate, follow these steps.

1. Get quiet.

Get away from noise, distractions, and electronics. However, particular kinds of music can be helpful, such as binaural beats—music that directs one tone into one ear and a different tone into the other. The difference in the frequency of the two tones stimulates your brain and guides it to the state of mind the music is designed to lead you toward. There are binaural beat tracks for various different goals, such as better sleep or relaxation, and Allen sells them on his website. Binaural beat music may seem strange, but it doesn’t sound that way. Tracks are usually packaged as nature sounds, such as falling rain, and are pleasant to listen to.

Allen recommends the Opening Eye beat on his site for beginning meditators, which is $5 (but you can use the code word “Astral” for a discount).

2. Get comfy.

Find a comfortable position to sit in. You could be in a chair, on your sofa, or on the floor. Allen recommends the half-lotus position—sitting on a pillow with legs crossed in front of you, one foot resting on the opposite thigh and the other foot tucked under (you’ve seen it in yoga class). Keep a long spine and rest your hands on your knees.

If you suffer from lower-back pain, an even more comfortable posture might be seiza, a Japanese style of sitting where you kneel on the floor and sit on your heels (again, place a pillow under your butt for greater comfort).

3. Breathe.

Close your eyes and try to relax. Take slow, deep breaths, and do your best to keep your mind on the rhythm of your breathing. Of course your thoughts will wander, but Allen promises that the more you practice the easier it will become to keep your mind clear. When you catch yourself thinking, “just acknowledge that the thought got your attention and it will go away,” says Allen. Gently refocus on your breathing. Trying hard to think of something else or exploring that train of thought will only make it worse. “There’s a Zen saying,” says Allen, “that you can invite your thoughts in, but don’t serve them tea.”

Most importantly, don’t get frustrated and think you’re wasting your time. Keep breathing and trying to relax, and you’ll improve over time.

4. Let go.

Allen says that you should breathe in meditation the way you do when you sleep—fluidly and softly. You need to relax every muscle, and this goes double if your main goal with meditation in the first place is to reduce stress and promote peace of mind.

“You can gamify it a bit,” says Allen. “With every exhale, try to relax a little bit more. See how much you can let go.” As you relax some muscles, you’ll become aware that others are tight, so direct your attention to them and release them in sequence. “Allow your armor to melt off,” says Allen, and you’ll begin to feel like you’re floating.

5. Ask questions.

When you feel your mind has quieted down and you’ve relaxed physically, you can start to use meditation for its greatest purpose—to become enlightened. Maybe not to the level of the Buddha, but at least about your own life and things you want to achieve.

“I start to ask my own mind questions,” says Allen. For example, “What do I need to achieve today to fulfill my long-term goal? What are the next steps I need to take to sort out this situation? How do I need to realign my focus to better achieve my goals?”

Then wait and see what floats to the surface.

The breathing you’ve already done will help to clear away the normal chatter in your head, so it should be much easier, at this point, for you to think about what you want to work on objectively and with focus. “It’s like dialing into a radio station you want to hear instead of just getting static,” says Allen. “The resolutions will come forward.”

While questions are coming up, don’t try to actively answer them or problem-solve. The more you try to “grab” at thoughts and hold them down, the harder it will be to let your subconscious thoughts come out. It may sound a little esoteric, but think of your mind as a mirror (ever notice that thinking is called “reflection?”) When it’s racing and unfocused, the mirror is shattered, and you’re scrambling to pick up fragments of thought that you can never piece together into a whole. You can’t reform the mirror to get a clear image of who you are and what’s in front of you.

“By moving the intellectual mind out of the way,” says Allen, “we allow a unification of elements that eventually becomes conscious thought. Those fragments come together and the mirror becomes unbroken. You’ve been reflecting on pieces of a shattered mirror within you, but when you let those pieces become one, you can see the image.”

For more tips from Allen, see our previous guide to meditation HERE.

The post The Ultimate Morning Meditation Routine for Relaxation appeared first on Onnit Academy.

See for yourself:

Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, was prescribed Prozac shortly before he took 32 lives at the school.

James Holmes, who gunned down moviegoers in Aurora, Colorado, used Zoloft.

Adam Lanza, the 20 year-old Sandy Hook Elementary School killer, had been on Lexapro and Celexa.

Dylann Roof, who opened fire in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, had Suboxone—a narcotic—on him when he was arrested for trespassing a few months before.

And most recently, Stephen Paddock—the deadliest sniper of our time who left 58 dead and hundreds injured in Las Vegas—was discovered to be taking Valium.

The pattern in all these unconscionable acts that the media often fails to explore—and politicians prefer to avoid—is the killers’ use of widely-prescribed pharmaceutical drugs.

Look, the solution to end the kind of meaningless mass slaughter we’ve become all too familiar with in recent years won’t be a simple, singular effort. It will involve cooperation on every level, from looking at the access rights to particularly deadly weapons, to better mental healthcare and emotional processing techniques. Later in the article, you’re gonna read about some of the most promising of these practices the field of mental health has ever seen.

But the fact is, America has a serious drug problem. Far more people use prescription medication than own guns. In fact, the 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health revealed that 119 million Americans take prescription drugs—that’s 45% of the entire population, including children as young as 12. Of those, 19 million misuse these drugs, acquiring them from friends or relatives or taking more than they’re prescribed. The meds cited include painkillers, tranquilizers (counting anti-depressant and anti-anxiety pills), sedatives, and stimulants. You may know these drugs more colloquially as OxyContin, Xanax, Ambien, and Adderall, among many other names.

And while many of these are designed to prevent lapses in mental stability, they often have just the opposite effect, nudging disturbed people ever closer to their breaking points.

For the record, it is not fair to hold any kind of drug or brand solely responsible. Nor do we deny that judicious treatment with these medications has helped to improve lives in many cases. But with so much use and abuse in our midst, it’s negligent and foolish to not consider prescription drugs in the conversation about how to stop rampaging maniacs and the devastation they leave in their wake.

“Wait a minute,” you say. What are we suggesting? Suddenly snatch these products out of the hands of millions of people, many of whom are badly in need of some kind of medical intervention?

Of course not. Rather, let’s expand what the treatment options can be. More and more, science is confirming that psychedelic drugs—the ones our parents, teachers, and the government told us were ous—offer groundbreaking therapy to people with a wide array of mental illnesses. Isolated from plants in many cases, they can provide a safer alternative to conventional medications with fewer side effects. Clinical evidence is mounting that the use of psychedelics can help prevent violence and murder, and positively change the lives of people that our current medical system can’t effectively treat.

Read on, and see why the present medical paradigm is failing us, and how the alternative could bring an end to senseless tragedies like the one this past month in Las Vegas.

The Solution Is Part of the Problem

If you go to a doctor and say you feel depressed, anxious, or otherwise disturbed, you’re likely to get a prescription and be sent on your way. A study in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that as many as 57% of people with mental health problems are treated only with medication—no counseling, or stress management techniques are offered.

“In an ideal medical system, that person’s entire environment and social system would be evaluated,” says Dan Engle, M.D., a board-certified psychiatrist and neurologist and author of The Concussion Repair Manual. “But it’s a lot easier to prescribe a medication than it is to dredge up wounds [in therapy] from who knows how far back… Medications are designed to anesthetize people. They’re a superficial bandage that takes care of the active bleeding but doesn’t address the core-level issue.”

Worse yet, the drugs that are being prescribed tend to come with side effects that are at least as dangerous as the conditions they’re intended to treat.

Rx Drugs Can Cause Violence

A review of FDA data found that, between 2004 and 2009, 484 drugs triggered cases of serious adverse events. Of these, 31 drugs had a “disproportionate” association with violent behavior, and accounted for nearly 80% of 1,937 cases of violence toward others reported during the nearly six-year period. The worst offenders were varenicline (a smoking cessation aid, commonly sold as Chantix), antidepressants, sedatives/hypnotics, and stimulants used to treat ADHD.

Look at the numbers a little closer and it gets even scarier. People on antidepressants were determined to be 8.4 times more likely to commit a violent act than those on any other psychoactive drug. For users of the highly popular antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac) in particular, the increased likelihood was 10.9 times. And just when you thought quitting smoking was hard enough without drugs, taking varenicline was found to make you 18 times more likely to lash out violently.

“Drugs artificially manipulate neurotransmitters in the system,” says Engle. “If you have deficiencies in serotonin and dopamine, for example, you have depression. Now if all of a sudden you raise those levels through pharmaceuticals, that can create agitation.” Engle says this is why antidepressants increase the risk of violence. “Somebody who has chronic depression and wants to kill himself or shoot up his school, he’s now on a med that gives him more energy, motivation, and fuel for that fire. Now he’s got a greater ability to act on those thoughts.”

In the days after his attack, The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that Stephen Paddock had been prescribed Valium (diazepam)—an anti-anxiety med—back in June. Diazepam is a sedative/hypnotic drug, and therefore intended to chill a tense person out. But sometimes it has the opposite effect. Diazepam has been frequently linked to violent behavior because it can disinhibit the brain’s ability to regulate aggression, in effect bolstering the very behavior it’s often prescribed to mitigate. And this isn’t the first time it’s made headlines for its connection to a famous shooting. In 1981, John Hinckley, Jr., the would-be assassin who shot President Reagan, White House Press Secretary James Brady, and others, was on diazepam. On behalf of the victims, a Washington D.C. attorney later sued the doctor who prescribed Hinckley’s dose for negligence and misdiagnosis.

There’s another way Valium could have contributed to Paddock’s crime. Denis Patterson, M.D., a Reno-based, board-certified pain medicine specialist, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that diazepam is often used by marksmen to calm their nerves. He even speculated that Paddock might have “made up symptoms for a doctor so he could use the drug to make him more relaxed in the moment for better shooting.”

If current medical treatments risk making sick people dangerously worse, maybe it’s time we looked at fighting fire with water—reducing illness and disease without bolstering a patient’s potential for destructive behavior.

What Are Psychedelics?

Psychedelic is a term that carries a lot of different definitions and connotations. In the medicinal context they are used to describe compounds that alter cognition and perception, temporarily changing the way you think, see, and hear—coinciding with what many experience as a heightened level of consciousness. Psychedelics include ayahuasca, DMT, LSD, MDMA, mescaline, and psilocybin. Many of them are found in plants (in the case of psilocybin, “magic mushrooms”) that grow wildly and have been used throughout human history in religious ceremonies and for therapeutic purposes.

Half a century ago, the government studied them extensively for their potential as part of psychotherapy treatment. However, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, a non-profit organization that works to reform drug laws and educate the public about safe drug use, when they were embraced by the counterculture movement of the 1960s, psychedelics became symbols of “youthful rebellion, social upheaval, and political dissent,” leading to their criminalization. Fortunately, laws are changing and psychedelics are being studied again.

Unlike pharmaceutical drugs, “psychedelics help us get in touch with truth,” says Engle. “They don’t anesthetize us from truth—that truth being our subconscious material. They help us see things from long ago that often we forgot or repressed.” The desire to create pain for others, he says, comes from pain a traumatized individual has dealt with in his/her own past. Because of our psychological defense mechanisms, we can’t always access it and address it, but psychedelics can help.

“It’s like if you’re looking through binoculars and it’s really blurry,” says Engle. “You have to adjust the aperture so you can see clearly. Psychedelic medicines help you get clear. At the same time, they can often calm the fear centers of the brain so that we’re not so reactive and it doesn’t feel so overwhelming to recall these past traumas. MDMA in particular lets you have more of an objective, observing ego that can let you look at things with less emotional intensity—so you can actually understand them better. Then we can rectify and heal them.”

Are Psychedelics Dangerous?

Pop culture typically depicts psychedelic users as junkies in desperate need of a fix. Many an after-school special has been devoted to likening psychedelics to hard drugs like crack and heroin, ultimately driving the user insane. He hallucinates that he can fly—so the cliché goes—and then jumps off a building to prove it.

Of course, that’s utterly ridiculous. Sure, people have had bad psychedelic trips, but, if you’ll recall the statistics above, dangerous abuse can occur with any drug—while responsible use leads to entirely different results. A review of studies on adverse reactions to psychedelics from the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease states that clinical psychedelic treatment employs drugs that are very different from the kind sold on the street (which are of “unknown purity” and are commonly taken in much higher doses). The paper concluded that when they’re used for medical purposes and under professional supervision, “it appears that the incidence of adverse reactions to psychedelic drugs is low.”

There’s plenty more where that came from. A study specifically on psilocybin from the journal Pharmacology revealed “no cause for concern” that administration of the drug to healthy subjects was hazardous. Additionally, the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs published that there was “no evidence of injurious effects of ayahuasca on adolescents.” And if you’re worried about how psychedelics affect the body and brain over the long haul, see this review in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Looking at residual toxicity, it noted that literature on patients taking LSD “suggests that there are few, if any, long-term neuropsychological deficits attributable to hallucinogen use.” Furthermore, a study in Biological Psychiatry found that a lifetime of peyote (mescaline) use among Native Americans who took it in religious settings had no negative effect on their psychology or cognition.

To be absolutely clear, this article is not a recommendation to use psychedelics—or any other drugs—that are procured illegally. Most experts do not advise experimenting with them recreationally or outside the context of a qualified medical treatment program. But it is important to know the facts. Relaying information about their many benefits when used therapeutically will help the medical establishment to hasten the adoption of psychedelics as another valid form of healing, and people who haven’t found relief through any other means may finally gain some.

How Psychedelics Can Help

Drugs that change a person’s perspective can massively impact how that person views the world and his/her place in it. Mental health experts agree that people who turn to violence usually feel isolated and victimized by some trauma in their past. They lose connection with people who care about them and in turn stop caring about others as well as themselves. Psychedelics can help restore feelings of closeness and well-being, promoting empathy where there was indifference.

Anxiety and Depression

A mounting body of evidence indicates that psilocybin could be revolutionary for treating emotional distress. The Heffter Research Institute, a non-profit organization that supports research on psychedelics to alleviate suffering, has spearheaded three promising Phase II studies on psilocybin and cancer patients. (Phase II trials are done after a drug has been determined to be safe, and precede Phase III, where the drug is compared to other medications that are already accepted for use.)

In 2016, researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that a single dose of psilocybin reduced measures of anxiety and depression among cancer sufferers while increasing their optimism and perceptions about quality of life and the meaning of life. Six months later, 80% of the subjects had sustained these changes and more than 80% claimed a greater sense of well-being and life satisfaction. (Their observers noted the same, indicating that the patients didn’t just think they were doing better—their improvement was obvious to others as well.) Heffter’s corresponding studies at New York University and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center from 2016 and 2011, respectively, showed similar results on anxiety and depression in cancer patients at lower doses

PTSD

The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is a non-profit research and education organization. After 30-plus years of championing MDMA research, it announced this past August that the FDA granted the drug Breakthrough Therapy Designation for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This brings MDMA one step closer to being legitimized as a prescription drug that can be used to treat large populations—such as our military veterans.

It was only a matter of time. MDMA has been shown to provide significant relief to PTSD-sufferers in several clinical trials. In MAPS’ Phase II trials (the step that won over the FDA), 61% of 107 subjects no longer qualified for PTSD two months after just three sessions of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. In a follow-up one year later, 68% were CURED (trauma levels reduced below the medical threshold). All of the participants had chronic, treatment-resistant PTSD, and had suffered from the disorder for an average of 18 years.

Why does it work so well? MDMA produces feelings of safety, empathy, and heightened emotional insight, potentially giving a traumatized brain a kickstart.

For more info on psilocybin and MDMA, click here:
MDMA vs. Psilocybin

Socialization

A study in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs compared Brazilian teenagers who took ayahuasca as part of their religious ceremonies to a control group of regular teens. Both groups were found to be healthy, normal adolescents, but researchers noted several interesting differences. The ayahuasca users seemed “more responsible, respectful, and concerned about the welfare of others.” They tended to be “less confrontational” than the control group, and appeared to have a better quality home life. They also tended to have closer relationships with their fathers and were more optimistic.

You can surely chalk some of these advantages up to the close-knit community established by their church, but the ayahuasca teens rates of promiscuity and use of other drugs wasn’t significantly different from that of the other young adults. The researchers concluded: “We might expect that given the destructive consequences of youthful drug use in contemporary society, the [ayahuasca teens] would lag far behind their peers in a number of different dimensions of sociability, honesty, studiousness, etc… the qualitative data is quite revealing in that the teens appear to be healthy, thoughtful, considerate, and bonded to their families.”

Some people don’t have anyone they’re close to. In these cases, it would at least help to not feel like the world is against you, and that seems to be what psilocybin does. A 2016 German study had subjects play an online ball-tossing game while on the drug. The game is designed to make the player think he/she is playing with other participants who can control how often the gets passed, but the programmer controls it. The ball is kept away from the player on purpose to see how he/she reacts. Brain imaging revealed that the psilocybin players—despite being left out of the game—had significantly less activation in regions of the brain that process feelings of social rejection. In other words, they were excluded—knew it—and didn’t mind. Further, the psilocybin group said they felt connected to the game and the other players regardless.

The study authors concluded that “alterations in the sense of self after Psilocybin administration are important for changes in social interaction processing… which suggests that the sense of self can profoundly impact the experience of interpersonal relationships.” They expanded that psilocybin may increase empathy for others and allow one to better identify with them, making future “negative experiences more bearable.” They continued that this facet of the drug could help facilitate a better relationship between a patient and his/her therapist, allowing the patient to feel more secure in the environment and be more willing to discuss painful experiences.

A 2011 study in the Journal of Psychopharmacology looked at psilocybin’s potential to affect personality changes in adults (the researchers cite evidence that core personality traits are “predominately stable” after age 30). Subjects were administered the drug and evaluated on different categories of personality—neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Ultimately, the users reported significant increases in openness, defined as the ability to use their imaginations, appreciate aesthetics, experience a wide range of emotions, play with abstract ideas, be tolerant of other people’s lifestyles, and take interest in developing new hobbies. Those who had “mystical experiences” during their session maintained higher levels of openness for more than a year afterward.

Addiction

Before LSD became maligned for its street use among rebellious hippies, research demonstrated that it showed unprecedented rates of abstinence among alcoholics, even gaining endorsement from Alcoholics Anonymous. The findings of a 2012 meta-analysis indicate that a single dose of LSD—in the context of an alcoholism treatment program—is associated with a decrease in alcohol misuse.

There are similar findings with psilocybin. A 2015 study in the Journal of Psychopharmacology showed that alcoholics who entered a treatment program did not make much progress for the first four weeks, but when they were given psilocybin, abstinence increased significantly and was maintained at a follow-up at 36 weeks. There were no significant treatment-related adverse effects.

Psilocybin may also serve as a much more effective alternative to varenicline, the generic form of Chantix that has been linked with violent behavior. In 2014, research from Johns Hopkins University discovered that longtime smokers who had previously tried and failed to quit had an 80% abstinence rate six months after combining cognitive behavioral therapy and psilocybin treatments. While varenicline is widely regarded as the most effective smoking cessation drug, its success rate is only 35%; nicotine replacement and behavioral therapies average less than 30%.

Acts Of Violence

In October of 2017, the Journal of Psychopharmacology released a study based on data collected by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health between 2002 and 2014. Looking at over 480,000 respondents, those who used psychedelics appeared to be at a 22% less risk of being arrested for a violent crime in the past year. (FYI, the lessened risk of larceny or theft was 27%.) At the same time, lifetime use of other types of illicit drugs was associated with increased odds of criminal behavior.

The study’s lead author, University of Alabama Associate Professor Peter Hendricks, told the press, “Our findings suggest the protective effects of classic psychedelic use are attributable to genuine reductions in antisocial behaviour rather than reflecting improved evasion of arrest.” His co-author, Zach Walsh, co-director for the University of British Columbia’s Center for the Advancement of Psychological Science and Law, added that “the experiences of unity, positivity and transcendence that characterize the psychedelic experience may have lasting benefits that translate into real-world consequences.”

These findings echo a 2016 study done by the two authors that examined recidivism and drug use among U.S. ex convicts. More than 300 former inmates (all of whom had histories of substance abuse) were followed for an average of six years after their release. Those that didn’t take psychedelic drugs (42%) were arrested again for domestic violence. Those who indulged in LSD, MDMA, and psilocybin, however, were less likely to hurt their loved ones—only 27% faced the same charges.

In the press release, Hendricks suggested that psychedelics may curb violence by “providing profoundly meaningful spiritual experiences that highlight what matters most… Often, people are struck by the realization that behaving with compassion and kindness toward others is high on the list of what matters.”

According to Walsh, the positive socializing impact psychedelics have “may be particularly beneficial to groups that are frequently marginalized and isolated, such as the incarcerated men who participated in this study.”

“While not a clinical trial, this study, in stark contrast to prevailing attitudes that view these drugs as harmful, speaks to the public health potential of psychedelic medicine,” says Walsh. “With proper dosage, set, and setting, we might see even more profound effects.”

There’s evidence that psychedelics can reduce suicide risk too. Researcher Elena Argento analyzed data from a four-year long study of 766 female sex workers in Vancouver—a population at high risk for suicide due to social stigma, psychological distress, and risk of violence. The study had the women complete a survey that covered whether they had used drugs, and if they experienced suicidal thoughts in recent months. The women who had used psychedelics at some point in their lives were 60% less likely to have had suicidal thoughts.

Other Alternative Therapies

Psychedelic meds aren’t the only promising alternatives to the current leading pharmaceuticals. There are other well-established treatments for psychological problems that have been either wrongly maligned or are slow to gain acceptance in the medical community. We’d like to see more attention paid to the following.

CBD

Cannabidiol (CBD) is a natural compound found in the cannabis plant. It’s from the same family as marijuana but doesn’t have the same psychoactive effect. Now legal in 16 states for medical use, it’s been shown to mitigate seizures in people with epilepsy and contain anti-psychotic properties. A 2012 study on schizophrenic patients in Translational Psychiatry pitted CBD against the prescription anti-psychotic drug Amisulpride. Both drugs proved to be equally effective, but CBD did its job with significantly fewer side effects.

The Ketogenic Diet

We wrote extensively about the benefits of cutting carbs from your diet HERE. In addition to all the physical problems the ketogenic diet can help alleviate, it may improve mental ones as well. This year, Schizophrenia Research published two cases studies showing that a low-carb nutrition approach reduced symptoms, including delusions, in people who had tried multiple prescription drugs in the past to no avail. When the subjects went off their ketogenic diets, their conditions worsened, and when they went back on they improved again.

Floatation Therapy

If you’ve ever enjoyed floating on your back in water, imagine what it would be like to do it in outer space. That’s kind of what floatation therapy feels like: You enter a dark room and lie down in a tank filled with epsom salt and water that’s heated to the same temperature as your body, so you’re hardly aware that it’s there. Robbed of the stimulus of anything in your surrounding environment, slipping into a meditative state becomes easier. Stress is reduced and replaced with an endorphin rush that can have a powerful and positive effect on mental state.

In a 2016 study from Karlstad University in Sweden, subjects with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) who floated saw reduced symptoms, including depression, along with improvements in sleep and emotional regulation. A 2014 study from the journal BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine had 65 people do two weekly float sessions. After seven weeks, the stress levels among the subject were cut in half, and they reported feeling less anxiety and greater optimism.

The fight to further research and awareness of psychedelic medicines needs your support. Organizations like Heffter and MAPS rely on donations to fund new studies—such as Phase III trials that could finally get psilocybin and MDMA FDA-approval for use as a treatment for depression, PTSD, and more. The potential to cure millions of needless suffering—from our veterans to, perhaps, your friends and family members—is at hand. For more information, and to find out how you can help, see our short film below and visit TheCureIsNear.com.

The post Can Psychedelics Prevent Tragedy? appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Our mind has the ability to turn any heaven into a hell and any hell into a heaven. I’ve seen miserable men walk manicured gardens in the Hamptons and joyous souls plod barefoot in the poorest slums of Kenya.

All of us have experienced times when the external world yawned with perfection, but inner turmoil kept us locked in a prison of our own creation. The great mystics place mastery of the mind as the utmost priority on a path to happiness or enlightenment. It is also one of the hardest things to do.

Think of the mind as a wild stallion. You can’t just ask timidly, “Hey, Mr. Stallion, would you please do exactly what I want?”

To be the master, you must assert yourself as something greater than the mind – the essential self that resides in stillness and presence. I call this force, consciousness. As the steady and loving hand of consciousness, you can bend the mind to your ultimate will.

Here are nine helpful exercises to achieve the greatest of all feats: mindfulness. NO supplements, drugs, or medicine required.

Mindful Exercise #1: Yoga

A lot of people view yoga as stretching. While stretching is part of the practice, the magic of yoga is the utilization of breath to push through self-imposed limitations. As you practice, you start to hear your mind squealing, “that’s far enough. I can’t do that. What are we doing later?” Anything to take you out of the intensity of the present moment.

But you stay steady with your intent. You focus on your breath. You release stray thoughts with each exhale. You bring in life force with each inhale. You drown the fire of the mind with a generous ocean of respiration and perspiration.

Consistent tug and pull of breath. Resistance and release continues for about an hour, and finally at the end of the session, the mind is a quiet and humble servant. During Shivasana, the final, you rest full force in consciousness.

Mindful Exercise #2: Meditation

There are dozens of styles of meditation and all of them work. However, you will find that some of them work better for you. Here are a few that have worked best for me.

Open Focus – The preferred method of Joe Dispenza. It is a process of relaxing your focus to an empty space in your body. It starts with space behind your eyes and expands from there. An interesting and potent technique, try fixing your focus on nothing in space.

Transcendental (TM) – Popularized by The Beatles in the 60s, the advantage of TM meditation, according to popular opinion, is that an amateur can reach the same state as a master within weeks of starting the practice. Repeat a simple chant, distracting the mind long enough for consciousness to emerge.

Vipassana – This form of meditation asks you to focus on your breath as it passes the threshold of your nostrils. Gradually, you expand this awareness to permeate your whole body.

LVK Meditation – This meditation has been 100% proven to turn you into a Care Bear. Focus on all the love and kindness in your heart while loving the world so much that your mind can’t handle it anymore. This will result in your heart leading your mind.

Guided – Guided meditations are a great way to start and have merit for practitioners of all experience. A vocal guide, either live or via recording will take you to a deep, inner quiet with a series of cues.

Sacred Silence – One of the most comprehensive and effective techniques, this sequence starts with focusing on your breath, much like Vipassana. Gradually, it moves to flexing and releasing parts of your body,  followed by a sequence of visualizations. Lastly, it anchors the meditative state with a trigger breath that conditions your body to eventually be able to enter this state on command. I have my own guided version available for download here.

Biofeedback – One of the recent players in the meditation game is a biofeedback device called the Muse. It measures brainwave activity and plugs into an iPhone app. The more relaxed you get, the more peaceful a nature scene on your phone becomes. Spikes in beta activity or distractions kick up the wind and ruin your peaceful setting. Similar to real life!

“In meditation, we move not just from conscious mind to subconscious mind, but also from selfish to selfless…from being some place to being no place, from being in time to being in no time…Meditation takes us from survival to creation; from separation to connection; from imbalance to balance; and from the limiting emotions of fear, anger and sadness to the expansive emotions of joy, freedom and love.”
– Joe Dispenza

Mindful Exercise #3: Floatation (Sensory Deprivation)

Floatation tanks, also known as sensory deprivation tanks, operate by eliminating all of your sensory input, tricking the ever-perceiving mind into lapsing into a hypnotic coma.

It goes kind of like this: You enter an enclosed hot tub of sorts, filled with 900 lbs. of epsom salt. The water is only a foot or less deep, but because of all the salt, you float easily.

The temperature is the same temperature as the outside of your skin, so after time, it becomes hard to determine where you end and where the water starts. That’s the point! When the door to the chamber closes, there is no light, no sound, and no smell.

In everyday life, your watchdog mind is very pre-occupied with analyzing sensory data to keep you alive. When all that sensory data stops, it goes on a lunch break. Here is an excerpt on a post made the first time I went floating at Zero Gravity Institute:

Capital ‘M’ Mind fussed around for the first 10 minutes or so, but then he got sleepy. All of a sudden, my authentic self locked in like a Greyhound preying on a rabbit. As my body floated blissfully in what seemed like outer space, I was able to intentionally explore the key issues in my life.

A razor scythe of clarity cut through the chaff of emotional hurdles and preconceptions, and I arrived at peaceful resolutions. I could tune into the living memory of family who had passed away, and that has only possible for me in the deepest meditation.

Floating also has a host of ancillary health benefits. A 2001 study found that floating had the ability to reduce chronic pain, increase optimism, and decrease anxiety and depression. As a bonus, participants fell asleep easier following floatation tank treatment and experienced a higher quality of sleep. (source)

The key is to remain conscious inside the tank to maximize benefits. The sweet spot is that theta range of brain function at 6 to 8 Hz which is somewhere between waking and sleeping.

Mindful Exercise #4: Hyperoxygenation

Utilized by Kundalini yoga practitioners for thousands of years, a new school of hyperoxygenation practice was developed by Dr. Stan Grof in the 80s. Holotropic breathing – also called Shamanic breathing – creates a temporary surplus of oxygen in the blood.

This oxygen crosses the blood-brain barrier, suppressing normal thought patterns and allowing consciousness to emerge. These practices are best in a guided setting for maximum effect. One of the safest modalities available, hyperoxygenation has no known injuries, (this type of breath work).

The first time I tried Shamanic breathing, I was stunned. As a man who has explored the psychedelic pharmacopeia, I was expecting something really mild. This is not how it went down! After pushing through about 20 minutes of serious huffing, I saw a crystal clear vision of my eternal self staring back in my eyes. It was one of the most powerful moments in my life.

Mindful Exercise #5: Fasting

Many wisdom traditions from around the world demand that acolytes complete a fast before receiving any teaching. Depriving the mind of sugar and B-vitamins like nicotinic acid puts the watchdog brain in chill mode.

Fasting isn’t fun, but neither is being bullied by your mind. Once you get past the first day or two, it is much easier from there.

If you are looking for a guided fast to follow, check out this reboot.

Mindful Exercise #6: Binaural Beats

Binaural beats are an auditory biohack that facilitates entrainment to optimal brainwave status. Just as neurons firing are measured with frequency so too, is sound. The technique to create binaural beats is to put one sound in stereo left at one frequency, and then the same sound at stereo right at another frequency. This means that there is an almost imperceptible difference in sound coming into your left and right ear.

Hence the term bi – meaning two and – aural, “of the ear.” This technique creates an auditory phenomenon called beating. The size of the gap in frequency between the left and right ear will be the frequency of the beating. This is the target frequency for your brainwave entrainment.

Often times white noise i.e. rain is used in conjunction with these tones to help relax the mind and put it in a more malleable state. The result is the ability to target a variety of different brainwave states to yield varied benefits.

One uncontrolled pilot study showed that after 60 days of delta wave (deeply relaxing) binaural beats, there was a decrease in trait anxiety (p = 0.004), an increase in quality of life (p = 0.03), and a decrease in insulin-like growth factor-1 (p = 0.01) and dopamine (p = 0.02) observed between pre- and post intervention measurements. (source)

Another study, this time with a control group, showed significant reduction in anxiety for preoperative patients listening to binaural beats prior to surgery. (source)

The technology is definitely on the forefront of biohacking, and I have found these beats to be particularly useful in mastering the beta wave clutter of the mind. So useful in fact, I got together with sound technician, Cory Allen, to create my own.

My favorite track is called “Earth Peace“, and combines live recordings of Texas rain with Tibetan singing bowls.

Mindful Exercise #7: Nature

Contemplation in nature is the original form of meditation. Have you ever hiked to the top of a majestic mountain? Sat at the foot of a deserted waterfall? In these places, it is far easier to quiet the mind. Beyond the sense of awe it might inspire, this may have something to do with the frequency of the Earth itself.

Meditative states are generally found in frequencies between 6 to 10 Hz (theta and alpha). The frequency of the Earth, called the Schumann resonance, sits at 7.83 Hz. Babies sync their heartbeats to their mother. If we can sync our brain to the frequency of our great Mother, we’ll be on the right track!

A specific tactic used by Native American trained tracker and author, Tom Brown, is to relax the focus of the eyes to allow for extreme peripheral vision. This not only reduces the focus on any one thing, but it also allows all visible input to filter into the mind at once, without the brain actively seeking to register it. I have found this a very interesting technique to experiment with.

Mindful Exercise #8: Dance

Dance is a universal cultural phenomenon. People dance to celebrate. People dance to connect with the opposite sex. People dance for ceremony. In ceremonial dance, like the Navajo sun dance, dancing is the vehicle to induce a deep trancelike state.

But in our culture, because of its prevalence as a form of social expression, dancing to create a meditative state is under-represented.

I was first introduced to the term “ecstatic dancing” in my 30s. Just to clear things up for all you ravers out there, ecstatic dancing is not the same as dancing on ecstasy! In an ecstatic dance, the dancers are sometimes blindfolded to ensure the performance aspect is removed from the mind.

Participants are encouraged to move completely and freely with their body, surrendering entirely to the music. Some movements may not even resemble anything we would normally consider dancing. The goal is to reach a state that some psychologists refer to as superfluidity – the ultimate form of flow state.

What is interesting is that once you release the mind from concerning itself with how you look, your body comes alive. Every cell seems to wake up and the mind takes a huge step back. For many people, this can be a very cathartic process as they release the somatic memories of shame and judgment that we place upon the movement of our body.

One particular study compared dancing to mindfulness meditation, and found that 97 percent of participants chose to receive a voucher for dance rather than meditation. The study found that both activities reduced depression, but only dance reduced stress levels.

Mindful Exercise #9: Choice

Ultimately, we are in control of our mind. As much as we would like to think otherwise, we are the boss. I remember this one time, I mentioned I had a song stuck in my head to my good friend Bode Miller and he just looked at me and told me to “get it out.” It was a stark reminder that we are indeed in control of our mind.

Recently I heard a speech from a man who quit his opiate addiction, and he offered a ‘helpful’ tip for those seeking to quit. He said, “Take all of your opiates and put them in plain sight. Then don’t take another pill.” That was a mic drop moment for me.

If you want to still the mind, choose to still the mind. It’s a move we always have available but seldom use to its full potential.

Nine to Nirvana: 9 Mindfulness Exercises for Mastering the Mind

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