Top TED talks on Meditation

As we know that TED talks show is the best way to learn something new everyday from the best people around the world. There are lot of TED talks on mediation and mindfulness practices of meditation. Here is a list of my favourite talks on meditation and its impact on your daily routine life.

Mindfulness meditation is the best way to reduce stress in your daily routine without doing any extra effort. Even you do not need to sit in silent for the sake of doing meditation. Below talk is all about mindful meditation. One of the most popular mobile app Headspace founder Andy Puddicombe describes the transformative power of doing just that: Refreshing your mind for 10 minutes a day, simply by being mindful and experiencing the present moment. When is the last time you did absolutely nothing for 10 whole minutes? Not texting, talking or even thinking? Listen below talk from mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe.

Next talk is about breaking your bad habit through mindfulness or say mindful mediation. Do you want to quit a habit which you are trying to come out since a long but not able to stick your goal, listen to this TED talk from psychiatrist Judson Brewer. Can we break bad habits by being more curious about them? Judson Brewer studies the relationship between mindfulness and addiction — from smoking to overeating to all those other things we do even though we know they’re bad for us. Learn more about the mechanism of habit development and discover a simple but profound tactic that might help you beat your next urge to smoke, snack or check a text while driving.

Shawn Achor says if we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then our brains work even more successfully as we’re able to work harder, faster and more intelligently. In this fast-moving and very funny talk, psychologist Shawn Achor argues that, actually, happiness inspires us to be more productive. Watch this talk to know the secret of being happy.

Do you want happiness in your life? Obviously yes, there would be hardly a single person in this planet who doesn’t want to be happy but how you get happiness, what are those things which make you happy in true sense? Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard says we can train our minds in habits of well-being, to generate a true sense of serenity and fulfilment. According to Matthieu Ricard its very easy to be happy in true sense, listen below talk to figure out how.

In this constantly moving world is there any way to remain calm and peaceful? If you closely look at yourself or others, you will observe that everybody is running fast as there is some race which all of us want to win. But nobody knows in which race they are running. Since everyone is running so we are. We are surrounded with fast pace technology, high speed computers, electronic gadgets and lot more other stuff which is making our mind constantly working or thinking something every bit. We need to pause our mind and make ourself still for sometime to enjoy the life or environment around us. Renowned traveller Pico Iyer takes a look at the incredible insight that comes with taking time for stillness. In our world of constant movement and distraction, he teases out strategies we all can use to take back a few minutes out of every day, or a few days out of every season. He names it “Art of Stillness”.

I hope your enjoyed watching and listening these amazing TED talks. Let me know if you want to add any other talk in this list so that other people can learn and get benefited from this.

How to practice meditation technic – Mindfulness

If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things – that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. This special kind of meditation technic is called “mindfulness”.

Here how the technique “mindfulness” works and how to practice it –

Sit cross-legged in a quiet place, preferably on a low pillow or cushion to reduce strain on your back. Your back should be straight in such a way that it should not hurt you. Take deep breaths.
Close your eyes and listen to your inner monologue, the thoughts that spin through your mind all the time: home, work, office, travel, movie etc. Those thoughts are the chattering of your “monkey mind.” Don’t try to stop it from chattering, at least not yet. Instead just observe how it jumps from thought to thought. Do this for five minutes every day for a week.
After a week, without trying to silence your monkey mind, during the meditation, shift your attention to your “ox mind.” Your ox mind is the part of your brain that thinks slowly and quietly. It senses things around you. It doesn’t try to assign meaning to anything. It just sees, hears, and feels. Most people only really hear their ox mind when they experience a “breathtaking moment” that temporarily stops the monkey mind from chattering. However, even when your monkey mind is driving you crazy with blah blah or hush hush, your ox mind is still there, thinking its slow, deep thoughts.
Once you’re feeling more aware of your ox mind, ask it to start quieting your monkey mind down. What worked for me was imagining the monkey mind going to sleep due to the slow walking of the ox as it moves patiently along a road. Don’t get upset if your monkey mind keeps waking up. It’s a monkey, so it can’t help acting like one. However, you’ll find that, despite its protests, your monkey mind would rather give it rest and stop making all that tiring and tiresome noise.
As your monkey mind calms down, continue to shift your attention to your ox mind. Each breath will seem to take a long time. You’ll feel the air on your skin. You may feel your blood flowing through your body. If you open your eyes, the world will look brand new and even rather strange.
While it can take a while to get there, you’ll know you’re doing the exercise correctly when it seems as if no time has passed at all between when you started the timer and when it goes off. When you succeed at that, gradually increase the amount of time you spend each day. Weirdly, no matter how long you practice, it will seem as if no time has passed.

In my experience, daily practice of mindfulness has three valuable results:

First, it completely eliminates stress. While the stress may return, it’s starting from scratch and thus has less chance of snowballing into something unmanageable.

Second, it eliminates insomnia. When I was practicing this regularly, I was able to close my eyes and go to sleep within two or three seconds. That alone is worth the effort, in my view.

Third, and most important, it allows you to think more clearly and more creatively about everything happening in your own life. In my case, I used the sense of calm to extract myself from an unhealthy relationship and a job that made me miserable.

So, while I can’t promise that practicing mindfulness will make you as creative as Steve Jobs, I can promise from my own experience that mindfulness will create positive change in your life.

A Journey without Gadgets

Recently I had the most amazing and relaxing journey so far I remember in recent time. Around a week back on my family vacation I did the most memorable flight journey with my son. Why this journey was so special and worth talking about it? How this journey was different from my past trips? Why do I want to share this with everyone? I am sure these must be the questions in your mind while reading this, I will answer each one soon but before that I want to share something which I read in a book before starting my journey.

One day before my trip to Lucknow from Bangalore I was reading a book and was impressed with one line sentence “Savour Your Environment To Live Your Life Happily“. This one line made a big impact on me and made me think that how many times do we miss the present moment which we are living in worry of future or in regret of past. We actually miss to live in the present moment whether we are having breakfast/lunch or dinner, drinking coffee, talking to our partner, walking in the garden/road or travelling with our family. Try to observe that we do not live in current moment, our mind is always busy in thinking about future or must be in memory of past. So I decided to give my best to live in present moment and see if I notice any change, do I enjoy the current moment, do I feel good.

A Journey Without Gadgets. Next day family vacation started from Bangalore. I did my packing previous night which include all my gadgets; camera, phone, Ipod, Kindle, macbook, ear phone, selfie stick and other essential items required in the trip. Our first flight was from Bangalore to Lucknow and I decided to use this time with my family and specially with my son (Adi), this was Adi’s first flight when he can actually enjoy it, his all previous flights were mostly in his mamma’s lap or in stroller. Adi’s curiosity is increasing day by day as he is growing. I wanted to live this moment with him.

I saw my son’s reactions on almost every thing whether its Uber ride till airport, putting luggage on airport trolly, getting into the gates, passing a smile to police person, getting his boarding pass and so on. The moment I got into the Uber cab from home, I stopped checking my phone and during whole trip first time I did not use any gadget. Generally I browse songs on Ipod to listen my favourite playlist, clean up my phone by deleting old messages, docs, notes. I also browse offline videos or read books on my Kindle. But this time I just savour it every bit with my family. I savoured everything around me; Adi’s naughtiness, my coffee at airport, my fellow co-passengers and much more. I saw one lady must be in her sixties looking out her window in airplane, she was smiling alone quite often. Sometime she used to stare outside window for a long time and in between she used to smile; may be she was also savouring the present moment and her time alone, remembering good old days or may be she is excited to meet her loved ones at the end of this flight. Even without knowing her or talking to her I was happy to see her smiling. Someone has truly said that “happiness is hidden behind small things around you”.

My son Adi did not sleep for a single moment during whole journey and so did I. He was curious to know every thing around him; tray table, seat cover, seat handle, push button, seat belt, window shutter, light above his head, aircraft sound, crew announcement, pilot announcement, food served and so many other things. He asked so many questions and I just savoured that moment. I was smiling on his curiosity and his reaction on every answer.

I must say that this was the most amazing flight journey I had so far. I generally hate boring flight journeys; sitting at one one place, hearing same kind announcements, seeing same hand gestures of crew members. I used to plug my ear phones the moment I used to enter in flight, but this time it was different, I did not realize that I was sitting at same place and almost same sitting posture for last 2.5 hours. And when I landed in Lucknow (capital of Uttar Pradesh, a state in India), I was very relaxed, my mind was like I took a long deep sleep though I did not sleep a bit. Whole journey my mind was busy doing something at that moment. I asked my self why I am feeling so relaxed, light and fresh; because I lived in present moment, no thought about past, no worry about future, no phone, no music, no Kindle, no any other gadget. I lived in that moment with my son and family. I savoured the time, the meal, the journey and the place.

Art of savouring; give time yourself to savour the environment around you. When you are drinking a coffee; don’t just drink it while checking your emails; instead savour the coffee and its flavour. Savour the environment around you while drinking coffee, see the people around you. Savouring helps in relaxing your mind, it helps in keeping you in present moment, living the current moment and focusing on present thing. Its one kind of meditation where you focus on only one thing at a time, just one thing which you are doing in current moment.