 Meditation has become increasingly popular in recent years, and it’s not hard to see why! This practice can reduce stress, anxiety, and depression—helping you feel better both physically and mentally. It can also boost your immune system, improve your sleep quality, and increase overall happiness. While meditation is powerful on its own, there are some things you should know before you begin meditating to ensure that your practice is safe and effective.
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 The latest release from Meditation Treks is out on mp3 album, including Spotify, iTunes, and all the usual streaming providers. Binaural Nature Meditation is the culmination of years of field recordings and months of editing and mastering. The first four tracks are specific meditations recorded from Mother Nature: The rainforest of Costa Rica, The thunderstorm of Texas, The Waves of the Caribbean, and the La Fortuna Waterfall. As if this 5 hours of nature sounds wasn't enough, the album includes four additional tracks: Sleep, Relax, Create, and Focus, which are edited versions of the first four tracks + binaural beats for those brainwave states in the title. The last track is a mix of the nature sounds.
 Guided Meditation Treks is proud to announce the next album: Healing Breathwork. The culmination of years of life experience with this type of meditation modality and a 4-level training from my mentor on the subject, David Elliott, this is the 5th album from Guided Meditation Treks. The topics for this album go deep into both the light and dark elements of our lives that may need healing.
The first track, Stepping Into Your Power, reminds us of the inherent power we have as a soul in this incarnation to "do what we came here to do," and helps us shed any layers of doubt that have been imposed upon us from society. The second track, Grieving and Celebrating a Loss, allows us to take any given specific instance of "loss" in our own life and evaluate where we are in the grieving process, then move on to the next state until (in time) we reach acceptance. The most charged track of the album is Healing Sexual Abuse, where we cultivate space to honestly deal with and move beyond the emotions and situations that arise from having an episode of sexual abuse in our life. Finally, the album ends with a light exercise around Abundance, where we connect the inherent abundance within ourselves to the abundance which surrounds us to create a circuit of manifestation. In each track, the listener is instructed to practice a specific form of pranayama breathwork, which is the featured active meditation of this album. The album was written, produced, and recorded by Russell Eric Dobda, and is now available on CDBaby, iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, and other music distribution sites worldwide. As with all of the GMT albums, there will be an app version for Android and iOS, which will be released later in 2019. Check out the dedicated page for this album to hear a sample and read more detail about the work.  Due to recent changes in the iOS store, as well as feedback from users, the Guided Meditation Treks V1 and V2 apps for iOS have undergone an upgrade. Previously, these apps each came with one meditation, with the option to purchase 3 more. With this change, the app now includes ALL FOUR of the meditations at one price. All previous users of the app will be "grandfathered in" and can receive all of the meditations for free, simply by upgrading to the latest version of the app. As an added token of gratitude, I will be keeping the price at $2.99 until the end of January, at which point there will be a price increase to better keep price parity with the audio-only album versions of these apps, which are generally $9.99, in alignment with most audio albums these days. I'm not exactly sure what the new iOS app price will be, but if you want to get all of the meditations on each volume for under $3, then make your purchase before February 1. Also, I have made the code for these apps open source on GitHub (without the copyright audio of course). Thanks for your support!
Fortunately, I am currently in a nurturing and stable relationship with an amazing, caring, and beautiful soul. However, this hasn't always been the case. I've had a few break-ups, and I can tell you from experience that severing the cord was not always easy. Especially if you are a loving and caring person, it can be hard to let go of someone with whom you once shared everything in your life. I always set intentions around my break-ups to cut loose my former lovers in a way that is for the greatest good of the both of us. Once the realization is made that the world is a better place with us apart than together, the work begins to separate ties. This is not always easy, and in this blog, I present some practical methods and specific (free) meditations you can do to help the process...
 For those of us doing the "standard" meditation practice of sitting upright in silence with our eyes closed to observe ourselves, it's good to be aware of the position we take to do this. I've always personally been rather inflexible through my years, so I generally take the easy way out and allow my back to be supported by something as I meditate. I reckon that this is much better than not meditating at all.
That said, I do find it important to occasionally try stricter postures, and of course if I'm not meditating at home, it's a good opportunity to try different things as well. When I'm on the floor, I pretty much always have something keeping my butt off of the ground to relieve tension in my legs. Sometimes, I might even run a pillow across the underside of my knees to relieve tension there as well. My goal is to allow me to focus on my meditation instead of the pain of sitting awkwardly. Read some tips about Meditation Posture  I just got back from a 10-day retreat in Kaufman, Texas, where I learned teachings passed down for centuries from the man himself, Gautama Buddha. If learning to meditate like Buddha isn't a great marketing spin for a meditation retreat, I don't know what is! The seminar was a mind-blowing experience with its share of ups and downs. This is my story, and my take on the meditation technique of vipassana.
I am a strong believer in understanding and trying many different meditation disciplines to find the one(s) that work for you. This guest blog written by Diamond over at eHealthInformer outlines four of them.  Though meditation has been around for centuries, it's still only just starting to take off in the Western world. It first gained popularity in the West during the 1960s as culture changed with music and narcotic experimentation. The Beatles learned Transcendental Meditation from the Maharishi in Rishikesh, which changed their musical sound and lyrics meanings to be about spirituality and eastern philosophy.
Around this time other bands and influential people began learning and experimenting with meditation. However, since then meditation has spread deeply throughout Western culture and is now considered as standard as yoga or shisha pipes. Meditation is now used not only for spiritual connection but mind health, stress relief, developing focus and vision exercises. Not everyone wishes to use meditation for spiritual purposes, though that is the area the techniques were bred from. These four unique meditation practices are among the most effective and widely practiced to date. Using the information below you should be able to decide which is right for you and your desires.  My friend, Robin D Bruce, has released a new book called 40 Meditations: Stories Inspired by Yoga and Practices for Transformation, available now at Amazon. I can definitely vouch for this book, and I even helped do a little bit of grammar editing. Robin gives us 40 personal stories that arose through her experience with yoga and meditation. Some of them are touching; some of them are embarrassing; and some of them are downright hilarious. Then, each chapter ends with a meditation exercise and a journaling exercise. Robin has been doing this for over a decade, so there's plenty of good stories and great meditations in this book, and it will keep you in a zen state for a long time, that's for sure! Check it out now on Amazon!
 The idea of sitting in lotus pose even for 20 minutes can feel overwhelming…or boring. Even if you’re interested in achieving flow state, if you’re a typical high-achiever Type A personality, then you might think that sitting cross-legged and breathing deeply is a waste of precious time.If you’re nodding your head in agreement, there are two things you should know. First, if you think you’re too busy to meditate, you probably need meditation more than anyone! Secondly, meditation takes many forms—it isn’t all chanting and hanging out in rock gardens. Check out four ways you can reap the benefits of meditating even if it’s not your thing. Read More...
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