It's already known that meditation offers an endless list of benefits to its practitioners, but what about some personal stories? Often, hearing from someone about how meditation specifically helped them personally can really help us see the benefits, more so than some boring scientific studies that focus on "absolute truth" instead of the "subjective truth" that we each experience in our own world. Take a look at this list of testimonials about how meditation has helped these individuals. I even submitted my story too...

The fifth release from Guided Meditation Treks introduces you to the "Healing Breathwork" practice, an active pranayama meditation that is used to transmute stuck emotions and behaviors by activating the respiratory system and heart chakra through the practice. This is a powerful meditation that can come with strong physical and emotional effects. These awakening effects could even be life changing. This practice can unlock deep  feelings, so use it under your own discretion, for your greatest good, of course.

Like Vipassana, part of the purpose is to teach you the technique of the breathing practice. If you only do the breath itself, without anything else, you will feel effects, and so the app has a "timer" feature where you can hear a breathing track in the background and time your breath to follow it. The most important part of the technique is for  you to move as much air as possible in and out of the lungs. The goal is to create an oxygen-rich state in your system, which will create specific psychological effects that will bring your consciousness out of your head and into your heart.

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.

I've been an avid consumer of acupuncture for over a decade. As a software developer and pianist, I spend a lot of time at a keyboard using my wrists and arms. This causes tension that runs up my arms, and also around my shoulders and into my neck and back. I believe that regular acupuncture has helped keep me from developing severe tendonitis, or worse, carpal tunnel syndrome. I try to go twice a month, and I've advised friends to use it for their own muscular pain and tension. However, some people are against acupuncture because they are either afraid of needles or have a bad history with them. Recently, I was given the opportunity to try the moxaLight, which applies the concepts of acupuncture via a system of LED lights attached to the body. It seemed promising, not only for those who fear needles, but for myself. Sometimes, I just can't get enough acupuncture. In the past, I'd stolen needles from my acupuncturists to administer it at home, but I learned that this can be dangerous if I hit the wrong points. The moxaLight seemed like a much safer alternative for home-administered acupuncture, so I was excited to try it. With that, I present my review of this product...

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

Guest blog by Sarah

Every time you watch television, open up a magazine, grab a flyer or simply turn down the corner, there seems to be some new fad or health guru proclaiming that this is the key to self-improvement, better health, more energy, and a better peace of mind. So rarely are any of these promises delivered upon. But there seems to be a small group of people who are getting it right.
 
There appears to be a correlation, backed up by science that people who routinely practice meditation are healthier, happier, have less stress and have higher energy levels. Therefore, let’s unpack the science and see just how meditation can help me and you to have a better body.