There are many ways to meditate! As part of a cleanse, I've been taking a hot bath every day for the last two months. A hot bath is a great way to meditate, and it is also a great way for your body to detoxify itself! You can do this in a hot tub or sauna, but since most people have a bathtub, a hot bath is easier.

Like me, you might have a tendency to get out of a hot tub after about 5 minutes as you start to sweat. But if you can hang in there, that's only the beginning of where the fun starts! The key to a detoxifying hot bath meditation is to stay in the hot water and sweat for 10-15 minutes. As with any meditation, at first, it can be challenging to sit still that long (especially in hot water), but it's worth it in the end! Here are my tips!

Many look to science to determine the effectiveness of certain treatments on our health, and there is a belief in Western medicine that the solution to our problems is some procedure or pill from the outside. I write a lot about the power we have to heal ourselves, but sometimes it may seem unscientific to hold this view.

Western medicine looks to physical science to prove or disprove certain hypotheses. However, Eastern belief systems indicate that our physical reality is a subset of reality, which is created by our higher planes of existence (our thoughts on the mental plane and our emotions on the astral plane). As such, our ability to heal on the physical can be affected by these higher planes. However, physical science can only witness the physical plane, and therefore, it may seem like an inadequate tool to measure these other planes of existence, which seem out of the reach of physical science because the physical plane "below" the higher planes.

One way we can directly witness the effects of these higher planes on the physical plane is the age-old psychological concept called "the placebo effect," wherein a subject of a scientific study perceives and believes that they are receiving some external treatment to create a desired effect and then begin to feel well due to this perceived treatment. However, in reality, the subject did not actually receive the treatment. Instead, it was their belief that they received the treatment which made them perceive that their problem was solved, and through this perception, the problem does indeed actually become resolved. In these cases, it is scientifically shown that the external treatment did not cure the person, but rather, the person's belief. Here is a great article and documentary that details how the placebo effect can help us heal!

Read more and watch the documentary...

A new research study shows that a little yoga or meditation a day might just keep the doctor away.
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Stress-related health problems are responsible for up to 80% of visits to the doctor and account for the third highest health care expenditures, behind only heart disease and cancer. But as few as 3% of doctors actually talk to patients about how to reduce stress. Read More...

The advantage of this is that it actually doesn’t cost anything,” said Karen May, a vice president at Google, explaining how her company offers “mindfulness” classes to its employees. Mindfulness is a New Age kind of meditation that focuses on the present moment “non-judgmentally,” tracing its origins to Buddhism. The growing phenomenon was the subject of a 60 Minutes segment on Sunday, for which May and other fans of the practice were interviewed. Read More...

Andrew Weil, Twice on the cover of TIME magazine and author of 10 books, discusses what he calls "Guided Imagery Therapy," which is essentially what many of the Guided Meditation Treks are. Visualization and guided imagery offer tools to direct one’s concentration on images held in the mind's eye. These therapies take advantage of the connection between the visual brain and the involuntary nervous system. When this portion of the brain (the visual cortex at the back of the head) is activated, without receiving direct input from the eyes, it can influence physical and emotional states. This, in turn, can help elicit physiologic changes in the body, including therapeutic goals. Read More...

Our lives are filled with distractions -- email, Twitter, texting we're constantly connected to technology, rarely alone with just our thoughts. Which is probably why there's a growing movement in America to train people to get around the stresses of daily life.

It's a practice called "mindfulness" and it basically means being aware of your thoughts, physical sensations, and surroundings. Tonight, we'll introduce you to the man who's largely responsible for mindfulness gaining traction. His name is Jon Kabat-Zinn and he thinks mindfulness is the answer for people who are so overwhelmed by life, they feel they aren't really living at all. Read More...

THE HUMAN DNA IS A BIOLOGICAL INTERNET and superior in many aspects to the artificial one. Russian scientific research directly or indirectly explains phenomena such as clairvoyance, intuition, spontaneous and remote acts of healing, self healing, affirmation techniques, unusual light/auras around people (namely spiritual masters), mind’s influence on weather patterns and much more. In addition, there is evidence for a whole new type of medicine in which DNA can be influenced and reprogrammed by words and frequencies WITHOUT cutting out and replacing single genes. Read More...

Most doctors say meditation can’t hurt you, but now there’s reassuring evidence that it may help you as well when it comes to warding off disease. Previous studies have linked better health outcomes among heart patients who practiced meditation compared to those who did not, but none of those trials could definitively credit the brain-focusing program with the better health results. In the latest trial to address those limitations, however, meditation does appear to have an effect on reducing heart attack, stroke and even early death from heart disease, at least among African-Americans. Read more...

The ancient eastern tradition of contemplation has slowly but steadily infiltrated the western world.  But what is it all about and why are so many people taking it up? There are quite a few ways to meditate. Some of them, e.g.  yogic meditation called Kirtan Kriya, involve chanting of mantras: first aloud, then in a whisper, and then silently. This is sometimes followed by breathing and relaxing visualizations, e.g. forming mental images of light. Another popular type of meditation is mindfulness. Mindfulness means paying attention to the immediate experience with curiosity and acceptance. Do you know the feeling when you arrived home with no recollection of the route you have just driven because you have been thinking about the past or worrying about future? Mindful presence in the moment aims to teach us more conscious ways of living, as opposed to being on the ‘auto pilot’. Read More...