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There is growing interest to exercise your brain using something called “cognitive fitness.”

It’s a known fact that exercise and meditation reduce anxiety, ease depression, and give you a general feeling of wellness. Can ideas about the brain be discovered from these practices to help create an emotional fitness tools?

Can biofeedback games like Wild Divine help beginner brains look more like enlightened brains without a lifetime of dedication?

Numerous articles published by the Mayo Clinic Foundation for Education and Research, the New England Journal of Medicine and other resources, cite the importance of regular "brain work-outs" in helping individuals maintain a vital and healthy lifestyle. Solving crossword puzzles, playing card and board games, and participating in other mentally challenging tasks, are specifically mentioned as activities that can delay the onset of age-related cognitive problems. A great site for this is Acuity Games.

Engaging in mental exercises for the purpose of increasing cognitive fitness is gaining popularity for Baby Boomers and their parents. The research is not definitive regarding the prevention of brain deterioration by rigorous mental exercise, but psychologists, neurologists, and other educators are designing cutting-edge programs for the public’s desire to stay mentally sharp.

Can a meditation supply item help you go into a deeper state of inner awareness? If you choose the right item, there is a good chance that it can help you get more comfortable and allow you to become more relaxed.

A common problem with meditation is that many people are not flexible enough to sit in a position for a long time without starting to feel some discomfort in their bodies. If you are not comfortable in the traditional crossed legged or Lotus positions, you might benefit from one of the following meditation supply items.

Meditation Chair - This can be a very useful accessory if you tend to experience pain in your lower back when you sit for long periods of time. Chairs support your upper back and some have lumbar cushions that you can adjust to provide the maximum level of comfort for your lower back.

Meditation Bench - If your hips are not very flexible, this item can help you sit more comfortably by providing extra support for your legs and knees. Some of them tilt slightly forward to help you maintain good posture while meditating.

Why is staying awake while meditating important? Falling asleep is certainly relaxing, and can be good for you, but to get the full range of benefits from your meditation you need to have your brainwaves in the alpha and theta ranges. When you are asleep, your brainwaves range from theta to delta. Meditation should be a state of relaxed alertness (primarily alpha brainwaves). Try the following tips to stay awake.

1. Don’t lay down. Laying down may be the comfortable way to meditate, but it is also the surest way to have trouble staying awake. Find a comfortable posture for meditating, but not TOO comfortable.

2. Don’t meditate where you sleep. A comfy chair may be a great place to meditate - unless its the one you fall asleep in while watching TV. Anyplace where you regularly sleep is likely to trigger a sleep response in your body.

3. Create slight discomfort. If you are too comfortable to stay awake, try turning the thermostat down, sitting in a harder chair, or otherwise creating a minor irritation that will be enough to keep you awake, but not distract you too much.

Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment,
I know this is a wonderful moment!

Do you live a life of action while maintaining a life of peace? The two do not seem to coexist and we often find ourselves striving to achieve one or the other. Do you relate to being determined and yet patient as you move through your life? We plan and organize for the next moment, week or year then forget the actual intention for the planning in the first place. We are much better at doing than being.

There is an abundance of happiness available to us. Clarity is waiting to be seen. Inner peace is free for the taking. It is all available to us if we are willing to make a modest investment. The benefits are priceless and dividends continue to multiply over time. It is within reach, here and now, and it can be applied to everything you think, say and do.

Before I started meditating several years ago with CDs using audio technologies, I estimate I hadn’t recalled much more than tiny snippets of a dream in, gosh, at least ten years and probably many more than that.

One of the things I liked immediately when I began using meditation CDs was that I started sleeping as soundly as a puddle of snoozing cat and dreaming vividly and often. For the first time in years I could clearly recall in the mornings my imaginings of the nights before.

Well, right after I started using meditation CDs, I dreamed that I was in the atrium of a large bank-like building, the front of which had huge plate glass windows. Granite columns rose from the polished floor to the top of the atrium, some four stories above my head.

I was walking through this atrium, minding my own business, when a man suddenly ran past, shouting, “The storm’s coming, the storm’s coming. It’s headed right for us!”

He evaporated from my sight as only dream people can do.

I walked toward the plate glass windows, looked outside, and, sure enough, a terrible storm was headed right for the building, a perfect storm with tornadoes, hurricane force winds, lightning, and driving rain.

Meditation is an age old healing and stress relieving modality practiced throughout the world, in virtually all cultures and all religions, although it may go by different names - prayer, visualization, relaxation techniques, and hypnosis; they are all forms of the same practice.

Meditation refers to “taking a break” from real life. Its goal is to bring about a sense of relaxation to the mind, body and spirit. For some, it helps to connect them to their higher self, others connect to the Universal life force and still others use meditation to get away from reality for a few minutes.

In fact, it’s been found that meditation is not just merely a “taking break”; there are a multitude of physiological changes that take place when a person meditates. As a sampling, and by no means all inclusive, the following conditions can benefit from regular use of meditation:

Addictions, stress relief, pain management, hypertension, PMS, fibromyalgia, headaches, migraines and insomnia.

Other more serious and life threatening diseases such as heart disease, AIDS, autoimmune conditions and cancer may also benefit from the regular practice of meditation.

Meditation is a form of relaxing and a method to spiritual enlightenment that has been around for centuries. Yet with all the different types of meditation as well as the varied methods, how do you know you are truly meditating? Which one is right for you?

We are often told that to meditate is to think of nothing and clear your mind, which to me is impossible. Our minds do not stop even when we are asleep, so how do we consciously clear them when awake? The fact is that our minds are equipped with a goal serving mechanism, which means that the mind does not hear differences but only understands actions. It does not understand "do" and "do not", "will" or "will not." So by saying to your mind, "do not think of anything whilst meditating," the mind did not hear the "do not" and consequently you instructed your mind to do the exact opposite of what you wanted. It will now think of everything.

Helping the broadest range of people attain enlightenment through meditation is my lifelong preoccupation. I have more than 20 years of daily interaction with people helping them meditate and encouraging them to set high goals and use meditation as a tool for attaining inspiration, precious insights, enlightenment and other benefits that come along with it.

In order to practice meditation, you need a pleasant quiet place where nobody is going to disturb you. Once you are comfortably seated, you can start with pranayama (rhythmic breathing exercise), followed by pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses from the outer world), thorough relaxation of the mind and senses, and finally relaxation of the physical body. By breathing rhythmically ? inhaling, holding the breath, and exhaling while following a simple pattern (4-16-8, for instance) ? you will accumulate prana, revitalize your life force, and new spiritual strength will come to you. During the pratyahara you will play the role of a neutral observer of your thoughts, with the ultimate aim of achieving a state of consciousness without any thoughts.

Peace can mean quiet, tranquility, serenity, peace of mind, mental calmness, friendliness, no wars, civil disorders or strife. Sometimes a word makes sense and other times there is no reference for it.

From my own experience I had no reference for the word ‘happy’. Logically I knew what it was supposed to mean, however I couldn’t relate to it. On the other hand I knew and experienced what ‘contentment’ and ‘joy’ was, but with ‘happy’ ? sadly I had no reference point.

The word ‘happy’ had to be demonstrated to me in order for it to have any meaning. ‘Happy’ was demonstrated to me by a male facilitator on a course I was on a couple of years ago. He started an impromptu, very silly dance which had me laughing for a long time afterwards. The memory of it still gets me smiling and gives me a ‘happy’ feeling which I fully experience throughout my body.

With that in mind whenever I step into peace I totally experience it through every cell in my body. How do I know that is what I’m experiencing? I feel it and link the word peace to that feeling.

The following exercise program has been designed to get the mind firmly in the present, not yesterday or tomorrow but right here, right now. It’s a particularly great exercise to become familiar with because it helps during times when you need to totally concentrate on an important task. There have been many times in the past when I’ve been overwhelmed by the many different tasks on my ‘to do list’. Learning to become present has helped me to focus totally on one thing at a time and makes me far more effective in my work output.

You can try one, more than one, or all of the following exercises to access the present moment and as you do them, retain your focus for at least three minutes. The longer you stay focused the longer you’ll be in the present moment.

If you start thinking about dinner; what’s on television; the shopping etc, then you’re no longer in the present but the future or possibly the past. If and when this happens refocus on your breathing to again be aware of the present moment.