Breathwork the Anunnaki Way (21 days)

(Library of Thoth) I tried the Anunnaki's 21-day breathwork protocol, and the results blew my mind

• Memory (neuroplastic) consolidation
• Settling into stillness: samadhi?
• Buddhist Ana-pana-sati (mindfulness of breathing)
• BASIC DISCOURSE: Ānāpānasati Sutta

Yogic Breath Work

Can we do yoga as mindful moving meditation?

Prana-yama (Sanskrit प्राणायाम, prāṇāyāma) is the yogic practice of controlling, retaining, balancing, and working the breath in yoga. It is described in Hindu texts such as the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, it is described as one of the eight limbs of yoga ("union" with spirit, breath, the universe's energy). In classical yoga, what we call "the breath" is actually the life energy called prana (chi, qi, holy spirit, wind, pneuma, esoteric energy, Vayu-Vata).

Anunnaki: "royal [divine] offspring"

In later Hatha Yoga texts, it means the complete suspension of breathing [which is something that happens in Buddhism's meditative absorptions (jhanas) four through eight]. Prana-yama practices in modern yoga done just as exercise, such as in Ashtanga (Vinyasa) Yoga, differ radically from those of the Hatha Yoga tradition, often using the breath in synchrony with movements. Pranayama

Soldier karma: life with NO brain

Psychology of brain damage: shattered

How can we live in a world that makes no sense at all? How could we exist when every second of our lives is an unsolvable puzzle, and the tiny bits we do manage to recognize can’t come out?

That was the life of Russian soldier Lev Zasetsky (1920–1993), a young man who suffered a brain injury fighting in another useless war.

That was the life of Lev Zasetsky, who suffered a severe brain injury when thrown into World War II.

The 3,000-page diary he wrote following his injury became one of the most valuable and insightful texts on the study of the human brain in the history of biological science (popsci.com).

Zasetsky suffered from aphasia, a disorder or dysphasia that impairs a person’s ability to communicate or understand communication.

• When Monkey Mind (thinking) stopped
• Case of survival: Lev Zasetsky | Mind Matters
• VIDEO: What if brain stopped working for 5 seconds?

Patient Lev Zasetsky and Dr. Alex Luria

Zasetsky’s form of aphasia resulted in him being able to write without being able to read his own writing or understand all of what he had written.

Russian Dr. Alexander Luria, one of the Soviet Union’s most accomplished neuropsychologists, was assigned to care for Zasetsky and found that the young soldier “simply could not write and…had suddenly become illiterate.”

Dr. Luria pinpointed Zasetsky’s injury to “the second major block of the brain located in the posterior sections of the large hemispheres.”

This portion of the brain’s job is “for receiving, processing, and retaining information a person derives from the external world.”

The precise location of his shrapnel injury meant that “a very important function [had] been seriously impaired: he [could] not immediately combine his impressions into a coherent whole; his world [became] fragmented.”

That’s how the world existed for Lev Zasetsky: fragmented. But he didn’t give up. His fascinating story and undaunted attitude can inspire and reframe our modern understanding of psychology, history, language, communication, showing what the human spirit can accomplish.

• From "He was the man who lived with no brain" (sort of), Popular Science, for more original Popular Science videos, subscribe on YouTube

SUTRA: Want to be a soldier? You might want to reconsider

The headman (gamini) was wise to ask the Buddha to clarify and dispel doubts (Yodhājīva Sutta)

 

The village headman Yodhajiva went to the Buddha, bowed, sat respectfully to one side, and said: "Venerable sir, I have heard it passed down through the ancient teaching lineage of warriors that:

• 'When a warrior strives and exerts in battle, if others strike one down and slay one while striving and exerting in battle then, with the breakup of the body after death, one is reborn in the company of angels (devas) slain in battle.'

"What does the Blessed One say about that?"

"Enough, headman, set that question aside and do not ask it." But a second time and third time the headman Yodhajiva asked it.

"Headman, I seem to be unable to get past by saying, 'Enough, headman, set that question aside and do not ask it,' so to reply simply: When a warrior strives and exerts in battle, one's mind is already seized, debased, and misdirected by the thought, 'May those beings be struck down, slaughtered, destroyed, annihilated, and no longer exist.'

"If others then strike one down or slay one while one is striving and exerting in battle, then with the breakup of the body after death, one is reborn in a hell called the Realm of those Slain in Battle.

Oh no, what will come of ignorance and killing?

"Moreover, if one holds a view such as, 'When a warrior strives and exerts in battle, if others then strike one down or slay one while one is striving and exerting in battle, then with the breakup of the body after death, one is reborn in the company of angels slain in battle,' that is his wrong view.

"There are, I say, two destinations for a person with wrong view, either hell or the animal womb" [rebirth in one of the many hells or the super-diversified animal plane].

When this was said, the headman Yodhajiva began to sob and burst into tears.

"Headman, that is what I was unable to get by you by asking you to set that question aside and not ask it."

"But, venerable sir, I am not crying because of what the Blessed One said but rather because I have been deceived, cheated, and fooled for a long time by that ancient teaching lineage of warriors who said that" (SN 42.3).

Calm when mind is wild (Yongey Rinpoche)

Ven. Yongey Mingyur, July 7, 2020; CC Liu, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Keep calm when your mind is wild

(Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche) Learn how cultivating bare awareness (Buddhist mindfulness or sati) can help create a peaceful mind and joyful heart with Rinpoche’s guidance at Joy of Living online course (beta.tergar.org).

We may try meditation to look for peace of mind and think that we aren’t doing it right when we experience the turmoil of our thoughts and feelings.

But we don’t need to force our minds to be quiet: "Meditation" means just being present with our minds as they are.

True calmness comes when we are at ease with whatever we experience, whether our minds are quiet or busy, peaceful or restless, tense or relaxed.

In this video teaching, Mingyur Rinpoche talks about how we can find rest in our mind’s natural awareness – under any circumstances.

For translation choose a language and open it in a separate window. Mute or lower the volume of the YouTube video in order to hear the translation more clearly.

• Spanish
• Tibetan
• Chinese
• Russian
• French
• Czech
• German
• Portuguese
• Indonesian
• Korean
• Thai

🔗 Joy of Living Meditation Program: Learn meditation under the skillful guidance of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche at own self pace: joy.tergar.org

🔗 Vajrayana Online: Study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism with Mingyur Rinpoche: learning.tergar.org

🔗Online events, retreats with Mingyur Rinpoche: events.tergar.org

🔗 About Tergar Path: tergar.org/programs

"Rewired with Dr. Joe Dispenza" (Gaia TV)

Dr. Joe Dispenza (gaia.com); Crystal Quintero, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

I can make you supernatural. Yes, even you.

Author, lecturer, chiropractor, researcher, and star of What the Bleep Do We Know!?, Dr. Joe Dispenza’s profound work has touched the lives of millions, enabling them to conquer pain, chronic conditions, and even what were once thought to be terminal illnesses.

Through the power of neuroscience, epigenetics [the study of the genes that turn other genes on and off], and quantum physics, Dr. Joe shows the way to greater health and self-actualization.

I could have done this myself...if I knew how.

In his first-ever Gaia.com series, Rewired, Dr. Joe teaches viewers how to rewire their brain and recondition their body to go beyond our current limitations and become supernatural. Discover more of Dr. Dispenza’s remarkable work on Gaia. More

ABOUT: Dr. Joe Dispenza caught the public’s eye from the film What the Bleep Do We Know!? He is a researcher, chiropractor, and New York Times bestselling author, who explores the science behind spontaneous remissions. He empowers people to change from the inside out by combining quantum physics, neuroscience, brain chemistry, biology, and genetics. He explores the effects of meditation on how people can heal themselves.

He received a Doctor of Chiropractic degree from Life University and did his post-graduate training with a focus on neuroscience and cellular biology in response to memory formation, aging, and longevity.

• NPR: Can fidgety skeptics meditate, Dan Harris?
• Vast dumpsite of Fast Fashion in Chilean desert now visible from space [What's "space"? Fifty miles up]
• How we use AI to run a thriving side hustle with Amazon’s Audible app (pubprofits.com)

Neuroscience of Awakening: Buddhist Brain

Asangoham, April 29, 2023; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

The Neuroscience of Awakening: Your Brain on Buddhism

(Asangoham) Our brains have the amazing ability to change themselves. This is called neuroplasticity.

[The brain is not the mind. Mind is near the heart]

Our brains are not fixed structures. Rather, they are dynamic systems that are constantly changing and evolving in response to the environment.

In fact, research done in the last decade has shown that the brain is much more malleable and responsive to change than previously thought.

Neuroplasticity can occur at different levels of the brain, from the level of individual neurons to the level of entire brain regions.

One of the primary features of neuroplasticity is that it is activity-dependent. This means that the changes in the brain are driven by experiences and activities.

For example, if a person engages in a particular activity repeatedly, such as learning to play a musical instrument or practicing a new language, the brain will adapt to these experiences and develop new neural connections that support these activities.

Neuroplasticity also has important implications for understanding the relationship between the mind and the brain. If the brain can change and adapt in response to experiences, this means that our minds also can change and adapt.

But what do we mean when we say “mind”? What is a mind? The mind is nothing but thoughts. There is no mind without thoughts.

• [There is. Mind knows. Thought is the attempt to symbolize conceptualizations. According to the Abhidharma and verifiable personal experience, there were all these things before the brain. They exist independently.]

Therefore, because of the neuroplasticity of brains, we can radically change our thought patterns, or our minds. We can change our thought patterns to have happier or more beneficial minds.

But even more than this. We can also develop the capacity to slow or even stop thought completely by the activity of focusing attention on the emptiness or empty silence between thoughts.

Many religious and mystical traditions, including many schools of Buddhism, teach that it is this capacity to rest in the emptiness between thought that ultimately reveals the very nature of reality, and the reality of who we truly are.

#buddhism #neuroscience #awakening #buddha #spirituality

Script: Matt Mackane. Edit: Medo. Voiceover: Andrea Giordani. Music: Epidemic Music x Original. 

DISCLAIMER 01: All ideas expressed on this channel are for entertainment and general information purposes only. There is no advice on what an individual should or should not do. Any response made by anyone after hearing this communication is their interpretation and is their responsibility. Ideas expressed by this channel should not be treated as a substitute for medical advice or professional help. If expert assistance or counselling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

DISCLAIMER 02: All materials in these videos are used for entertainment purposes and fall within the guidelines of fair use. No copyright infringement intended. If one is, or represents, the copyright owner of materials used in this video and has an issue with the use of said material, please send an email to doseofquotes02@gmail.com.

Copyright © 2022 Asangoham. All rights reserved.

Neuroscience meets Buddhism: Matt Ricard

(Action for Happiness) Matthieu Ricard and Wolf Singer join Mark Williamson for a discussion of Beyond the Self, sharing insights from Buddhism and neuroscience to help us live happier, more compassionate lives. Filmed in front of a large audience in London on Jan. 29, 2018.

There is no "self"

"Self" (atta=soul, ego) is illusory.

Let's do what the Buddha did and move BEYOND the self. But what is the "self," the ego, soul, personality, identity, consciousness? It is an illusion. We can think of it as our body and mind. But most of us will feel it's a lot more our mind (name, consciousness, awareness, memories) and hardly this ever-changing body. "Mind," the Buddha discerned, is what we cling to as self: feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. But none of this is enduring, identical, or able to provide fulfillment. It is something, but it is not a self. The gateless gate to enlightenment is the realization that all that we regard as "self" is actually impersonal. What if psychology knew that? What if neuroscience could test that? Former geneticist Matthieu Ricard and Professor Wolf Singer wrote a book merging neuroscience and Buddhism.

Beyond the Self: Conversations Between Buddhism and Neuroscience

Buddhism meet neuroscience

This book examines converging and diverging views on mind, self, consciousness, free will, unconscious, perception, meditation, and other topics.

Buddhism, on the one hand, shares with science the task of examining the mind empirically. It has pursued, for more than two millennia, direct investigation of the mind through penetrating introspection.

Neuroscience, on the other hand, relies on third-person knowledge in the form of observation. In this book, French Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, who trained as a molecular biologist, and Prof. Wolf Singer, a distinguished neuroscientist, offer their perspectives on mind, self, consciousness, subconscious, unconscious, free will, epistemology, meditation, and neuroplasticity.

Matthieu Ricard and his dad

Ricard and Singer's wide-ranging conversation is an enlightening and engaging encounter between Buddhism's wealth of experiential findings and neuroscience's abundance of experimental results.

Among many other things, these two good friends discuss

• the difference between rumination and meditation (rumination is the scourge of meditation, whereas psychotherapy depends on it);
• the distinction between the contents of awareness and pure awareness;
• the Buddhist idea (or lack of one) of the unconscious and neuroscience's precise criteria for conscious and subconscious processes; and
• the commonalities between cognitive behavioral therapy and meditation.

Their views diverge. (Ricard asserts that the third-person approach will never encounter consciousness as a primary experience). And they converge. (Singer points out that the neuroscientific understanding of perception as reconstruction is very like the Buddhist all-discriminating wisdom).

But both keep their vision trained on understanding fundamental aspects of human life. More

Mindfulness meditation at UCLA (video)

UCLAhealth.org; Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Meditation Initiative), Wisdom Quarterly

MARC (the Mindful Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles) is excited to announce that the UCLA Mindful app has now been released for both iOS and Android as “UCLA Mindful” in the app store (iTunes/Google Play).

• Free Guided Meditations and Weekly Podcast
• All guided meditations and podcasts are available for free:
• Stream or download Studio-Recorded Guided Meditations
• Stream or download Weekly Live Podcasts
• Dharma Meditation Initiative (free meetup group)

MARC is a partner of the Norman Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology within the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior on the UCLA campus. More

Free Guided Meditations

Meditation rebuilds brain cells: Harvard study

Harvard.edu; feelguide.com (11-19-14 ); Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly via Stacy Kesten

Harvard unveils MRI study proving meditation literally rebuilds the brain’s gray matter in 8 weeks

Test subjects taking part in an 8-week program of [Buddhist style] mindfulness meditation showed results that astonished even the most experienced neuroscientists at Harvard.

The study was led by a Harvard-affiliated team of researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the team’s MRI scans documented for the very first time in medical history how meditation produced massive changes inside the brain’s gray matter.

You have a good brain, venerable, very good. Meditating Buddhist monk goes into an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machine to document brain changes during meditation (BBC).

.

We should have been monks. (UCLA)

“Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day.”

This is what is said by the study senior author Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology.
 

Better than beauty sleep (SFU)

“This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”

Sue McGreevey of MGH writes: “Previous studies from Lazar’s group and others found structural differences between the brains of experienced meditation practitioners and individuals with no history of meditation, observing thickening of the cerebral cortex in areas associated with attention and emotional integration.

Yes, the difference is clear.

“But those investigations could not document that those differences were actually produced by meditation.” Until now, that is.

The participants spent an average of 27 minutes per day practicing mindfulness exercises, and this is all it took to stimulate a major increase in gray matter density in the hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection.

Brain is not mind, but never mind.

McGreevey adds: “Participant-reported reductions in stress also were correlated with decreased gray-matter density in the amygdala, which is known to play an important role in anxiety and stress. None of these changes were seen in the control group, indicating that they had not resulted merely from the passage of time.”
 

“It is fascinating to see the brain’s plasticity and that, by practicing meditation, we can play an active role in changing the brain and can increase our well-being and quality of life,” says Britta Hölzel, first author of the paper and a research fellow at MGH and Giessen University in Germany. More at Harvard.edu

• AUDIO: “Listen as Sam Harris explains how to tame your mind (no religion required)” 
• Neuroscience shows how training in compassion meditation Makes Us More Altruistic
• The Placebo-Nocebo Effect; proof of the mind’s explosive healing, curing power
• Bliss of Letting Go: David Lynch discusses Transcendental Meditation in new doc
• A Strong Back and a Soft Front: the power, beauty, neuroscience, and importance of compassion

Obama's Deadly Brain Mapping Money

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Alex Cohen, A. Martinez, "Take Two"

Human brain (Mauricio Lima/AFP/Getty Images)

 

B.S. O'lama: Big plan. You'll see.

Just when he sounded like he was doing something good and useful, the truth comes out. The Nobel Peace Laureate President is making sure at least half the research money goes to one military use: DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for secret military weapons development at www.darpa.mil). What do they do? They make the deadliest most secretive weapons on Earth.

(Take Two) One of the greatest mysteries of science is right inside our skulls: the human brain.
 

Killing is our business, and business is good

Yesterday President Obama announced an initiative to help map our minds. [Will the government be reading them next and fulfilling Orwell's dystopian dream of criminalizing "thought crimes"? Why not? If it means fewer civil liberties and greater military-industrial control it will fit right into the fifth (G.H.B. x 1, G.W.B. x 2, B.S.O. x 2 = 5)  Bush administration's Brave New World Order.] 

 

Yer gonna make me so much money!

The President has pledged to put $100 million [in addition to the countless billions of unaudited funds] toward developing a map that would do for the brain what the human genome project did for DNA. [Science means using knowledge to control and manipulate reality for the profit of private corporations which externalizes costs and internalizing profits like WalMart.] Here to talk the new "Brain Initiative" is Dr. William Newsome of Stanford University on SCPR.org's TAKE TWO (LISTEN).

Really, a Brain Initiative?
(Letters and Politics, KPFA, Berkeley, April 3, 2013, 10:00 am)

Host Mitch Jeserich discusses mapping the brain with University of California Berkeley neuroscientist John Ngai and John Julius Norwich, author of Absolute Monarchs. Together they take a much more in-depth look at what is really motivating the current administration and where the money will be funneled in spite of the mainstream media's cheer leading. More

• Obama heads to San Francisco for fundraising events
• Drone industry boosters pilot controversial growth plan
• Next Mission: Student-veterans and their space
• What Angelenos got right/wrong predicting L.A. 2013
• AP Stylebook: "Illegal immigrant" no longer "legal"

Build willpower: Meditate on neuroplasticity

Daniel Goleman, Greater Good Magazine via Integral-Options Cafe; Sharpbrains.com

Brain cell (neuron) links are capable of connecting and disconnecting as we learn.

Yes, You Can Build Willpower (meditate on neuroplasticity!)
New research sug­gests we can build our willpower

Those of us who strug­gle to resist junk foods or oth­er­wise suf­fer a lack of willpower will be heartened by some good news from neu­ro­science. But there’s some bad news, too. First the bad news. A slew of stud­ies sug­gest that we each have a fixed neural reser­voir of willpower, and if we use it on one thing, we have less for oth­ers. Tasks that demand some self-control make it harder for us to do the next thing that takes willpower. In a typ­i­cal exper­i­ment on this effect, one group of peo­ple was made to watch a video of a bor­ing scene; another was not. More

• Daniel Goleman has a series of audio interviews including one with Richard Davidson on Training the Brain.

Meditation for Business People

Matt Eschler, LMFT

Reality is not nearly as important as what you tell yourself is true about reality (Matt Eschler)

Better Attitudes in the Workplace Before "The Matrix" became a movie phenomenon, the word matrix meant "a point of beginning." By definition a matrix is where something that constitutes the place or point from which something else originates, takes form, or develops.

We are continuously developing our psyche as well as our soul. As we develop these parts of our being, we are required to create mental focus. The more we focus on something -- whether it's math or auto racing or football or career paths -- the more that becomes our reality, the more it becomes written into the neural connections of our brains.

When we focus we generate ideas and develop paths to even more thoughts. In a sense we are shaping our brain as well as creating our future. We can literally sculpt our brain just as we'd sculpt our muscles if we went to the gym. This sculpting is referred to as neuroplasticity by neuropsychologists.

There are numerous ways and means to shape our brains. Meditation and prayer are very cost effective ways to create peace, focus, and life direction. Through the meditation process, or while engaging in prayer, we are really committing to a pattern of thoughts that will enhance our lives. More>>