Today’s topic is natural hormones versus synthetics.  Now, this is an area of tremendous confusion, not only for the average person, but also for a lot of health care practitioners.  People just don’t know the difference between a natural hormone and something that is not natural to the female human body.  I’m going to give you the most common examples.   Premarin is a natural hormone for a horse.  It is the most common form of hormone replacement, and it is made from the urine of pregnant horses.  So it’s a natural hormone, if your native food is hay.  

Now, progesterone is found in the human female ovary.  It’s also made by the brain.  It’s even made by some nerve cells.  Unfortunately, in most hormone replacement, the molecule that’s used is not natural bioidentical progesterone, but instead something known as medroxyprogesterone acetate, MPA.

Natural Hormones

Psychologists use a version of this meditation to help people with their addictions, including our technology addictions. The idea is the faster we are at noticing our urges, the less likely we will be to helplessly act on them, and thus the more quickly they can pass, allowing us to reset. 
 
It is extremely hard to reset fully. As with everything about mind, body, and behavior, we are talking about a continuum. We can get better and better at dis-embedding from an urge, but we’re still going to miss some of them, and catch others late. And even with the ones we do catch, the feeling of wanting to act on them can linger for a long while, sometimes causing us to act out all over again as soon as we lose mindfulness. 
 
All of which is fine. Forty percent better, 20 percent better, even 10 percent better—that’s still better. As someone with lifelong impulse control issues, I can definitely say that meditation has reduced my ratio of high-risk behaviors, to say nothing of my blurting-out-stupid-shit-at-dinner-parties ratio.
 
From the book Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, coauthored with Dan Harris and Carlye Adler. The book's dozen or so other meditations can be found on the 10% Happier app. Enjoy!
 
Jeff
For more free meditations, see www.jeffwarren.org

Resources:

Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics : http://jeffwarren.org/books/meditation-fidgety-skeptics/
10% Happier app: http://www.10percenthappier.com/

Mindfulness of Urges

“RAIN” is a well-known meditation acronym that stands for Recognize, Accept, Investigate and Non-Identify. It’s a helpful way to explore – and, sometimes, process – any sensation, thought, or emotion. Even hard ones. 

The practice helps in a couple of ways. First, it boosts our emotional literacy. Instead of being lost inside a big reaction, we learn to stop and get curious about our own idiosyncratic “tells” – the many subtle tics and contractions that are our particular body’s way of saying: “I’m feeling over here!” In this way, we learn to catch our emotional reactions early, and not, in teacher Sharon Salzberg’s excellent words, “fifteen consequential actions later.” 

And there’s a second way it helps. The fruit of meditation isn’t just less emotional reactivity. It’s also having fewer negative emotions in the first place. The more we practice observing our emotional habits, the less potent they become. 

This process of catharsis (or “purification” to use the creepy contemplative term) is fascinating. We can begin to experience in real time painful bits of old conditioning softening and falling away. In the meditative journey, this is often paired with a lovely feeling of intimacy with the space that surrounds and permeates our experience. Space – and not sensation – becomes the new baseline we learn to operate from. It may sound bonkers, but this is the experience a great many practitioners report. 

A more detailed description of each step of this meditation can be found in the “Pandora’s Box” chapter of Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. And a live, far more intimate version of the practice can be found here [https://soundcloud.com/jeff-warren-5/mindfulness-of-emotions-rain-meditation-2]. 
 
Jeff
For more free meditations, see www.jeffwarren.org

Resources:

Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: http://jeffwarren.org/media/books/meditation-fidgety-skeptics/

Mindfulness of Emotions - RAIN - Short

10% Happier asked me to write this meditation for Apple employees. They took my script and recorded it in the voice of the iPhone. Personally, I think the voice should be slowed down by a third, to make it more hypnotic and meditative. The meditation “object” here is the sound of silence, the “space between commands.” If you do the practice, really try to direct your attention in this vague direction: the ambient hum of space, the thick absence of silence itself.

Resources:

10% Happier: http://www.10percenthappier.com/

Space Between Commands

Something a bit different. I created this meditation for kids, aged 5 – 10. It is a meditation designed for kids, not adults, complete with cool sound effects and animated vocals and continuous appeals to the imagination. The idea of Calmland is to help kids move from hyperactive agitation to a more relaxed and self-regulated state. Should they wish to! They may not; it’s their choice. Calmland is a companion to Colourland, which helps them move in the other direction.

This track is one of many I’ve created with my friend Kirsten Chase at  Kid Evolve.  Our plan is to build an app to teach kids mindfulness and other social-emotional skills. Children’s minds are enormously powerful and open to suggestion; in many ways, they have the capacity to guide their own development and healing.

Resources:

Kid Evolve: http://www.kidevolve.com/creative-mind-journeys/

Calmland

Original text: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18454892/chapters/43722032
Rating: Explicit
Music: English Summer by David Tobin, Jeff Meegan and Julian Gallant

Some Power of Selection

Chapter 7

This 25-minutes long practice was recorded in Costa Rica on March 17th, 2020, in a time of great anxiety about coronavirus. It describes how to face emotional intensities and/or sensorial challenges in a paced and responsible way: the pendulation between opening and expanding capacity, and then moving back to safety and comfort and knowing our limits. Fear, like the virus itself, is contagious. It is also workable – in a sense, treatable. But first we need to understand the medicine. 

This meditation is more educational than relaxing, and it meant to be that way. Hopefully it will also be helpful.

For more free meditations, see www.jeffwarren.org

Pendulate

Sharon Survival Guide

Recorded by Hannah Bullock. "17 June 2020, 4.30am."

Eden Project - dawn chorus

Anti Cuna Yachay Nihuan          } //
Uma Tocota Yupapurcancu       } // (//)

Paqui Challu Tulluconata          } //
Corallahua Yupapurcancu         } // (//)

With the knowledge of the land
They valued learning and the mind
Even the brittle bones
They hardened them with herbs alone

Icaros Anti Cuna Inti Wasi

Learn more: https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/bbc-symphony-orchestra-core/

The Perilous Flight — Louis Rugg

Jeff Warren is a writer and meditation teacher. He is the co-author of The New York Times bestselling Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, author of The Head Trip - a travel guide to sleeping, dreaming and waking - and founder of The Consciousness Explorers Club, a nonprofit meditation adventure group based in Toronto.

Mindfulness of Emotions - RAIN - Short

Jeff Warren

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