Dear Meditator,

There's one major problem with meditation. If you don't do it - it doesn't work. If you do however, the benefits can be even more useful than you might have imagined. For example, recent research shows how meditation can help you to more effectively deal with emotional upset.

If you haven't been meditating as much as you'd like recently, give yourself a mid-winter kick start and follow these two simple suggestions.

1. Practice this months' spot meditation twice a day for the next 5 days.
2. Get along to a Simply Silence group meditation session - it's the cheapest and healthiest night out in Melbourne.

In This Issue...

• Spot Meditation
• Next course(s) begin in two weeks
• Casual Meditation Classes in Elwood and North Melbourne
• Brain Scan Reveals Why Meditation Works
• Meditation Tip

Spot Meditation

Six, ten-second meditations equals one minute of suprisingly effective rest. Try this little sequence for a sense of immediate calm.

How and where do you meditate when you've only got a minute? Send your own spot meditations to matt@melbournemeditationcentre.com.au

The best suggestion each month will be published here.

Course Schedule

Our next series of courses commences in two weeks.

You can register online for any of the following classes. Note that most courses book out a week or so before they're due to start.

For information on courses beyond August check out our 2007 course schedule.

Term 4 August/September

Casual Classes

Simply Silence

Our first Simply Silence session in Elwood went well, with about 20 meditators coming along last Monday night. Thanks to Sarah Fletcher and Debbie Ling for running the night and doing the guided meditations. We'll be doing it all again on Monday August 13.

Simply Silence provides you with the opportunity to practice your meditation in a group setting on a casual basis; entry is by donation and you're invited to join us for tea and biscuits afterwards. For full details or to subscribe to our reminder service, which lets you know when the next session is scheduled, visit the Simply Silence website.

balance

The next balance session will include african and indian percussion, didjeridoo and singing bowls. Check the Melbourne Meditation Centre homepage for full details later this week.

In the News - Brain Scan Reveals Why Meditation Works

If you name your emotions, you can tame them, according to new research that suggests why meditation works.

Brain scans show that putting negative emotions into words calms the brain's emotion center. That could explain meditation’s purported emotional benefits, because people who meditate often label their negative emotions in an effort to “let them go.”

Psychologists have long believed that people who talk about their feelings have more control over them, but they don't know why it works.

UCLA psychologist Matthew Lieberman and his colleagues hooked 30 people up to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machines, which scan the brain to reveal which parts are active and inactive at any given moment.

Read more...

Meditation Tip - Warming Up

Rest your hands in your lap, one hand over the other. Take three long breaths and while you follow your breath, focus on your hands. Feel them becoming warm, if you like, by imagining some scene or way in which you might bring warmth to the body. Feel the blood vessels relaxing. Invest all your attention in the sensation of your hands relaxing and warming. Do this for at least one minute.

Were you aware that the power of your attention alone has the capacity to warm the body? When you focus on a particular part of the body, the blood vessels there open, arterial resistance goes down and temperature goes up. In five to ten minutes of focusing on the notion of warming, you can probably raise your skin tempterature by five to ten degreees. This is not magic. This is a proven, measurable fact from the field of biofeedback. Most people can do it.

When you sit and focus on your breath during meditation you do much the same thing. Because you're triggering the relaxation response, your blood vessels relax and open. Arterial resistance goes down and blood flow goes up.

By trying to warm your hands, you're learning first hand a key fact: When you meditate, you exercise some control over the same systems you lose control over when stress gets the better of you - your nervous, hormonal and muscular systems. While these systems can run on autopilot, you can influence all three by meditating.

Know someone who could chill out?

Do you have friends who are perpetually stressed or anxious, have trouble sleeping or could just do with learning how to relax? Do them a favour and forward this email to them. (Or if this is you, subscribe here.)