You and Me

07 Friday Dec 2018

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You and Me

I hear you

I know you

I have walked in your shoeshands-005

I am walking with your feet

Your skin is my skin

I hold you

You hold yourself

I ask you

You ask yourself

We listen together

Our ancestors tell a story

of laughter from long ago

when we were all babies

alone swaddled in blankets

waiting for the breast

We watch as you move

I call out the signs

You give me your hand

We hold them together

and wave good bye

What is

06 Thursday Dec 2018

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What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. Isapo-Muxika (Crowfoot)

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Being Creative & Meditation

05 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by in Creativity, Meditation, mindfulness

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Certain meditation techniques can promote creative thinking, even if you have never meditated before. This is the outcome of a study by cognitive psychologist Lorenza Colzato and Dominique Lippelt at Leiden University, published in Mindfulness.418234_10151301447999689_275921219_n

Long-lasting influence

The study is a clear indication that you don’t need to be an experienced meditator to profit more from meditation. The findings support the belief that meditation can have a long-lasting influence on human cognition, including how we conceive new ideas. Besides experienced meditators, also novices may profit from meditation.

Different techniques, different effects

But the results demonstrate that not all forms of meditation have the same effect on creativity. Test persons performed better in divergent thinking (= thinking up as many possible solutions for a given problem) after Open Monitoring meditation (= being receptive to every thought and sensation). The researchers did not see this effect on divergent thinking after Focused Attention meditation (=focusing on a particular thought or object.)

Setup of the study

40 individuals participated in this study, who had to meditate for 25 minutes before doing their thinking tasks. There were both experienced mediators and people who never meditated before. The study investigated the influences of different types of meditative techniques on the two main ingredients of creativity:

  • Divergent thinking Allows for many new ideas to be generated. It is measured using the so-called Alternate Uses Task method where participants are required to think up as many uses as possible for a particular object, such as a pen.
  • Convergent thinking Convergent thinking, on the other hand, is a process whereby one possible solution for a particular problem is generated. This is measured using the Remote Associates Task method, where three unrelated words are presented to the participants, words such as ‘time’, ‘hair’ and ‘stretch’. The participants are then asked to identify the common link: in this case, ‘long’.

Lorenza S. Colzato, Ayca Szapora, Dominique Lippelt, Bernhard Hommel. Prior Meditation Practice Modulates Performance and Strategy Use in Convergent- and Divergent-Thinking Problems. Mindfulness, 2014; DOI: 10.1007/s12671-014-0352-9

The Ten Rules For Being Human

03 Monday Dec 2018

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1. You will receive a body.
2. You will be presented with lessons.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons.
4. Lessons are repeated until learned.feelings-12
5. Learning does not end.
6. “There” is no better than “here.”
7. Others are only mirrors of you.
8. What you make of your life is up to you.
9. All the answers lie inside of you.
10. You will forget all of this at birth.

Children of the Holocaust

02 Sunday Dec 2018

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Following the end of the World War Two, the BBC began a series of special radio appeals on behalf of a group of children who had survived the Holocaust but were now stranded as orphans in post-war Europe. A recording of one of these moving broadcasts still exists in the BBC archives. Seventy years on, Alex Last set out to find out what had happened to the 12 children named in this recording. They had been in many camps, including Auschwitz, Muhldorf, Kauferng, Theresienstadt, Belsen, and Dachau, and the modern-day search took him to Germany, Israel and the United States.
Five of the Holocaust survivors are still alive today, and four of them were well enough to speak to Alex, who was able to piece together their stories of courage and humanity. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02qh7v5

Lost Children of the Holocaust

01 Saturday Dec 2018

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Following the end of the World War Two, the BBC began a series of special radio appeals on behalf of a group of children who had survived the Holocaust but were now stranded as orphans in post-war Europe. A recording of one of these moving broadcasts still exists in the BBC archives. Seventy years on, Alex Last set out to find out what had happened to the 12 children named in this recording. They had been in many camps, including Auschwitz, Muhldorf, Kauferng, Theresienstadt, Belsen, and Dachau, and the modern-day search took him to Germany, Israel and the United States.

Five of the Holocaust survivors are still alive today, and four of them were well enough to speak to Alex, who was able to piece together their stories of courage and humanity. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02qh7v5

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I am a happy amateur photographer

25 Sunday Nov 2018

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I am, happily, an amateur photographer. I don’t know what I am doing, and I do it about 100 times a week. I go out and shoot nearly everyday. I still have no idea what most of the settings on my cameras do, despite books, YouTube videos, and carrying flash card like cheat sheets around. I am slowly discovering, after about 5 years, what I like to photograph and where to point the camera.

Light and dark seems to come up in my photos a lot. I don’t consciously go out to shoot these types of photos. I just go out, start shooting, go home, and load them onto the PC and take a look.

Since I shoot most everyday, of the 10,000 or so photos I’ve taken most were shoot within 100 yards of my door. I do, on occasion visit historic sites and botanical gardens in New England and the Mid Atlantic states.

Many things inspire me to take photos: sunlight and shadows, colors and less colors, clouds, sunlight and branches, trees, flowers, birds, favorite photographers, and, very rarely, a planned photograph.

 I love the way sunlight filters through leaves and creates shadows. Click the images to enlarge.

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SONY DSC

Is an Optimistic Mind Associated with a Healthy Heart?

14 Friday Sep 2018

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“Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity.” — World Health Organization (1946) Many poets, philosophers, and thinkers throughout history have recognized the intimate link between physical and mental health. The ancient Roman poet Juvenal once declared “A healthy f-555 mind in a healthy body”. However, until relatively recently, most psychological research has focused on the link between psychological difficulties (e.g., anxiety, depression) and physical health. But things are changing. Over the past few decades, a growing number of studies demonstrate that merely alleviating anxiety and stress don’t necessarily lead to better life outcomes. Positive characteristics, such as optimism, vitality, meaning, and subjective life satisfaction are immensely important in their own right. The related fields of positive psychology and health psychology focus on rigorous scientific investigations of how people adapt to life’s inevitable challenges, and how that is related (or even leads to) a better quality of life. This process of resilience across life is the idea of thriving, successful aging, or flourishing.

See more at: http://www.creativitypost.com/psychology/is_an_optimistic_mind_associated_with_a_healthy_heart