Happy Mind: Meditations from the Ancient World to Modernity

Our Mid- and Upper backs hold the weight of the world, our world at least. And this weight can bring chronic or periodic pain. Fortunately we can use our bodies and minds to release this pain, to heal ourselves. We just need to know the code. Scientists have identified and synthesized the parts of marijuana that make people feel so good and along the way they have figured out the answer to the mys...

Ready to release the tension in your back and shoulders? Having pain and tightness again? You have the power to fix it by taking advantage of the way the brain works, by hacking its mode of operation. The world we perceive isn’t what we think it is. Take the vision processing center of our brain. 90 per cent of all connections coming in to this part of our cortex don’t come from our eyes. They com...

Imagine that you have a daughter and she has just come in from playing outside. She has a freshly skinned knee and is crying because the bully who pushed her down also took her dolly. Our bodies are like that. They can’t speak the language we use with each other so they tell us their troubles and fears through pain, soreness and restricted movement. We can learn the language of our bodies and demo...

Ever wonder why a hug feels so good? Or a massage? Or hot baths? It is because these are the sorts of “words” our bodies understand. We can’t command a muscle to relax with a thought or a sentence. We have to speak the body’s language. We do this by combining love and attention with movement and touch. Music works too. This is the language our bodies understand. We all carry the stresses of the da...

We spend most of our lives either doing something or wanting something. We all know the feeling of wanting more money or more leisure time or more love or peace or safety or comfort or whatever it is. Some of us get sucked in to that and struggle to pull out. Most of us believe that the best thing to do isn’t to sit around and wallow in it but to get out there and create our destiny. The self-help...

When we experience suffering of any kind, the great masters tell us that we are the ones creating that suffering in ourselves. But how can that be? Surely some things we can blame others for? These ancient masters suggest that really we are the ones who need to be taking the responsibility. Where better to practice becoming comfortable with this truth than while driving? It seems like every time w...

Driving appears to be the very place where the world conspires against us. We discover that people can become unusually inconsiderate when they feel they are anonymous and are in a rush. Yet we can choose to convert this time from one of frustration and stress into part of our systematic program for retaking control of our life. We are going to use this time and this experience of driving your car...

Driving today is yet another illustration of how modern society isolates each of us from one other and from our communities. The facts support this in places like Los Angeles where 70% of commuters choose to drive alone in their vehicle to get to and from work. And when we are in our cars we are surrounded by a bubble of reinforced steel and hardened glass and plastic, separated from our fellow tr...

Driving seems like an obvious place where we are in control of our movement. So it makes a great place to practice getting used to the two of the most important concepts in achieving lasting peace and happiness: the ideas that we are neither a self nor a doer. We are doing this practice because, as counterintuitive as it sounds, the biggest names in the pantheon of great masters, from Lao Tzu to B...

The ancient Chinese philosopher and military strategist Sun Tzu is famous for saying: “To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.” His wisdom is surprisingly relevant to the battle against insomnia. The key to winning the battle for sleep, to breaking our wakefulness’s resistance, is not to fi...

This short talk introduces the Serena Sleep Meditation Series. If you hare suffering from insomnia, your subconscious or lower self doesn’t want to let you fall asleep. There is some worry or fear so deep that your lower self believes that sleep might even lead to your death. It is irrational but the part of our selves that is in charge of putting our bodies to sleep has a different logic. It’s lo...

It is bedtime and once again you can’t sleep. You’ve tried everything you can think of and you’re ready to give up but you don’t even know what that means. It is time take another tack, to earn the trust of your lower self, to help her discover your inner fortress where the best sleep of your life is possible. Using this meditation to find that inner fortress will help unlock the cycle of insomnia...

We can’t tell our body to fall asleep the same direct way we can tell our arm to move or our voice to make words. Unfortunately, that isn’t how that system works. So we have to play by the rules of the going to sleep game. Tonight, the way we are going to play that game is by pretending our body is a small child. She doesn’t want to go to sleep tonight so we have to help her. We have to remind her...

Sleep is a funny thing. It is only when we let go of needing to fall asleep and thinking about sleep that we can fall asleep. This meditation involves imagining a bed time bath. Sleep is brought on by changes in your body and this sort of guided meditation helps bring about those changes. Normally, our body follows the rules and keeps with the rhythm of the day and puts us to sleep according to th...

A wonderful meditation practice that has been passed down through the ages is Loving Kindness or Metta Bhavana meditation. It is a compassion based practice that is a popular form of meditation in Buddhism and is also found in the ancient texts of Hinduism and Jainism. The word “metta” can be translated as friendly, benevolent, affectionate, kindness, good-will, love, or sympathy. In this brief se...

An extraordinary meditation technique that has been passed down through the millennia is called Loving Kindness or Metta Bhavana. Through a sort of paradox of giving equals receiving, this meditation allows an emptying of oneself to lead to a fullness. In this shorter session the focus is on generating and sharing loving kindness and other wonderful sensibilities. For the companion podcast coverin...

An extraordinary meditation technique that has been passed down through the millennia is Loving Kindness or Metta Bhavana meditation. This Guided Meditation is a variation on that ancient practice. It follows the more traditional method of generating and cultivating loving kindness and other wonderful sensibilities within ourselves and then extending them out to others. Through this emptying of ou...

A common meditation technique that has been passed down through the millennia is Loving Kindness or Metta Bhavana meditation. There is a reason it has stood the test of time: it works. One study done at Stanford University suggests that a loving-kindness meditation practiced even for 7 minutes can increase social connectedness. Loving kindness meditation has also been shown to help people with chr...

This track is the complete Chakra set. Proceed with caution. The eight noumenal centers of energy in the body are all activated in this guided meditation. Then you are guided through moving the energy within each Chakra, among multiple chakras and finally out into the universal Chakras. The concept of Chakras was passed down probably for thousands of years in the oral tradition of the Indian subco...

This is the third in the Chakra series and it encompasses activation, energizing, connection and balance. Chakras represent the centers of energy or power in the body and are believed to regulate and harmonize the physical, emotional, neurological and spiritual systems in the body. Many practitioners of Eastern medicine believe that when they are blocked or disconnected we experience negative effe...

This is the second of several that you can use and is similar to the first one but longer, focusing primarily on the activation and balance of the chakras. Chakras represent the centers of spiritual energy in the physical self and are believed to regulate and harmonize the physical, emotional, neurological and spiritual systems in the body. Many practitioners of Eastern medicine believe that when...

Chakra is a Sanskirt word meaning wheel. They represent the centers of energy or power in the body and are believed to regulate and harmonize the physical, emotional, neurological and spiritual systems in the body. Many practitioners of Eastern medicine believe that when they are blocked all sorts of negative side effects will manifest in our bodies and lives. So keeping them energized, open, heal...

One popular mantra chanted as part of the Kundalini tradition is the phrase “sa-ta-na-ma”. Sa means infinity; Ta means life; Na/death; and Ma/rebirth. This track is chanting only so that you have someone to harmonize and chant along with. You can also listen to the brief introductory track for a bit of background to the practice and then spend a few minutes chanting on your own. For the companion...

One popular mantra chanted as part of the Kundalini tradition is the phrase “sa-ta-na-ma”. Sa means infinity; Ta means life; Na/death; and Ma/rebirth. Listen to a brief introduction to the practice and then spend a few minutes chanting on your own. For the companion podcast covering the theory behind why these meditations work, check out the Serena system podcast at https://goo.gl/Dxu4eo. Hosted o...

There is a Buddhist chant popular in the Japanese Nichiren tradition called “Nam myoho renge kyo.” Nam means taking refuge. Myoho means pure dharma or wonderful law. Renge means lotus flower. And Kyo means sutra. Putting this together, one way to say the meaning of the phrase in English is “May I take refuge in the wonderful teachings of the Lotus Flower Sutra.” This refers to the extraordinary Bu...