Mindful Monday: 4 Steps to Mindfulness

Thanks for posting this Therese. I look forward each Monday to your Mindful Monday posts. If any of your readers are interested I also have a post on Tips for Daily Mindfulness at my blog:
http://beyondbreastcancer.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/tips-for-daily-mindfulness/

good topic i deffinetly can use help with my emotions and my wandering mind.will deffenetly use these.

I have not tried Dr. Goldstein's CD's. I am getting the impression that these are like a guided meditation. Am I correct?

I've tried a number of products over the years, all have had some benefit to me. Think Right Now by Mike Brescia makes some nice CD's that play suggestions over Baroque-style music. I have several titles from them including I Am Organized Now, and Supreme Self Confidence. When my wife went on hospital bed rest in April for our triplets, I picked her up another Mike Brescia CD called Dissolving Panic & Anxiety Now. She found it quite helpful during a rather stressful time. These CD's run about an hour long, and you can play them in the background, you don't need headphones. All these CD's work better if you can sit and relax, and concentrate single-mindedly on them, but I will often pop one on in the background when I am deep-cleaning the kitchen.

I also enjoy many of the Brainwave Entrainment CD's that use binaural beats. I would google both of those phrases for more info. I got started a dozen years ago using Holosync, but it is extremely cost prohibitive and I don't advocate any product of that type that says you must use it daily. I followed that with Hemisync but many of those titles are an hour long as well.

With a full time job, three new babies, six rental units to landlord for, and trying to nurse my creative muse, I don't have alot of time, so I prefer to just drop off to sleep to something that is thirty minutes or less. I like the Chakra meditations from Xtrememind, and the Shamanic Consciousness from the Unexplainable website. I also listen to a number of titles from Harmonic Ascension, but never more than one title a nite. Some nights I just want to lie on my side and drop off to sleep...tough to do with ear phones, so if I miss a nite, so be it.

I don't make a dime for any of these products and I don't personally know any of these people who put these products out. This just happens to be a topic that I am passionate about and I may do an article about it some day.

The sites that make these products frequently make lavish claims, I won't pretend to give a dramatic testimonial but I do seem to handle stress better in recent years. Most folks who get to know me often marvel at how well I handle stressful situations. This may be due to the meditative qualities of these CD's or maybe I am just mellowing with age.

These meditation CD's all cost a pretty penny. Holosync is by far the most expensive, while Unexplainable offers instant downloads that are a fair bit cheaper. If you're truly worried about money, nothing beats sitting in a quiet room, with your eyes closed, focusing on your breath. That's how the Yogi's did it for 5000 years.

YMMV
-Papa Charley

PS - The site says that you won't lose the comments you wrote if the Captcha expires. I can tell you that this is not true. I hit the refresh Captcha twice because it timed out when writing this, and I lost it all. Got smarter the third time and wrote it in Microsoft Word, then copied it over.

WOW!THIS IS VERY INFORMATIONAL,I'VE BEEN STRUGGLING WITH A MENTAL ILLNESS FOR SOMETIME NOW.AND MY MIND OFTEN PLAYS ALOT OF TRICKS ON ME.BUT BY READING HOW THE MIND WORKS IN A SENSE I CAN NOW LEARN HOW TO COPE WITH SOME OF MY MINDFULNESS.I OFTEN TEND TO GET DISTRACTED WITH SOME DISTURBING THOUGHTS.AN I'VE TRIED LISTENING TO MUSIC,OR MEDITATING BUT I LOSE FOCUS AN JUST GIVE UP.IM HANGGING IN THIER AN WILL CONTINUE TO COME TO BELIEFNET FOR HELP. THANKS

I am fascinated by a book I am currently reading "is it me or my meds? Living with Antidepressants" by David A. Karp.