​Many military historians believe battles, even wars, have been won or lost in the warrior's mind, long before any physical conflict is initiated. Learning how to circumvent the debilitating psychological influence of stress is key to military success as well as military personnel’s well-being.
To train future soldiers, the U.S. Military is using new technologies and ancient traditions, like yoga and meditation, to retrain their brains, help them be better soldiers, and prevent trauma.
 
Historically, one purpose of meditation has been to reduce stress, however, the Army's long-term goal is to use it to mitigate the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.  The University of North Texas and Bruce J. West, Army Research Office, published a study in June 2018 that studied 2 forms of meditation to determine which has more effect on stress levels. They found that the long-term practice of meditation has the effect of making permanent the meditation-induced physiologic changes. Moreover meditators show a stronger executive control, that is, the ability to carry out goal-oriented behavior, using complex mental processes and cognitive abilities.

Here’s a review of some of the recent meditation studies and uses in all the branches of the US Military:

Army
"Soldiers are experts at standing at attention," according to Jha; however, maintaining this type of mindful attention under the intense physical and emotional demands of deployment is a far more difficult task. 
A University of Miami-led research study, led by principal investigator and neuroscientist Dr. Amishi Jha, and funded by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, has shown that meditation positively support active-duty Soldiers in protecting and training their own minds and helping better prepare Soldiers for high-stress combat situations while also improving overall cognitive resilience and performance. 
"I would like to emphasize that these practices are powerful, but that they only work if they are exercised daily," said Jha.

Marines
In 2014, a research team recruited 8 Marine Infantry platoons at Camp Pendleton.  4 platoons underwent standard military training, while the other 4 had a 20 hour meditation course added, along with a requirement for 30 minutes daily meditation.  After their training was completed, they went through a mock ambush attack.  The meditating group of Marines breathing and heart rates returned to normal faster than the others. Other results indicated that the meditators moved from the fight-or-flight status faster than the other marines.

Navy
Elite navy SEAL training that includedmeditation showed more activation of the insula, related to awareness, pain and emotion; and increased gray matter volume and better synapses in pre-frontal cortex. Soldiers showed better biofeedback tests of muscular and neurological reactions to stress after 10 days of meditation/yoga and the practices helped relieve stress as well as increase awareness. They were able learn a foreign language better, learn complex technical weapons systems better and were better marksmen. 

Are you looking for ways to deal with stress or ways to be more effective in your life?  As you can see from above, learning a meditation practice and using it regularly can make a change in your life.  Find a meditation that you will do daily. 
We like to recommend The Art of Ascension as it is so simple and so effective.  You can meditate without any special postures, it requires no special equipment, and can be done anywhere.

​Self-compassion and self-love are largely used interchangeably in specialized literature. Researchshows that having more self-compassion builds resilience when times get rough helping people to recover more quickly from traumas or romantic separation. Self-compassion is great for coping with failure or embarrassment.
The subject of narcissism has received much attention in part due to psychological literature and recent studies showing that the path to self-esteem from the last several decades actually has led to narcissism and has not created resilience.  Self-esteem relies more on positive self-evaluations and often is based on comparing oneself with others in order to increase one’s perceived self-worth. Self-esteem requires that I feel better than others or even better than most.  Self-esteem is contingent on success.  
By comparison, self-compassion works in quite the opposite way. It is not strictly based on self-evaluations and comparing oneself with others, but is rather based on the realization that we are all connected and part of mankind, as well as on the awareness that failure and setbacks are part of normal life.
A common myth says that in order to be motivated you must be self-critical. However, a more encouraging stance actually helps us to learn from failure.
"Self-kindness entails being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than flagellating ourselves with self-criticism," write Profs. Neff and Germer who have studied and written extensively on compassion.  As Neff said in an interview with The Atlantic in 2016: "When we fail, it's not 'poor me,' it's 'well, everyone fails.' Everyone struggles. This is what it means to be human."  
There's some work on physical health, showing that self-compassion is linked to better immune function. Studies show that it stabilizes glucose levels and improves depression in diabetes patients, another study says it's associated with longer telomeres, which has shown to add to longevity.  (also from the Atlantic article) Self-compassion helps you be motivated, it helps you take responsibility. It's not self-indulgent, it's not selfish, and it leads to better relationships. I find it's quite remarkable how much research there is supporting these ideas.
According to the researchers, practicing self-compassion techniques for 40 minutes every day for 8 weeks raised the participants' levels of self-compassion by 43 percent.
Let’s talk a little bit about what elements are active in True Compassion.
3 German Scientists published their work in 2015 studying 16,000 volunteers globe-wide showing that those with higher levels of self-compassion had higher levels of well-being. Their definition of self-compassion had 3 components 

1. An understanding behavior toward oneself in the face of suffering.
2. The balanced awareness of negative thoughts and feelings rather than their over identification.
3. The perception and classification of one’s experiences as part of mankind rather than an interpretation that is separate from others.”

 
Another study just published in May 2018 from the University of Wisconsin states that compassion is connecting with the suffering (of others and oneself) and a genuine wish for freedom of suffering.  The connection requires the courage to see the suffering rather than avoidance or denial. "Compassion meditation may shift habits of becoming overly distressed when we encounter another's pain," says Helen Weng, assistant professor of psychiatry at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Richard Davidson, founder of the Center for Healthy Minds and senior author of the study said, "The pattern of these findings -- an increase in looking at suffering while simultaneously down-regulating neural circuits associated with negative emotion -- is a winning combination.”
This is put in perspective by another statement from Davidson.  He says that training your brain to pay attention to compassion would be a giant step toward a better, more enjoyable life.  When you aren’t doing anything in particular, but are just at rest, your brains’ so-called default mode kicks in. This baseline mental state often leads to negative rumination that tends to be, as Davidson puts it, “all about my, me, and mine”.  
In the practice of the Art of Ascension, the Compassion technique is taught in the beginner’s workshop. A great aspect of this tool is that it can be used all day long when you are going about your active life. So, Compassion can be cultivated whenever and wherever you are.

Neuroscience “will play a huge role in the future of business education,” says Michael Platt, a Wharton professor.  

Business education of the future will not be limited to accounting, strategy and finance.  The future includes heart-rate monitors, meditation and new courses that help students improve productivity, influence decision-making and handle stress. 

MIT’s Sloan School of Management has offered “Neuroscience for Leadership Course” since 2014. “Demand is growing because business leaders who are ahead of the curve know that emotion can impact their performance,” says Yoshie Tomozumi Nakamura, Columbia’s director of organizational learning and research.

Thomas Bonfiglio, a regional director with American Medical Response in New York found good results after taking the MIT course by introducing meditation into the workplace. “We have a lot of aggressive, alpha-type personalities,” he says. “It was often difficult to get the group to work together.” But after introducing meditation, they worked more quickly and effectively, Mr. Bonfiglio says.

When NYU introduced Mindfulness in Business program, hundreds of MBA students participated and at least 15 faculty and staff members attended various programs.   Following the program, students told them they were made more self-aware, more focused, and better able to recognize and understand their own thoughts and emotions. Many felt that it made them better leaders, and expressed the need for continuing the programming. 

A graduate school in Japan, called Shizenkan, is re-orienting their approach to teach innovation-oriented management. Courses will be taught in both Japanese and English, and will include meditation and other spiritual practices.  Anil Sachdev, the founder Delhi's School of Inspired Leadership in India, or SOIL, said "to [foster] inspired leaders with character, competence, enthusiasm and social responsibility, we need to transform higher education." They are following the direction of the Japanese school to incorporate more experience-based learning to include meditation and ethics to address the trend they view in America that lacks corporate responsibility and has issues with fraud.  

Jeremy Hunter, from Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University outside Los Angeles, believes meditation should be at the center of business schools' teaching. He argues that improving the workplace and productivity is about improving the quality of attention. "To me, it's fundamental to how work gets done these days," he said. "Basically, that's what work is, attention."

Committing to a daily practice of meditation is a simple method that will improve attention, allow one to be more self-aware, handle stress with less turmoil, as well as improve productivity.  

Daily practice is key.  The most important thing is to find a practice that you will do every day.  Many of the teachers of Ascension tried many techniques before trying the Art of Ascension.  One reason we like it, is because it is easy to use and can be used anywhere.  After all the other things I tried, I knew that this is one I could and would use daily.

​Jyoti

Almost every tenth person in the population has symptoms associated with hyperactivity also known as ADHD or ADD. The currently accepted practices to treat children with ADHD are medication (mostly stimulants) and behavioral treatments. However, both have limitations. Medication works only short-term and children often have side effects. 

Studies of teenagers in 2008 and 2011, after 3 months of meditation practice showed results in:

• improvements in brain function measures associated with hyperactivity symptoms,
• improvements in five ADHD-symptoms:

1. Ability to focus on schoolwork,
2. Organizational abilities,
3. Ability to work independently,
4. Happiness,
5. Quality of sleep.

Multiple studies have been conducted showing that utilizing meditation regularly and also using techniques throughout the day to “check-in”, help with ADHD symptoms.

Dr. Lidia Zylowska and her team of researchers released a study in 2008 on adults.  Results stated a 30% reduction in ADHD symptoms among 78% of the participants in the study. As a bonus, anxiety and depression symptoms also showed improvement. Participants who completed this study reported extremely high satisfaction levels, giving the program an average score of 9.

Unlike medication, meditation develops the individual’s inner skills. Through regular use, it strengthens the ability to self-observe, to train attention, and to develop different relationships to experiences that are stressful.  It can be very helpful in teaching you to pay attention to paying attention, helps you to be aware of your emotions, and therefore it can help you to be less impulsive or reactive. That’s often a real challenge for people with ADHD.

Just as an aside, a 2012 study showed that ADHD is most often a highly subjective diagnosis.  ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder increased 381% between 1989 and 2001 most often being applied to boys unable to sit still or pay attention rather than through a clear diagnostic standard of testing.   

Dr. Edward Hallowell, a Massachusetts-based psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and has written a book with the self-explanatory title CrazyBusy. In his book he calls multitasking a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously.” He describes a new condition, “Attention Deficit Trait,” which he claims is rampant in the business world. ADT is “purely a response to the hyperkinetic environment in which we live,” …“Never in history has the human brain been asked to track so many data points.”
 
A new study out of Princeton University showed that students who constantly checked on their own levels of attention performed with fewer mistakes and were better at focusing. This proved that our brains possess attentional plasticity — or the ability to improve focus when checked on. 

In this era of distraction through our use of cell phones and social media, whether one is diagnosed with ADD or ADHD, the benefits of learning to “pay attention to attention” is going to become an ever more important skill for everyone.  

The Art of Ascension cultivates the skill of paying attention to attention, which can begin at a level of being aware of your train of thought in this moment. However, through continued regular practice, can lead the awareness to ever deeper levels of the mind, into higher consciousness.

Have you ever considered that what we identify with determines our experience of life?

What used to be called “Multiple personality disorder” has been renamed “Dissociative identity disorder”.  It seems the human being can identify with all kinds of things. In the disorder, the mind chooses an identity to the exclusion of other parts of the personality.  However, it is considered normal to identify with characteristics, with ideas, beliefs, etc.  It is just in a smaller degree than the disorder.  Psychological sites note that it is normal for people to change their personality traits in order to “identify with” people or groups of people they admire. 

A famous case mentioned frequently in medical literature cites a person with one personality who is deathly allergic to oranges, but when they switch personalities, oranges are the favorite food of the other personality. Another case showed that a drunk person instantly became sober when he changed personalities. Some people have had tumors appear and disappear as they change personalities.  Another amazing feat of the mind is shown when a person reconciles their various personalities into one, he or she can make these physical changes at will.

Maharishi Sadasiva Isham (MSI) said, “In the Waking State, we identify with our thoughts and do not experience consciousness as it is.”  We get caught in the identifications and miss the most important experience of a lifetime! MSI said, “If we identify with the constantly rising and falling waves of the physical world, we will alternately enjoy and suffer.”

Ascension retrains the mind. With the cumulative effects of the tools of Ascension, the more power we have to make choices. Each choice we make becomes more and more powerful. We can continue to look toward the manifest world of phenomena and identify with that.  Or, we can bring the Ascension Attitudes more and more into our day to day lives to expand consciousness.  A by-product of a higher state ofconsciousness is to identify with the Ascendant Self, the unbounded, unlimited One.

With that as a priority in your life, what are the possibilities for your life?

The last US census report of 2010 reported 53,364 people over 100 years old (including 330 people over 110).  In 2014, there were 72,197 Americans aged 100 or older, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of centenarians is up 44 percent from 2000. Worldwide, there are about 233,000 people over 100 years old.  Just to put that in perspective, in 1908, average life expectancy in the US was 51 years old.  

What do you think was the most common factor in people living over 100?  Of course, good genes are a great help.  But the most important factor for which people had some level of control was their ability to handle stress.

Centenarians overwhelmingly cite stress as the most important thing to avoid. Their lives are marked by as many stressful events as the rest of us, but they differ in how well they manage their stress. Rather than dwelling on it, they let it go. 

"What we are finding with our twin experiments is that one little factor difference can have a very major impact on them, and there is some evidence that mildly optimistic people do live longer than pessimistic people," says  Prof Tim Spector, an expert on ageing from Kings College London.

Stress initiates the release of a variety of hormones that make your pulse race and cause your blood pressure to rise. The hormone cortisol, released to lessen these effects, also creates problems when it remains chronically elevated. 

Spector suggests that the difference in how a person views the same situation could actually have an impact on the genes affecting their brains which in turn could change certain chemicals and alter stress levels. All this could potentially have an effect on health and longevity.

It is important to understand, we need not be a victim of stress.  Remember, that stress is not the event; stress is a result of our reaction to the event. We react based on stresses lodged in our nervous system from our past reactions. Without a meditation practice that reduces stress, modern man is just caught in a loop of adding more and more stress into the nervous system.  

Through a daily, regular practice like the Art of Ascension, the nervous system is freed from stress as consciousness expands; consciousness expands as the nervous system is freed from stress. Both happen simultaneously. Indeed, one is impossible without the other.

As stress decreases and is removed from the nervous system, the conflicting demands from the mind change; this alters enzymatic production to allow for maximum effect from digestion and the health tends to improve. Also as stress decreases, the mind starts functioning more clearly to inspire one to make better choices.  The practice of the Art of Ascension includes an open-eyed practice that reduces new stresses from adding to the nervous system.  The close-eyed meditation practice dissolves old stresses.  So it need not take nearly as long to eliminate the stress in the nervous system as it took to accumulate it!

Whether we live to be 100 or not, don’t we also want to live all our years in greater health, happiness and more consciously?

One thing that corresponds to both anxiety and depression is rumination. Ruminating means that someone repeats a thought or problem again and again without resolving it or taking it to completion. This could include worrying and self-defeating thoughts. For those with depression, the common themes are being inadequate or worthless, leading to hopelessness and helplessness.  The repetition of the feeling associated with the thought raises anxiety, which interferes with the ability to solve the problem.  Then depression deepens.

Negative emotions have been shown to limit the scope of attention.  These negative emotions involve neural, cardiovascular, endocrine and muscular changes as well as the tendency toward the primitive urge of “Fight or flight”. Also, when thinking about a situation in which you felt inadequate or worthless, it lights up a neural network of other situations in which you felt the same way. The brain chemistry creates a loop.

Research with Dr. Frederickson has shown that what she calls “Upward spirals of positive emotions” can counter these spirals of negativity caused by rumination. 

Her research has shown that positive emotions, like love and gratitude, encourage new and creative actions, ideas, and social bonds. When people experience positive emotions, limits fall away and they open up to new possibilities and ideas. At the same time, positive emotions help people build new resources, ranging from physical resources, to intellectual resources, and social resources.

Jacobs research in 2011 also showed that a meditation retreat utilizing positive emotions significantly reduced symptoms of ruminating, worry, anxiety, and depression.

The positive emotions of Praise, Gratitude, Love, and Compassion is only one component of the Art of Ascension.  Ascension Attitudes have 3 parts, the upward spiraling emotion, a component to align you with the Infinite Source, and third part is an area of life to be expanded into wholeness.  It is more difficult to understand than it is to practice.  

The Ascension Attitudes are designed to clear out past beliefs and behavior patterns which inhibit full mental and physical function­ing. By effortlessly introducing these seed thoughts at deeper levels of thinking, the entire structure of the mental framework gradually and gracefully transforms.

Are you an excessive worrier? Perhaps you unconsciously think that if you concern yourself over every little detail you can prevent bad things from happening. But the fact is, worrying can affect the body in ways that may surprise you. When worrying becomes excessive, it can lead to feelings of high anxiety and even cause you to be physically ill.

Worrying is allowing one's mind to dwell on difficulty or troubles without effectively dealing with any of them.  Worrying often centers on problems that cannot currently be solved. Worrying may interfere with your appetite, relationships, sleep, and job performance. Worrying can lead to habits such as overeating, cigarette smoking, or using alcohol and drugs.

Stress can be beneficial.  If you have an upcoming job interview or test, it can help you rise to the challenge and prepare for it. But excessive worry leads to fear and one can become so irrational that you cannot focus or think clearly.  This leads to physical consequences of the fight-or-flight system:

• Suppression of the immune system
• Suppression of digestion
• Muscle tension
• Short-term memory loss

In 1998 study, they began following 30,000 people for 8 years.  They found that those that reported the perception that stress affects health was associated with an increased likelihood of reporting psychological distress.  Those that reported a lot of stress and perceived that stress affects health a lot increased the risk of death by 43%.

Even more intriguing, those who reported high levels of stress but who did not believe their stress was harmful were not more likely to die. They actually had the lowest risk of death of anyone in the study, even lower than those with little stress.

So, it is not the stress that has been killing us but how we interpret that stress.

Just trying to change your belief system from the surface level of the mind does not work well.  

One of the most effective ways to change one’s relationship to their thoughts and beliefs is through the Ishayas’ Ascension. In the process of the Ascen­sion techniques, a specific and highly individualized thought is created by the teacher working with the student as a “vehicle” to “ride” inward to the Source of all thought.

Using these techniques to retrain the mind, it becomes unneces­sary to try to undo the previous beliefs and judgm­ents; the power of this wholly beneficial inward process is sufficient to remove all previous false percep­tions and under­standings and replace them with the direct experience of the transcen­dental beauty and perfection of the Source within.  

Are you looking for transformation?  Have you found that affirmations are not working for you?

In Analysis of the Art of Ascension Maharishi Sadasiva Isham (MSI) said, “Simply decid­ing with the surface mind that “I am well” is not only useless but potentially mentally deranging. Affirmations repeated by the conscious thinking level of the mind, although occasion­ally soothing distraught emotional states, are all but worthless for bringing about a deep transfor­ma­tion of perception of Reality. An affirmation repeated a few times a day does little to counter­act the intensity of the habitual patterns created by the average adult human’s 50,000 daily thoughts.” 

Dr. Joanne Wood at the University of Waterloo examined whether affirmations made students feel better.   68 students were asked to repeat to themselves every 15 seconds, "I am a lovable person."  Those with high self-esteem felt better, those with low self-esteem felt worse. She theorizes that those with low self-esteem feel worse because they did not believe the statements and also they could not resist negative thoughts.  First, they felt bad because they had not responded to the affirmations as they thought they should and secondly they had negative thoughts. 

Targeting beliefs at the conscious levels of the mind only go so far. As Einstein said, “"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." 

In Enlightenment MSI said “There are a number of different teachings today that encourage a constant repetition of positive or idealized statements. One unfortunate effect of this is a polarization between conscious ideals and the unconscious belief systems of the destructive internal programming. If we fail to recognize, accept and change unconscious emotional and psychological imprints, these forceful tactics of the ego will only serve to create tension and resistance in the personality and can lead to a dangerous split between the conscious and unconscious minds”

Trying to deal with duality from the surface of the mind only divides the mind.  The only “cure” for a divided mind is to Ascend.  Every time we use the Ascension Attitude, which has no opposition, the mind returns to the One Source of Everything.  Even if it is brief, as it may be when one first uses the practice, the mind moves out of duality for that moment.  Unity or duality? If one learns The Art of Ascension, there is choice.

The placebo has a lesser known flip side called the “Nocebo”.  Placebo means “I shall please” whereas the nocebo means “I shall harm”.  When the doctor tells you ‘you have an incurable illness’, or that you’ll be on medication for the rest of your life; if you believe it, they are invoking the nocebo effect.  

Nocebo is at least as important as the placebo effect and may be more widespread.—­ Ted Kaptchuk, Program in Placebo Studies, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard University.

In an oft-cited case from 1886, John Mackenzie, a surgeon in Baltimore, obtained an artificial rose of such superb workmanship it was like the original. He exposed a woman with severe rose allergy to the fake flower. Unaware that it was fake, the woman had a full-blown allergic reaction, including a running nose, swollen nostrils, and a tight chest.

The nocebo effect is not confined to clinical trials.  A school in Tennessee was forced to evacuate after a teacher reported smelling gas fumes and became dizzy.  Ultimately, over one hundred people were admitted to the Emergency Room; 38 were so sick they were kept overnight. Later, after an extensive investigation, no evidence was found of a chemical or any problem at the school.

After treating over 1000 melanoma cases at Sydney Hospital, Dr. Milton warned of another form of the nocebo effect.  Upon delivery of a cancer prognosis, many of his patients became so disheartened, they died a premature death before the cancer had developed enough to cause death.

A study showed that “patients about to undergo surgery who were “convinced” of their impending death were compared to another group of patients who were merely “unusually apprehensive” about death. While the apprehensive bunch fared pretty well, those who were convinced they were going to die usually did.”

Other studies have noted that study participants became “addicted” to their placebo and had to be weaned off of it. In a chemo-therapy study, 30% of the participants receiving a placebo lost their hair.

The power of suggestion can have tremendous effects upon the unsuspecting mind. Did you know that our society has even given us a standard time to die? There is a day and a time when it is more likely you will die than any other? 9 AM on Monday morning. Why is that? Possibly, it just seems easier to die than face another week of this horrible job! This is a truly remarkable achieve­ment of our species. Presumably no other species recognizes which day Monday is. 

The power of the mind is everything.

Beliefs hold sway over our lives only as long as we give them power.  But through a regular practice of Ishayas’ Ascension these faulty belief systems begin to collapse.  By redirecting the mind with this practice, to perfect statements of Truth, one is lead to the Source of Everything.  Through choice, one can break up these belief patterns and restructure the mind back to an innocence, back to its original design of perfection.