When you see the research on Emotional Intelligence, it is no surprise that meditation has become an increasingly popular practice amongst the C-suite elite (such as CEOs Rupert Murdoch, Bill Ford/Ford Motor, Rick Goings/Tupperware, and Marc Benioff/Salesforce.com.)
 
“Studies have shown that people with high EI (Emotional Intelligence) have greater mental health, job performance, and leadership skills.” For example, Daniel Goleman, in his book Working With Emotional Intelligence, indicated “that EI accounted for 67% of the abilities deemed necessary for superior performance in leaders, and mattered twice as much as technical expertise or IQ.”

Dr. Goleman states that there are four competencies of emotional intelligence that are required for effective leadership: 
1.   Self-awareness
2.   Self-management (positive outlook, achievement orientation, self-control, adaptability)
3.   Social awareness (organizational awareness, empathy)
4. Relationship management (inspirational leadership, conflict management, teamwork, mentor, influencer)
 
In the last 10 years, much research has been published showing how meditation provides foundational support for these skills.  Of course, meditation alone will not produce these skills.  But, with a foundation of a regular practice, these skills can more readily develop as old stresses are set aside and new capabilities allowed to flourish when certain areas of the brain develop. 
 
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Self-Awareness and Self-Management is supported by the prefrontal cortex which is associated with body regulation, communication, emotional balance, response flexibility, empathy, insight, self-knowing awareness, and fear modulation. The prefrontal cortex also releases an inhibitory neurotransmitter (GABA) that actually counters the impulses of the amygdala which helps to modulate fear. In a study of regular meditation practitioners, the left side prefrontal cortex activation tripled after four months of practice.
 
“Feeling fear but not acting on it" is a physical, chemical process, even if it is experienced subjectively as purely mental in nature. Over time, with meditation, activity in the reflective, regulatory, mind increases.  A common experience among regular meditators is that rather than immediately reacting to a stimulus, as they may have in the past, they find a new “spaciousness”. 
 
Meditation strengthens the connection of the insula (what monitors the body sensations and gut feelings) to the Medial prefrontal cortex (Me Center of the brain that constantly references back to you, your perspective and experiences.) which increases in Social Awareness and Relationship Management.
 
Before one begins a regular practice, if you were to look at a person’s brain, you would likely see strong neural connections within the Me Center and between the Me Center in regards to bodily sensations. For odd body sensations (e.g., a tingling, pain, itching, whatever), a non-meditator would begin to feel anxious, scared or assume that there is a problem (related to you or your safety). This Me Center activity, unchecked, is what causes the repeated loop, “There is something wrong….” and can begin the cascade of the fight/flight chemicals.
 
Because meditation strengthens the connection of the insula to the medial prefrontal cortex, it increases our capacity to understand where another person is coming from and put ourselves in their shoes. It also helps regulate the over-stimulated Me Center created thoughts, so that the anxiety related feelings settle down. 
 
In the Art of Ascension, the three-fold structure of the Ascension Attitudes causes each of the three primary aspects of our personality -- our hearts, our minds, our bodies -- to move in the direc­tion of growth. This process unwinds or loosens the deeply held judgments and beliefs that keep us bound to fear and restric­tion.

The Ascension Attitudes are designed to clear out past beliefs and behavior patterns which inhibit full mental and physical function­ing. This process is primarily one of effortlessly uncovering ever more expanded states of awareness.

When the pattern of thinking and desiring is orderly, the result is health, happi­ness, joy, progress, creativi­ty, and fulfillment.

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?

Mental stress has been reported to impair cognitive functions. This may be relevant to the performance of students, office workers, and many others for whom optimal alertness, concentration, and memory are significant variables affecting their performance.

Researchers in India studied the effects of meditation before stress and after stress using computer games as the stressor.  Computer games usually give immense pleasure after a win. However, in the initial stages of the game when a player suffers repeated defeats or constraints, the game becomes very stressful.

The computer games gave a sharp increase in stress levels. The study measured galvanic skin response, heart rate, electromyography, sympathetic reactivity, cortisol, and acute psychologic stress scores.

They found benefits were given to even first time meditators.  Meditation, if practiced before the stressful event, reduced the adverse effects of stress. Memory quotient significantly increased for those that meditated before, whereas cortisol level decreased after both stress and meditation. The practice of meditation after stress may ameliorate some negative effects of stress, however the effect was greater on those that meditated before the stress!

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD sifted through nearly 19,000 meditation studies, they found 47 trials that addressed stress and met their criteria for well-designed studies. Their findings, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, suggest that meditation can help ease psychological stresses like anxiety, depression, and pain.

It’s pretty amazing that there are 19,000 studies on meditation already completed on the effectiveness of meditation.

The Ishaya Tradition techniques/meditation have been practiced for thousands of years and have been verified to be universally true for all. 
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The Ascension Attitudes are priceless for the modern world. The Art of Ascension is ex­treme­ly easy to prac­tice and quick­ly frees any­one from stress. This opens life to maxi­mum cre­ativity, enjoy­ment, health and success.

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?

According to Drug Addiction Now, the new trend in treating addiction includes meditation to help people overcome dependence during rehab as well as after rehab. A possibly not so surprising figure, is that 40-60% of those who seek treatment relapse.  The addition of meditation to their program has the opportunity to change that figure.
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A 2004 Study published in Molecular Psychiatry indicates that when the addict gets a fix, they get a dopamine rush and later a crash due to extremely low dopamine, and hence need another fix.  However a 2002 Study of John F Kennedy Institute found that meditation boosted dopamine by 65%. 

A 2006 Study from the University of Washington followed 78 addicted inmates.  They found that including meditation in their treatment program made it 6 times more effective than the more traditional chemical dependency treatment plan.  A second study followed 286 in post rehab.  One third of the group used meditation, another third used the 12 step program and another third a “relapse prevention program”.  The relapse prevention program had 17% relapse, the 12 step program had 14% relapse, and the meditators had 9% relapse after 1 year.

A meta study from October 2016 published in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction shows ten benefits that help treat addiction when one is more mindful (becoming more aware, on purpose, in the present moment, in a non-judgmental way).

1. Structural Brain Changes in at least 6 areas of the brain that are associated with learning, memory, self-regulation, and more.
2. Reduced Autonomic Arousal which increases relaxation response and brings on blissful states
3. Perceptual Shift so that people change their relationship and responses to their thoughts and feelings
4. Increase in Spirituality which helps buffer against loneliness and help in re-evaluating priorities in life
5. Greater Situational Awareness allows the practitioner to enter into a form of effortless communication with the present momentwhich is understood to improve (amongst other things) decision-making competency, job performance, and the ability to anticipate how a particular situation might unfold
6. Values Clarification because the practitioner begins to appreciate more fully that life can only unfold and be experienced in the present moment, and that fantasizing about the future or ruminating over the past is ultimately a futile and fatiguing process.
7. Increase in Self-Awareness which in turn helps to improve ability to identify and label negative mood states and thinking patterns 
8. Addiction Substitution because the blissful state from meditation can substitute for the addicted person’s buzz addiction, in other words, substituting a negative addiction for a positive one.
9. Urge Surfing refers to the ability to observe the urge but not react to it which allows them to deal with their cravings in a new way
10. Letting Go pattern is positively correlated with acceptance, non-reactivity, self-compassion, subjective wellbeing, and eudemonic wellbeing 

 
“What happens is when you meditate, your brain starts to shift,” said Christina Nadeau, meditation instructor at Outer Banks Meditation & Mindfulness in Corolla, North Carolina. “You start looking at something in a different perspective. The body is processing all those toxins. Your toxicity levels go down; your blood pressure goes down; your immune system gets better; you are able to make natural chemicals like dopamine and serotonin.”
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Meditation also helped Stacy Thrash with the physical symptoms she experienced during addiction recovery. “The physical craving in the body gets worse if you resist it,” she said. “We’re used to running from our emotions. When we’re able to respond to something differently, it comes and goes. A headache doesn’t last forever.”

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.  

The 2018 rankings in Happiness scores world-wide shows that the USA has fallen to number 19, below Costa Rico, Israel, and a host of Germanic/Scandinavian countries. Mental health was one of the issues cited for the fall in USA happiness ranking which was 3rd in the world in 2007.  

Mental health has been shown to be an issue with America’s young.  47% of college students have overwhelming anxiety; 30% are too depressed to function. Research suggest the majority of anxiety is about grades and time to complete assignments.  This belies the fact that the things that are the source of anxiety has no impact on happiness. Even though today’s youth grew up with much more affluence, contemporary young adults face much more depression, loneliness, and social disorders than Baby Boomers.

In 2017, Harvard offered a course on “Happiness” that was its most popular class to that date.  In 2018, Yale offered a course on “Happiness/Psychology and the Good Life”, which has become its’ most popular class in its 317 year history. Even though there were hundreds of other courses that conflict with the course in happiness, 1200 students were enrolled. No classrooms were big enough, so they had to move the course to the stadium used for concerts.  1 in 4 students at Yale took the course that will be given only the one time.

Dr. Laurie Santos, the instructor and author of the course, is hoping that this high percentage of the population will act as a seed to help to change the culture of the college campus. She said that students want the culture to change.  Yes, they realize it’s a privilege to get into Yale, but at what cost. 
 
She started by researching who is really happy and looking at their lives.  Several practices are associated with happier people and make these the foci of the course:

1. Take time for yourself, prioritize your own time
2. Take time to be mindful and grateful 
3. Meditate
4. Do good things for others (keeping things for ourselves doesn’t make us happier, but giving does)

The course emphasizes behavioral change.  She stresses that you can’t just hear about the findings to be happier (what she calls “GI Joe mentality”), you must put in the work.

While others might see easy credits, Dr. Santos refers to her course as the “hardest class at Yale”: To see real change in their life habits, students have to hold themselves accountable each day, she said. You must form new habits.

She uses “Rewirement Assignments” or behaviors for the weekly or course long assignments.  For example, each day they must log what they are grateful for today, meditate, and sleep for 8 hours, and “be kind”.  They introduced a new app to log their random acts of kindness.  For their semester research project, each student must set up an experiment on themselves about what makes them happy.  

In the class on “Time Affluence”, which occurred during midterms, she gave the students the hour off (no class) to do anything that supported their well-being; the only rule being that they could not study.  Some of the students began to cry and others hugged her, saying this was the only “free hour” they had during the entire semester.

Her expertise in Evolutionary Psychology brings light to this subject by realizing our species was built for cooperation and our minds, especially things coming from our primate brains, lie to us. It is important that many of the things we think will make us happy, won’t make us happy. Santos brought out a great term invented by Tim Wilson at the University of Virginia and Dan Gilbert at Harvard called “miswanting,” the process by which our brain tells us that if we could just have X we’d be happy.

She also warned about our natural inclination to compare ourselves to others which has become especially extreme in the digital age, and it’s the main reason social media addicts report higher levels of stress, depression, and isolation, and lower levels of self-esteem and life satisfaction.

If you are looking for a meditation technique that is extremely simple, focuses on gratitude, love, and compassion, and can be practiced anytime, anywhere, by anybody, check out our Free Live Introductory Talk Schedule link here: Directory of Teachers  (scroll to lower portion of page).  The event is live and interactive and will give you an opportunity to hear about The Art of Ascension, how it works to rewire the mind/body/brain, plus ask any questions you may have.