Zen meditation guides? Truth of the matter is, we all find reassurance when we accept who we are and our role in this vast universe. And one of the best ways to express gratitude for who we are is to nourish our souls with inspiring aesthetic quotes that keep us going amidst the chaos and confusion that is life. If you’re looking for the most creative, cute, and humorous aesthetic quotes, your search ends here. Our collection of aesthetic quotes capture the essence of gratitude and the need to exact happiness from the simple pleasures that we so often ignore.
One study on the therapeutic qualities of meditation revealed that: Regular practitioners who participated in the retreat without any pay were more self-content than non-meditators. Beginners who practiced meditation for 1-2 months showed improvement in physical and mental health than non-meditators who practiced for the same duration. Beginners and regular meditators showed increased signs of happiness and heightened self-esteem when they were randomly assigned to meditation sessions rather than when they received alternate forms of therapy.
One of the most interesting studies in the last few years, carried out at Yale University, found that mindfulness meditation decreases activity in the default mode network (DMN), the brain network responsible for mind-wandering and self-referential thoughts – a.k.a., “monkey mind.” The DMN is “on” or active when we’re not thinking about anything in particular, when our minds are just wandering from thought to thought. Since mind-wandering is typically associated with being less happy, ruminating, and worrying about the past and future, it’s the goal for many people to dial it down. Several studies have shown that meditation, through its quieting effect on the DMN, appears to do just this. And even when the mind does start to wander, because of the new connections that form, meditators are better at snapping back out of it.
I first got in touch with Rachel because I was working on a project for a magazine, and I needed contributors. I emailed her from the burner phone I’d bought at Wal-Mart the day after I got out. I told her about the project, said I liked her poems, her journalism. She didn’t act stuck up or anything. We talked about books and shit. It came naturally to us. This didn’t go without controversy. Some took issue with her feelings about her own experience, something to the effect of it being unethical of her to exploit her own exploitation. She was even accused of being a “fake” sex worker. Her accusers were not sex workers, so it’s anyone’s guess how they might know enough to tell a fugazzi from a genuine article, but this is neither here nor there. A few porn stars bowed up to troll for White, and that was the last of people saying she was a fake. Read even more info on hopi prayer for the dead. The best form for your poem will depend on what it’s about and the mood and feelings you want to create in the reader. The length of the line can make the reader go faster or slower, change the look of the poem on the page, focus attention on certain words. You may decide to incorporate other structural elements such as a certain number of syllables per line, a regular meter, or a rhyme scheme. All of this should work with, and contribute to, the poem’s meaning.
How do you stay political in all the different things that you’re doing? Mine is a politics that comes from care, and mutual aid. I think the poems come back to that core. It’s not this idea of self-care, which I think can be very individualistic, and almost selfish. To me, care is community care. It’s keeping an extra space for friends who end up homeless or in between apartments, which often happens when people are criminalized. There’s ways to use your money to maintain spaces of care. Throwing parties to me is care. All these people come together at my parties, and everyone is intellectual and sexy and smart and [they] have all of these interesting things to say, and the girls end up doing a lot of care for each other when they’re coming down from working too much. A lot of what happens during the parties [that I throw] is people intellectualizing what is happening at work and what their burnout is doing to them and how the proximity to money and wealthy people is fucking with their brain. It’s almost therapeutic care that we do for each other. It’s also care to fuck people who aren’t clients and take back sexual energy.
Monterrico is a bit off the beaten path of Pacific coastal Guatemala. With beautiful black sand, volcanic beaches and far fewer faces than you’ll spot at some other beaches, it’s great for those looking for a true “escape” from reality. However, the Pacific currents and tides make for rough water and only very experienced swimmers should leave the safety of the beach to explore the waters of the ocean. If you’re into environmentalism and conservation, you can actively take part in saving a sea turtle by visiting one of the local sea sanctuaries (during the appropriate season) and help facilitate the release of baby sea turtles into the warmth and safety of the ocean.
Studies suggest that meditation functions on specific parts of the brain that are known to create depression, anxiety, and stress responses. For example, the medial prefrontal cortex, or the ‘me-center’ of the mind gets into overdrive during the depression and anxiety states. As a result, we experience more negative feelings about ourselves and keep sabotaging our self-esteem cluelessly. Amygdala, or the ‘fear center’ is a part of the limbic system that creates fear responses and activates the fight-or-flight system in the body, that consumes a significant portion of our energy, leaving us to feeling tired and weary for the rest of the day. During the depression and anxious states, the ‘me-center’ and the ‘fear center’ work simultaneously, causing a chain of reactions, as illustrated below.