American Meditation Institute Announces Meditation and Yoga Retreat in New York
The American Meditation Institute (AMI) in Averill Park, New York will host Leonard Perlmutter’s 16th annual “Heart and Science of Yoga®” summer intensive retreat July 14-17, 2016. This CME accredited foundation course for self-care will present an extensive curriculum of Yoga Science as mind/body medicine including topics on meditation, stress and pain management, breathing, easy-gentle yoga, Ayurveda, Yoga psychology, immortality and nutrition. The weekend retreat is designed for first-time or experienced meditators, and offers 18 continuing medical education credits for physicians, nurses and psychologists. Leonard Perlmutter (Ram Lev), AMI founder, noted educator and author of the award-winning book The Heart and Science of Yoga: A Blueprint for Peace, Happiness & Freedom from Fear will present all course components.
This intensive “Heart and Science of Yoga” course presents a comprehensive training in the world’s most effective holistic mind/body medicine and explains its scientific foundation. Noted physicians Dr. Oz (Mehmet Oz MD), Dean Ornish MD, Bernie Siegel MD and Larry Dossey MD have endorsed the curriculum being offered. The American Medical Association, American Nurses Association and the American Psychological Association provide medical accreditation credits for health care practitioners in attendance.
As part of AMI’s “Yoga of Medicine” program, this weekend intensive will include the following areas of study: an easy meditation procedure; a systematic method for harnessing the power of the mind; breathing practices to enhance the immune system; an understanding of the creative benefits of mantra science; Ayurvedic health principles; easy-gentle yoga exercises for joints, glands and internal organs; and the benefits of contemplation and prayer. The entire agenda is designed to encourage active participant interaction by combining engaging lectures, practicums and Q&A; in a concentrated three-day format. Leonard Perlmutter’s 39 years of personal study and teaching will provide all attendees, regardless of the level of experience, a complete set of meditation tools that can relieve stress, reduce pain, boost the immune system, heal relationships, enhance problem solving abilities, and help them experience greater health, happiness, creativity and security.
Meditation master Leonard Perlmutter (Ram Lev) has taught on the faculties of the New England Institute of Ayurvedic Medicine, the Himalayan Yoga Teachers Association and the College of Saint Rose. He is a disciple of holistic health pioneer Swami Rama of the Himalayas, the Yoga scientist who, in laboratory conditions at the Menninger Institute, demonstrated that blood pressure, heart rate and the autonomic nervous system could be voluntarily controlled. Leonard has presented courses at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, the Albany Medical College, the Commonwealth Club of California, “The New York Times” Yoga Forum with Dean Ornish, MD, and the United States Military Academy at West Point.
According to Leonard Perlmutter, “Human beings are not merely physical bodies. We are breathing and thinking beings also––living with complex thoughts, desires and emotions. Our individual achievement of optimal health does not begin with a lower health insurance premium. First and foremost, human wellness requires a reliable blueprint for mind/body self-care. With active and discriminating participation in our own health management, we can form a healing partnership with our physicians––and stop working against our own best interests.”
Meditation is the unifying thread throughout all Mr. Perlmutter’s lectures. The word meditation is related to the root word for medical or medicate. It implies a sense of attending to or paying attention to something. Meditation involves an inner attention that is concentrated, quiet and relaxed. Mr. Perlmutter teaches attendees how to consciously let go of their habitual tendencies to think, analyze, solve problems, and dwell on events of the past or concerns for the future. Students learn to slow down their rapid succession of thoughts and feelings, and replace that mental activity with an inner awareness or mindfulness. They learn how to witness and set aside stressful mental processes, such as worrying. Instead, they develop a valuable new skill that facilitates detachment, discrimination, willpower and creativity.
According to Leonard Perlmutter, “Sound decisions concerning a beneficial diet, healthy nutrition, daily exercise, diaphragmatic breathing and lifestyle selection are all much easier to make when the mind is trained through meditation.”
About the American Meditation Institute
The American Meditation Institute is a 501(c)3 non-profit educational organization devoted to the teaching and practice of Yoga Science, meditation and its allied disciplines as mind/body medicine. In its holistic approach to wellness, AMI combines the healing arts of the East with the practicality of modern Western science. The American Meditation Institute offers a wide variety of classes, retreats, and teacher training programs. AMI also publishes Transformation, a bi-monthly journal of meditation as holistic mind/body medicine.
Incense and Meditation
by Hart Broudy
From the most ancient times, incense has enhanced the spiritual strivings and practices of all faiths. Why this is so has been the subject of ongoing academic studies. It’s been shown that incense affects the limbic area of the brain, affecting mood, and does indeed possess anti-depressant qualities — but this is the tip of the iceberg. What hasn’t been analyzed so concretely (as yet) are its psychic, vibratory effects upon the creative mind.
It’s vitally important to understand what incense can’t do — and not to be gullible regarding any manufacturer’s claim. The mere burning of incense will not bring karmic reward nor any ‘accumulation of merit’. It is naive to think otherwise. The mastery of one’s lower nature and communion with the higher is accomplished solely by ongoing selflessness and perpetual compassion: in other words, forgetting the self to know the Self.
What incense can do, however, is to enhance meditation practice by providing a more ‘sensitive’ environment. According to the writings of the Tibetan Master DK, smell is considered the highest of the purely physical senses, allied with the spiritual sense of discrimination. Consequently, the effects of incense upon the higher consciousness during meditation could prove to be a rich and extremely fascinating New Age study.
Regardless of the mechanics, what we do know is this: the use of incense in meditation can aid in establishing needed tranquility. It can help in the focusing of thought and in doing so, potentially provide a link to one’s higher creative nature. It can help open doors, but like everything else in life, mindfulness is the key — from the lighting of the stick to the placing in the container, to correct breathing and proper meditation procedure. The fact that the meditation area may ‘smell nice’ is in reality, a minor side benefit.
The type of incense used is of prime importance. It’s imperative to stay away from cheap, artificially-colored and perfumed varieties. Since the aroma permeates the senses, it can produce effects both physical and psychic: hence the need for purity. Whether powder, coil or stick, incense should be all-natural and chemical-free, with absolutely no artificial perfumes, coloring or ingredients, and with little-to-moderate smoke. The meditation area should also be adequately ventilated. Incense is an enhancer to meditation — never the focus of it.
Those new to both meditation and incense often prefer mild, fragrant sandalwoods or agarwoods; these scents offer pleasurable aromas and are easy to live with. More experienced meditators may tend toward the more pungent Tibetan and Bhutanese varieties. Generally speaking, Tibetan incense is the stronger and more aromatic of the two. These types of incense do require ‘getting used to’, as they are more complex and intense — and at first can be quite distracting. They are hand-made according to strict, traditional Buddhist teachings passed down over many generations. Scents are many-layered, often difficult to describe. In fact, some say that if one tries to describe a particular scent, one has completely missed the point: words have no place here. Incense is best experienced wordlessly — absorbed, if you will, by the consciousness — and accepted or rejected according to personal preference. It is a very private exercise.
Another consideration for those who are vegetarian: there are two kinds of Tibetan and Bhutanese incense. One is purely vegetarian, using only grasses, plants, flowers, spices, barks and various natural herbal and medicinal ingredients. The other is not, and adds to these ingredients musk and often, scales of pangolin.
So. How does one decide what incense to use and how can one gauge its effects in meditation? Experiment — note what’s happening! If there’s any discomfort — an itching at the back of the throat, a desire to cough, a headache, a sense of unease — then that variety is certainly not for you. But if the aroma welcomes you and ‘becomes part of you’, and lingers like a tantalizing dream, then you may have found something very special.
Incense can enhance meditation practice by helping to create a serene and positive atmosphere. It can thus aid in calming, focusing and concentration upon one’s journey. The rest of the voyage is entirely up to the personal abilities and hard work of the meditator.
About the author:
Hart Broudy is a published writer/poet and graphic designer living in Canada. Having become enthralled by the wonders of Bhutanese and Tibetan incense on various trips to the far east, his wife and he decided to establish an online specialty incense shop, www.incense-traditions.ca. They stock various varieties of high quality incense previously unavailable in North America.
Visit to the Brahmasthan
By William T. Hathaway
I recently visited the ashram that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi built at the central point of India, the Brahmasthan. Two thousand Vedic pandits live there, meditating and performing ceremonies.
I’ve been doing Transcendental Meditation for many years and have had wonderful results in my active life — clearer thinking, less stress, more energy — but I’ve had very few experiences while meditating. A couple of times a year I might have a moment when the thoughts thin out enough for me to sense there is a field of silence underlying them. Very rarely I’ve glimpsed a bit of glow coming from that underlying field. I treasure these few moments.
In my first program in the yogic flying hall I felt deep silence as soon as I started meditating. And it didn’t go away as it always had before. It lasted, and it glowed. When I started the sutras, I gradually became aware that the silence had an energy to it, an inner dynamism. As I went on, joy began radiating from it like sunlight.
When I started yogic flying, I could sense this whole field was alive, filled with divine Beings. There was Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesh, and others whose names I didn’t know. There was Maharishi, Guru Dev, and Shankara. As I made great leaps, they told me, “We are bringing you up! We are bringing you up!” They were raising me into the air, but like cosmic parents they were also raising me into the full adulthood of higher consciousness. And amazingly enough, as good parents, they loved me.
I could perceive that they weren’t dwelling only in the transcendent but were permeating the whole atmosphere of the Brahmasthan. Then they weren’t just permeating the place but also permeating me. Then they were me. At this, I was totally enveloped in divine love. I was divine love. The unity of creation became a living reality. I had heard this statement before, but now it was no longer abstract. It was me. And this is going on all the time in full glory whether I’m perceiving it or not.
For the next four weeks I didn’t perceive it at all, just my usual mantra and thoughts, sutra and thoughts. Then at the end of the final Vedic chanting ceremony of my visit, I felt a sensation in the area of my heart. It was Maharishi! He was suddenly there, as if he’d just popped in. Then I realized he had been there all along, but I had only now become aware of him, as when a statue is unveiled and you can finally see it. This was no statue though, but a living presence. I remembered the section of the puja that describes the guru as “ever-dwelling in the lotus of my heart.” I could see this wasn’t a figure of speech but a statement of fact. Devotion poured from me to him, and I basked in his approval.
People were leaving the hall, and as I stood up, his presence expanded to become like a hollow tube running from the top of my head to the base of my spine. My awareness was centered inside the tube, and I was perceiving everything from this inner core of silence. This is my Brahmasthan, I suddenly knew. People too have Brahmasthans, a transcendental center out of which activity manifests.
I started walking, but I wasn’t walking. I ate a prasad banana, but I wasn’t eating. Walking was happening and eating was happening, but I wasn’t doing them. I was observing it all like a king on a throne enjoying the activity of my kingdom but not involved in it, totally free within myself. This is delightful, I thought, but what is it?
This is the Self, Maharishi explained. The one great Self that enlivens the universe. You are in the Self now, and that is separate from activity.
That sounds like enlightenment, cosmic consciousness, I thought.
Yes, Maharishi told me. Just a glimpse of what awaits you.
Gradually the glimpse faded, and my real identity became overshadowed by relative activity. Now that I’ve had these experiences, though, I know my deeper reality and I’ll never be the same again.
About the author
William T. Hathaway’s first book, A World of Hurt, won a Rinehart Foundation Award. His new novel, Wellsprings: A Fable of Consciousness, concerns the environmental crisis: www.cosmicegg-books.com/books/wellsprings. He was a Fulbright professor of creative writing at universities in Germany, where he currently lives. A selection of his writing is available at www.peacewriter.org.
The Healing Power of Meditation
By William T. Hathaway
I suffered a brain injury at birth. An EEG test showed chaotic, abnormal brain waves, and in school I had attention deficit disorder. I couldn’t concentrate and my thoughts were cloudy. My grades were mediocre, and I flunked out of my first university. I wanted to become a writer, but my writing was disorganized and unclear. In despair I took marijuana and other drugs, but they made my thoughts even foggier.
Then I started Transcendental Meditation. My thoughts became clearer, and I didn’t want drugs anymore. I could concentrate. And I could write. One of my essays gained me entrance to a much better university, Columbia in New York City, and this time my grades were so good I received a scholarship. My first novel won a Rinehart Foundation Award, and I became a professor of creative writing. I’ve now published eight books and many shorter pieces.
My EEG now shows normal, orderly brain waves with no sign of damage. TM healed my birth injury and gave me access to my talent and mental abilities. Without meditation, this change would not have occurred.
How did it happen? Physiologists have discovered that during Transcendental Meditation nourishing blood flow to the brain increases by 20%. Our brain waves become more coherent, synchronizing and coordinating across both hemispheres, an indication of more integrated mental functioning. The whole brain becomes more activated, and that gives us access to more of our potential. In the blood stream arginine vasopressin, a hormone that improves memory and learning ability, increases, as do serotonin and melatonin, hormones that indicate relaxation and well being. Adrenalin, cortisol, blood lactate, and blood pressure decrease, indicating lessened anxiety. TM produces mental and physical rest that is twice as deep as in sleep, although we’re fully awake. This rejuvenating state enables the body’s self-healing mechanism to repair the damage from traumatic events and illnesses. With these blockages gone we are more able to develop our full capabilities.
For more information on the effects of TM on attention deficit disorder: http://www.davidlynchfoundation.org/schools.html.
Research on the physiological changes: http://www.truthabouttm.org/truth/TMResearch/TMResearchSummary/SummaryContinued/index.cfm – physiology.
William T. Hathaway’s new book, Lila, The Revolutionary, is a fable for adults about an eight-year-old Indian girl who sparks a world revolution for social justice. Chapters are posted on www.amazon.com/dp/1897455844. A selection of his writing is available at www.peacewriter.org.
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