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Eight Billion Brains

Exploring brain skills, performance, and stepping back from stress

5 Habits Ruining Your Brain

A few days ago I was walking on the bike path near our house. I had my headphones on. I may have occasionally busted a sweet dance move or two when no one was looking. It has been an insane six months and I’m doing everything I can these days to clear out my bad habits. Walking, tunes, ninja dance moves in public: all excellent ways to get your brain healthy.

I slowly gained on a middle-aged woman and her husband. They were dressed in preppy work out clothes. She was wearing make-up. They were holding hands. But as I got close to them, with her other hand she took her gum out of her mouth and catapulted it into the lake next to the path.

“What?” I thought. “Why?” What’s so hard about waiting to spit out your gum? What if she killed a fish? Or a cute little turtle? I would have bet a Ben Franklin that she had a tissue in her vest.

Why Meditation Is So Difficult (and What to Do about It)

So my meditation time this morning was awful. Painful. Excruciatingly uncomfortable. Until it wasn’t. Welcome to meditating in the modern world. We pay attention to way too much most of the time and the moment you slow down, everything you’ve forgotten to attend to rises to the surface.

Here is the good news. Meditation is so difficult because it is so important. The time we spend intentionally sitting or breathing or focusing, changes our brain. I love the new research revealing that the kind of meditation you do grows your capacity in different ways. Want to feel less stressed? Use mindful meditation, where you simply notice what rises and falls in your environment, letting your awareness ride the moment like a surfer sitting on their board. Want to be better at a skill? Concentrative meditation attends to one thing, like imagining yourself playing a sport. Want to be more empathetic? Loving-kindness meditation widens our unconditional compassion for ourselves and all things. But knowing the benefits of a regular practice are very different than working through to the benefits of a regular practice.

How Mindfulness Really Works: The Two Powers

You are having one of those days.

Late. Traffic jam. Boss yells. Forgot your lunch. Somewhere around two, right before you snap, you realize it might be a good time for those breathing exercises. So, you breath. You close your door, set the timer on your phone, and you just breath.

You’re on your seventh set of box breathing and still nothing. You don’t feel better. In fact, you are now even more aware that you feel like crap. You think, This mindfulness thing is bullshit.