By Steve Horn

And Sauls son Jonathan went to David at Horesh and helped him findstrengthin God.(1 Samuel 23:16 NIV)

When I accepted the position of Executive Director for Louisiana Baptists, I made this promise:

Pastors will be encouraged.Churches are essential to our work, and spiritually healthy pastors are essential to healthy churches. I have been a pastor of four churches. Each church was a different size and had different strengths and weaknesses, but all required hard work. I want to encourage pastors through public ministry to them and private friendship with them to be all that God has called them to be. This will be my daily prayer, daily goal, and daily evaluation.

Years ago, I heard the Christian motivation speaker Zig Ziglar speak. The only thing I remember him saying is, Who motivates the motivator?

We could adjust the words slightly to say, Who encourages the encourager? Who preaches to the preacher? Who ministers to the minister? Who counsels the counselor? Who pastors the pastor?

Your pastor needs all of this. We all need a Jonathan to come alongside of us to help us find strength in God.

My friend Scott, at the time a doctoral student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, was taking his written examinations. Written examinationsa grueling three-day test of perseveranceoccur half-way through the doctoral program. This three-day period can be a very lonely experience. Another friend of ours knew that Scott was taking these tests. He arranged with the professor to put a note in Scotts test packet. The note simply read, Scott, heres a dollar. When you have your break today, buy a soda on me. Im praying for you.

That story has always reminded me that encouragement does not have to be expensive, just thoughtful and intentional.

I pray that all of us find meaningful ways to encourage our pastors this month.

Steve Horn is executive director for Louisiana Baptists. This editorial first appeared on his blog.

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Pastors need to be encouraged - The Baptist Message

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When you work in an office, why keep all the great information to yourself? That would be like finding an incredible restaurant around the corner office and never mentioning it to your colleagues as a lunch possibility. Youd never do that. In the same vein, when you read a book that changes the way you think, give everyone in your office a copy (or at least text them a link to its online description).

Whether youre spearheading an executive book club or looking for works to inspire your staffs creativity, youll appreciate these messages in these books. Each offers a different bent, allowing you to springboard conversations and rev up your teams collective idea machine.

Author Academy Elite

Does it seem as if everyone you know is crazy busy? Dont assume the world has to run on caffeine, energy bars and sheer willpower. As Garland Vance argues inGetting (un)Busy, people often can accomplish more if they switch from high to low gear. If the members of your team have been moving at lightning speed, encourage them to slow down and smell the copy paper. Theyll regain both their breath and their passion. Im becoming a believer in the efficacy of un and will practice it more frequently by unplugging, unfretting and unbusying.

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LIoncrest

At your next meeting, ask your coworkers to describe what your brand means. Not what you sell or a rundown of your operations manual, but the purpose behind your products or services. Chances are good everyone will be tongue-tied. Thats when youll be glad you can shareStand for Somethingwith them. Brian Burkhart superbly justifies why we need to take a standwhatever that means to our businessesto earn devotees. Im stirred by this challenge and eager to dig deeper into my businesss brand identity with my colleagues.

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Post Hill Press

Sometimes we all just need to stop overanalyzing everything. That can be hard in this data-driven age, but Michael Fanuele persuasively argues that magical inspiration rarely comes via scheduled brainstorming exercises. Rather, it appears suddenly in the form of a hovering musical lick or snippet of lyrics, both destined to top the charts and revolutionize a generation.Stop Making Sensemakes all the sense in the world; Im excited to free my mind and allow for untold possibilities. If your team has been stuck, help team members find their muses with this page-turner.

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Sound Wisdom

InGoals, sales genius Zig Ziglar unpacks a no-brainer truism: Being successful involves taking the first step. While taking action sounds easy, its not. If it were, everyone would reach all their goalsyet few teams are in that boat. This book outlines how to lay out goals and see them to fruition. To be honest, I have a few dreams that have lingered too long at the to-do list stage. This book serves as a reminder that I need to make a concrete plan to accomplish them.

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Get SMart books

Its hard not to focus purely on data points. We all get mesmerized by numbers, especially on social media. Pat Flynn demonstrates why teams need to find and cultivate individual superfansand not just collect likes and followers. By grooming diehard advocates, businesses can experience explosive growth. Superfans dont just come knocking, though; They must be wooed carefully by organizations that actually care enough to foster deep, symbiotic business-buyer relationships. After readingSuperfans, Im eager to talk to my team about ways we can uncover, develop and assist our strongest supporters.

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St. Martin's Griffin

Have you focused your teams professional development on the art of persuasion and the science of storytelling? After readingFive Stars, youll see how valuable it can be if everyone on your team understands how to sell their ideas more effectively. This book definitely belongs on your teams read and discuss list. I personally think it could be the basis for a long-term workplace training series. In any event, its inspired me to ensure that my employees and clients develop their communication skills to become five-star, confident influencers.

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Cloud Rider Publishing

Lets face it: We give lots of lip service to balancing our personal and professional lives. But what we usually end up doing is pouring our energies into developing our careers. Only then do we plug family time into the remaining slots in our schedules. Cory Carlson illustrates why that type of thinking can lead to overall job dissatisfaction and general unhappiness. He makes the case for putting home on par with the officeabove it, even. Ill be keeping this message in mind so I can better model for my team what true work-life balance should be.

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7 Books Everyone On Your Team Should Read - Forbes

Earlier this month, the insurance and health services company Cigna hosted a meditation event featuring Ted Danson. Come meditate with Ted Danson, the email invitation read. As a busy actor, producer and family man, Danson also understands that it is important to take action to reduce burdensome everyday stressors. At first I ignored it (and how did Ted Danson get connected with Cigna?), but then I was having a rough week and I thought, I want to meditate why not?

The event was held at a small yoga and meditation studio. A couple dozen other members of the press and I sat on meditation cushions, and Danson kicked it off by talking with a Cigna psychiatrist about the dangers of chronic stress, and about the benefits of meditation. (It lowers blood pressure, improves mood regulation, and enhances nervous-system function.) He also mentioned it being good for upending the ego, and for getting out of your own dead-end thought patterns.

Photo: Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for Cigna

It all felt kind of surreal a beloved celebrity talking about personal pain, sponsored by an insurance giant (an industry notorious for causing stress?) but it was also nice, honestly. Then we were all led in a 20-minute meditation session by an instructor named Marissa (pictured, up top). She guided us to feel the weight of our seats on the cushion, the weight of our hands on our legs, to hear the sounds around us, to feel the temperature of the air on our skin It all went by very quickly, and I never really stopped thinking, worrying, or adjusting to the strangeness of the situation, but when I opened my eyes, I felt good.

At one point beforehand, Marissa had said that it was fine to have a meditation practice that felt insultingly short, which I liked. That five minutes would be great, but that even five breaths would be helpful. She also said that the point of meditation wasnt to clear your thoughts and feel peaceful, but to sit with your own annoying mind, almost to prove that you can.

Afterward, people asked Danson about his acting career, his meditation routine, and the end of The Good Place. It felt funny and yet strangely appropriate to be talking about television in the same breath as existential dread, sponsored by insurance. How do you deal with emotional pain? Did you take home any keepsakes from the set? Why are we here?

The meditation session was also nice enough that I thought, Why not actually do this for a while? Id shown up to the event feeling bent out of shape I was down about various work and life things and afterward I felt better. Minorly rearranged. Since then, Ive been doing ten-minute sessions most days on Headspace. I know Im the last person in the world to get into Headspace, but it has a free beginners ten-day sequence. Strange doors are always appearing, it seems, to take us where we want to go.

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The Secret to Inner Peace Is Ted Danson - The Cut

Coffee, exercise and meditation now beat catching up on the news when it comes to the perfect morning ritual, according to a new study.

The findings emerged in a survey of 2,000 Americans which sought to explore peoples morning routines, lifestyles and the way in which they wish to spend their time.

Results showed over half (52%) find time for coffee in the a.m., while a further two in five want to exercise first thing in the morning even before jumping into reading the news and starting their workday.

These days, Americans celebrate the self-care movement and embrace the concept of activities such as meditation in regard to its contemplative and mood-elevating abilities 36% said that they would meditate if given the freedom to design their perfect morning.

In fact, one in three now considers meditation an essential element to the perfect morning.

The research, conducted by OnePoll in conjunction with Thermador, saw that exercise or some form of meditation is more essential to any perfect morning than even reading the news (31%) or watching it on TV (33%).

Still, dreams of meditative contemplation or relaxing post-yoga lattes can seem distant for most respondents, and the freedom to design their own schedule elusive. Two-thirds (65%) long for more control of their mornings and 77% rate their mornings as busy.

A lively one in five said they are always in a rush to even get out of the door each morning.

No matter your individual lifestyle, customizing your day is an indulgence we all wish we could have, said a spokesperson for Thermador.

This survey illustrates the need that todays luxury consumers share to personalize their morning experiences so that they can better achieve the ever-elusive perfect start to the day.

The trend toward more self-reflection time in the morning was also apparent in other core morning must-haves that luxury consumers would regularly indulge in if given the opportunity to design their life: yoga (24%) and juicing (26%) were among the things professionals would love to prioritize when it comes to customizing their busy schedules.

Time is such a precious commodity that even the slightest boost is welcomed one in four respondents said simply having 10 extra minutes per day would make all the difference, while a mere 30 minutes was deemed the average response for the sample as a whole.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, three quarters (74%) of those surveyed agree that having more time in the morning would be a true luxury.

So, is this dream of an extra 30 minutes per day attainable? Well, with cooking and food preparation taking up the most time of any given day, the secret may lie in kitchen automation.

When asked to consider the latest time-saving kitchen innovations from fully automatic coffee machines, to dishwashers designed to complete a wash cycle in just 20 minutes, respondents estimated that they could save 27 minutes on average with a fully automated smart-home kitchen.

The Thermador spokesperson added, With connected appliances across all product categories, Thermador is empowering consumers to maintain control over their daily routines, while at the same time providing access to culinary experiences from recipes sent directly to the oven, to notifications that meals are ready to be enjoyed.

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One in three Americans now consider meditation an essential part of their morning ritual - New York Post

Participating in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program appears to alter how the brain processes fear memories. In a study that will appear in the Nov. 1 issue of Biological Psychiatry, a team led by researchers at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) report that mindfulness meditation appears to help extinguish fearful associations.

A common way to treat anxiety disorders is to expose patients to the anxiety-provoking stimulus in a safe environment until it no longer elicits fear, a process known as exposure therapy. This exposure provides an opportunity to learn that these stimuli are not threatening and thereby facilitate adaptive regulation of emotional responses. To be successful, first a new memory must be created between the stimulus and a feeling of safety, then the safety memory, rather than the original fearful memory, must be recalled when the stimulus is presented again in a new environment.

Mindfulness meditation been proposed to provide an optimal condition for exposure therapy because it involves experiencing the present moment with an open, curious, and nonreactive mindset. Numerous studies have documented that mindfulness meditation programs are useful for reducing anxiety, however, the mechanisms were unknown. The current study investigated enhanced learning of the safety signal as one mechanism through which mindfulness can help individuals learn to have a less reactive and more adaptive response to anxiety-provoking stimuli.

The researchers used MRI brain scans and a fear-conditioning task to examine changes in neural networks associated with attention and memory following mindfulness meditation training. In the study, 42 participants completed an eight-week, mindfulness-based stress-reduction program in which they learned formal meditation and yoga practices. Another 25 participants were randomized to an eight-week, exercise-based stress-management control group, in which they were taught about the impact of stress and performed light aerobic exercise. The researchers found that changes in the hippocampus after mindfulness training were associated with enhanced ability to recall the safety memory, and thus respond in a more adaptive way.

Mindfulness training may improve emotion regulation though changing neurobiological responses associated with our ability to remember that a stimulus is no longer threatening, said Gunes Sevinc, first author of the paper, who is a postdoctoral research fellow at MGH.

Fear and anxiety have a habitual component to them the memory of something that provoked fear in the past will trigger a habitual fear response when we are reminded of the event, even if there is no actual present-moment threat. The data indicate that mindfulness can help us recognize that some fear reactions are disproportional to the threat, and thus reduces the fear response to those stimuli. Mindfulness can also enhance our ability to remember this new, less-fearful reaction, and break the anxiety habit, said Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, the studys senior author.

One of the major caveats in the study was that all of the participants were healthy individuals without anxiety. Future studies need to be done with clinical samples and using threatening stimuli relevant to their anxiety (e.g. spiders, cues that trigger panic or PTSD, etc.) to determine if similar changes in brain activation occur in these conditions. Furthermore, some of the findings were observed in both the mindfulness and control groups, suggesting that some of the changes are not unique to mindfulness training, or might be due to some other component of the program, such as social support.

Other authors on the study were Britta K. Hlzel, Jonathan Greenberg, Tim Gard, Vincent Brunsch, Javaria A. Hashmi, Mark Vangel, Scott P. Orr, and Mohammed R. Milad.

The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

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Mindfulness meditation study shows changes in neural responses to pain and fear - Harvard Gazette

David Michie teaches us a healing meditation to purify karma andcultivate well-being.

Artwork courtesy of livingbuddhistart.com

It is no coincidence that the words medication and meditation are only one letter different. They both come from the same Latin root word, medeor, meaning to heal or to make whole.

In the West, our medical focus is on the externalon the curing of physical symptomswhile Eastern traditions focus more on the internal, that is, addressing the mental causes of illness. It is our good fortune to be living at a time when we can access the best of both worlds.

Medicine Buddha meditation is a healing practice treasured by many in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. We can practice it for ourselves, or for someone we care about who is ill. The oldest Medicine Buddha sutra we know about dates from the seventh century. In that sutra, we are told the story of a bodhisattva, Medicine Buddha, who made twelve vows about how he would help living beings after attaining enlightenment. The holistic healing of mind and body was an important focus of his vows: he promised to help eradicate pain, disease, and disabilities of all kinds, as well as promote good health and optimal flourishing.

When we practice Medicine Buddha meditation, we do not do so to replace mainstream medical treatment, but to complement it. The practice purifies and removes the underlying, karmic causes of disease and cultivates the causes for holistic well-being. Such may be the power of our practice that we experience significant improvements in the symptoms, too. But we need to be clear about what we are doing.

Medicine Buddha is as much about mind as it is body. Empirical evidence shows that when we meditate, it triggers a self-repair mechanism in our own bodies. We stop producing cortisol and adrenalin, and instead enhance the production of immune-boosting endorphins and seratonin, arming our body against invasive bacteria, viruses, and other imbalances. These changes also promote positive mental states.

An element ofconfidencein the practice is helpful. The placebo effect is said to account for more than a third of all healing. Medicine Buddha meditation has been practiced for thousands of years. If we have confidence that it can work for us, then were off to a very good start.

Resonancemay also account for the powerful impact of Medicine Buddha practice.On one level, we may be sitting alone in a room meditating, but in a different way we are resonating with the many hundreds of thousands of people who have done exactly the same thing before us. Were benefiting from their experience and contributing to the experience of those who follow.

When doing this practice, its important to retain an awareness that you are not an inherently existent person asking an inherently existent buddha to get rid of an inherently existent illness. This would be little different from a theistic or shamanistic approach. It is precisely because nothing has any true, separate, or independent existenceincluding illnessthat practices like this have power.

We invoke Medicine Buddhathrough the use of specific imagery and sound, reaching out to the consciousness of those numberless beings who have already attained enlightenment and who have chosen to manifest Medicine Buddhas qualities.

The minds of buddhas are understood to be all-seeing and all-knowing.Buddhas react to their mantra in the same way we react when we hear our name mentioned, so we pretty much have a buddha on speed dial when we use their mantra. To borrow a metaphor from the late Tibetan teacher Gelek Rinpoche, when we recite a buddhas mantra we are providing a hoop through which they can hook us into their energetic influence.

Note that Medicine Buddha is a Kriya tantra practice. As such, it is helpful that you first have some familiarity with the sutra tradition, as well as receive proper initiations and teachings from a properly qualified teacher, if you wish to fully embody the precious Medicine Buddha lineage.

Lions Roar is a nonprofit. Our mission is to share the wisdom of the Buddhas teachingsto inspire, comfort, support, and enlighten readers around the world. Our aspiration is to keep LionsRoar.com available to everyone, providing a supportive, inspiring Buddhist community that anyone can access, from curious beginners to committed meditators. Do you share our aspiration? We cant do this without your help.

Lions Roar reaches more readers like you than ever before. Unfortunately, advertising and other revenues are falling for print and online media. We know we have something deeply precious to share with the world, and we want to continue this important work. Can you help support our efforts now?

Lions Roar is independent, unbiased, not-for-profit, and supported by readers like you. Please donate today and help the lions roar echo for readers around the world.

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How to Invoke the Medicine Buddha - Lion's Roar

COLTON -- Finding Peace in the Midst of Chaos, a class for developing skills in meditation and mindful attention, will be held at Five Elements Living in Colton, on Monday evenings from 6-8 p.m., beginning Monday, Oct. 21 and ending Nov. 25.

This approach to mental wellness will give participants tools to use for day-to-day upsets and challenges anywhere and anytime.

This "toolbox" is a collection of many practical strategies for self-calming; replacing obsessive, negative or self-critical thought patterns with alternate and more positive ones; and maintaining or quickly returning to a calm state even when "the flat tire" happens at just the wrong time.

While these strategies are helpful on their own, a meditation practice goes hand-in-hand with them and helps make them a way of life.

Each week participants can look forward to developing a kinder inner voice and a deepening sense of peace that comes as the mind learns to live with calm instead of stress, even in chaotic times.

The class is led by Ginger Storey-Welch, who has introduced meditation to many people and has a wide range of suggestions on how to utilize various meditation supplies and techniques to best suit individual needs.

Storey-Welch has been a practitioner of Zen meditation for 20 years and attends 4-5 meditation retreats per year at both the Zen Center of Syracuse and Dai Bosatsu Zen Center in the Catskills.

For more than 20 years she has led the North Country Zen Group on the St. Lawrence University campus, she has introduced a large number of students and community members to meditation and was recently referred to as "our best teacher of meditation" on campus by Professor Mark MacWilliams.

She has also taught meditation at the Yoga Loft and at Five Elements Living in the past as well. She specializes in showing ways that meditation can become a tool to enhance one's ability to live a more peaceful life.

Register at fiveelementsliving.com (scroll to Upcoming Events) or call 315-262-2622.

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Meditation class offered in Colton - North Country Now

Andy Puddicombe trained as a monk and now runs Headspace (Headspace)

Andy Puddicombe is a former Buddhist monk who became the co-founder of Headspace a guided meditation app that boasts 60 million users around the world.

Even if youve never heard of or seen Andy, his voice is instantly recognisable to anyone thats used the app. His diction is shot through with pauses giving him time to think and when he slips into guided meditation mode, his speech takes on a slow rhythm bordering on hypnotic.

I met Andy at one of Londons swanky Soho hotels in a closed-off meeting room known as the Library. As the name implies, there were armchairs, a coffee table and shelves stacked with books. There was even a roaring fire.

During the course of the conversation, I asked the man who trained to meditate for up to 16 hours what he might recommend for someone to get started on the path to mindfulness right away.

He gives me two answers.

Pick one activity during your day that might be having a cup of coffee or reading the paper and do it without doing anything else at the same time.

That might mean you dont look at your phone while you drink the coffee. Just put it down and focus on doing one thing without any distraction.

So, I put it to you to see if you can focus on this article without any distractions. Ignore your notifications or avoid clicking on another browser tab. Youll have taken the first step towards mindfulness and Ill tell you at the end of the article what Andys second technique is.

Meanwhile, if youre not familiar with Headspace, let me fill you in.

The app is part of a wider company devoted to digital health and making mindfulness more accessible. Initially, thats through guided meditation but there are other avenues, such as movement and nutrition, to consider as well.

Headspace through Andys narration guides you through different techniques and while theres a free tier, you have to subscribe and pay a monthly fee of 9.99 to keep accessing the new content. You can cut the monthly price in half if you sign up for a year at a time.

I get called an overnight success, but its taken 11 years, Andy tells Metro.co.uk. A Bristol native, Puddicombe moved to the US to start Headspace with his co-founder Rich Pierson. Now he lives in LA with his wife and kids and Headspace employs 300 people in LA, San Francisco, New York and London.

The app is pushing beyond just a subscription service on our smartphones. Its currently about halfway through the FDA approval process in the US which will allow doctors to prescribe it to patients therefore sidestepping the need to pay for a subscription as it will be covered by health insurance.

Things like mental health and emotional wellbeing are the disease states we go after. And the common wisdom is meditation is only for mental diseases, like anxiety for example, Andy says. And yes, while theres definitely a place for that, were also seeing a huge impact on physical ailments as well. Things like migraines or high blood pressure can be treated with meditation.

Indeed, Headspace the company is split into three distinct areas: the consumer channel (the app), business-to-business (corporate wellness schemes) and healthcare (the aforementioned FDA process).

The drive into corporate and healthcare is an obvious one its easy to write mindfulness off as some kind of pseudo-profound. But Andy tells me that 10 days of Headspace usage will improve focus by 14% something anyone can try for free using the app.

He defines focus as committing to any task, whether mental or physical, without distraction.

But why is focus so hard to begin with?

Meditation existed 2,500 years ago, Andy explains. Whats happening now is that were amplifying the noise and the distraction.

Hes not telling us anything we dont already know here. The bombardment of digital information whether thats 24/7 news, social media posts or the call of a new Netflix series is leaving us both wired and stressed.

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Hello Norbu Gyaltsen! This is me back in the olden days when I had a different name, wore different clothes, and lived in a very different place. Wouldn’t change that journey for anything #monasterymonday

A post shared by @ andypuddicombe on Nov 20, 2017 at 6:57am PST

When I mention that Generation Z (those typically born between the mid-90s and mid-2000s) wont ever know a world without these things, Andy gets circumspect. He says that we wont know the true effect of the Information Age for at least a generation.

Stuff is happening in schools right now, he says, its coming from a generation who better understand the need for concern around this kind of thing.

The company has a Headspace for Educators program that offers free access to the service for teachers, school administrators and support staff. It has partnered directly with over 168 schools in the UK since 2015.

As the company puts it: Headspace believes that if we can help educators build resilience, improve sleep quality, mitigate stress and foster mindfulness in their classrooms the impact on the next generation will be immeasurable.

We want to not only help Educators build their own healthy routines, but offer guidance and support to easily integrate Headspace into their classrooms in the most thoughtful, validated and relevant way.

To do this, were leveraging our authentic expertise, our full content library, our brand and techniques.

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A rare moment of stillness with our little wriggly boyz #summerlovin

A post shared by @ andypuddicombe on Jul 19, 2018 at 5:38am PDT

Of course, Headspace delivers digital content to you through a smartphone just like Netflix, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook or any other digital service competing for our attention. So is it just part of the same problem?

Andy is willing to talk about his relationship with the smartphone as a piece of tech before Ive even gotten a question out.

A phone is just a piece of metal and plastic, he says emphatically.

It cant do anything on its own, but in most cases people have it optimised for distraction.

At this point, he picks up his iPhone from the coffee table in front of us.

His homescreen is Zen personified.

Its only got a couple of rows of icons on it and is refreshingly free from notifications.

The only red dot I ever see is the one from settings telling me theres an update, he tells me.

It may seem inconsequential but rearranging how your phone works may go a long way to helping you check it less often. And while Andy does have to use social media for his work posting updates to his followers or responding to questions about Headspace he does it fleetingly and with purpose.

So, what does someone who has lived in 10-15 different countries over the course of his life (not to mention co-creating an internationally-recognised brand) feel about the state of the world in 2019?

I believe in people having different viewpoints but I think were losing the ability to listen. Were losing the art of talking about meaningful things, he tells me.

However, I also feel everything is quite cyclical in nature. So while the world may feel divisive at the moment, I have great optimism. I know things will change.

He reiterates that all of his success has come from a simple mission of wanting to bring mindfulness and meditation to a wider audience and promote it as a way to tackle a variety of problems. And getting started with it is simple if youve made it this far without checking your phone or getting distracted then congratulations.

As promised, Andys one other simple tip for getting into mindfulness was to take a minute just 60 seconds to make yourself comfortable, close your eyes, settle your hands on your stomach and just listen to your breath inhaling and exhaling.

Give it a try for yourself and see what happens. If you want to find out more about Headspace, you can visit the companys site here.

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Headspace co-creator Andy Puddicombe talks meditation and mindfulness - Metro.co.uk

Posted: Oct 15, 2019 / 03:52 PM HST / Updated: Oct 15, 2019 / 03:52 PM HST

Body&Brain Yoga Tai Chi Hawaii is hostingthe CONNECT event. Come and enjoy an afternoon of awakening, inspiration, andconnection withIlchi Lee, a world renowned meditation expert and the author of Connect.Learn how to access the most important source of health, power, and creativitywithin your body and brain.

The workshop is happening on Saturday, October 26 from 1p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Hawaii Convention Center, Room 323. Tickets cost $20 andincludes a copy of the book Connect.

At the event, you will HearIlchi Lees book talk and guided meditation for strengthening true connectionin every aspect of your life. You will experience practical self-care tools toreduce stress, gain clarity, and enjoy more happiness. And, you will beinspired to live your best life from your heart.

To register you can call (808) 596-9642 or you can purchase tickets at http://Connect.BodynBrain.com

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Book Talk and Meditation Workshop with Ilchi Lee - KHON2

Kristin Dahl, a holistic nutritionist and herbalist in Los Angeles, goes for a walk, to practice some deep breathing, and does Yoga Nidra as part of her bedtime routine, which is essentially a guided body meditation and body scan.

Ms. Love stretches and does deep breathing for 15 - 20 minutes.

A warm drink can help if its sugar-, caffeine- and alcohol-free. Ms. Love who prepares organic foods without excitotoxins (substances that trigger the neurotransmitters) and preservatives for dinner, around 6 p.m. drinks mushroom lattes, which are warm and cozy and help me wind down. Before bed, Ms. Panton drinks something warm in winter and iced in summer, with antioxidants, and likes turmeric chai tea. Ms. Dahl drinks lemon balm tea.

As part of her multistep skin care routine before bed, Ms. Panton does facial cupping, for better circulation, and ends with the facial-massage technique gua sha, pushing a hard, curved tool around the contours of her face for lymphatic drainage.

Latham Thomas, who is a Brooklyn-based doula and the founder of Mama Glow, a maternity lifestyle label, uses diffusers for essential oils; Ms. Panton prepares her bedroom for sleep with her companys essential oils, a blend of lavender, eucalyptus and frankincense, which she created during a trip to Joshua Tree National Park.

The signature sound of the bedtime routine might be a selection from the Calm meditation apps Sleep Stories, or the white noise of an air purifier, which Ms. Love has in her bedroom, or something more ethereal. Ms. Thomas recommends humming for people who feel they cant meditate. Its like an instant drop-in, she said, and also allows you to extend your breath even longer than regular meditation breath.

The blue light emitted by digital screens could be the most essential part of our tech-poisoned daytime lives to address in a bedtime routine. Dr. Winter said, The blue-green light is interacting with your pineal gland to block melatonin, which is why a cellphone in your face at night is preventing you from making melatonin to help you sleep.

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Improve Your Bedtime Routine With These Five Luxurious Tips - The New York Times