“Mediation is the most powerful health tool you could ever employ, way more powerful than drugs, way more powerful than anything the medical model can give you, even more powerful than nutrition. To me, meditation is the single most important thing you can do to stay healthy or revert yourself to health if you’re sick.”
The “Default Mode Network”, also known as the “Bio-graphical Self”, is the voice in your head that narrates your life. It keeps you awake at night, it makes remarks about your experiences, it goes over and over arguments or discussions. It is a part of you, but it does not need to control you.
“The brain does best when it is focusing on something, and this is what all meditative techniques have in common, is they give the mind something to focus on. They call it “Mindfulness”. All great medical schools study this concept of Mindfulness, because there is a relationship between the physical body and this Default Mode Network, or how we think. So, the body will show up secondary in may ways to a primary activity in the brain.”
“By controlling the brain, you can control the “secondary manifestation”, which is the body.”
“This is all accomplished through the “parasympathetic” nervous system, which we talk about all the time, or the “vagus nerve”, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system.”
“It can be spiritual, but it is not necessarily spiritual. You can use meditation to shape the body. You can effect which genes your body turns on and off. You can shape your neurology, by meditative techniques. ”
“Great athletes use meditation to improve what they call “flow” or “focus”. CEO’s and high performers use transcendental meditation. What all these meditation techniques have in common, whether it is spiritual meditation, meditation for performance, meditations for health, meditations for performing in the business world, what all these have in common is they give the mind something to focus on so the Default Mode Network quiets down.”