Seven reasons why Mindfulness with Muse changes your life

Finally, we can measure the benefits of mindfulness for each participant! 

Over the last five months, I've been measuring my brainwaves with the Muse headband while meditating. The results have been stunning. I was skeptical at first. Five months later, I've created a course that allows my corporate clients to see their progress in real time.

I've read the research, and it's impressive -- but more than that, I've experienced the results. I've also seen how the Muse headband can help establish and maintain a practice. Research says that this is one of the most important things you can do to create more happiness, peace, and positive changes in the brain. 

As a long time meditator, I have always wondered how my practice could be measured. Until now -- the options were limited. Until now there was no way for me to help my students between sessions. Now not only can I see results daily, but I can help students with their specific challenges by viewing their sessions remotely -- when given permission by the student. I don't work for Muse, but I can tell you -- Muse works for me.

If you're interested in this new approach for your team, I'm happy to share resources, research, and my passion for helping people discover what science has already proven. Life is better with mindfulness and the Muse headband is a wonderful tool to establish that practice. 

Below are a few reasons that mindfulness is vital in our fast paced, time-pressured world. 

(From the Muse headband website) 

Less stress. A small study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University determined that doing mindfulness meditation for 25 minutes, three days in a row, reduced self-reported psychological stress.

Lower pain. Research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center concluded that over an hour of meditation training lowered pain intensity by 40 percent and pain unpleasantness by 57 percent. As lead researcher Fadel Zeidan says, the study shows real effects of meditation in the brain and offers a way for people to potentially curb pain without medications.

Brain protection. Cerebral grey matter can deteriorate as we age, but a recent UCLA studyfound that participants who had meditated for an average of 20 years had less grey-matter volume loss than non-meditators.

Fewer wandering thoughts. The default mode network (DMN) is the brain network behind self-referential thoughts and mind-wandering– those chattering background thoughts often correlated with unhappiness. But Yale University researchers determined that mindfulness meditation lowered DMN activity, plus meditators were better able to turn their mental focus away from DMN musings.

More compassion. Many maintain that meditation increases empathy for others, but scientific evidence was scant. In 2013, however, a Harvard University and Northeastern University study found that 50% of study participants who took meditation classes helped someone in a staged scenario, compared to only 15% of participants who didn’t meditate.

Decreased anxiety. Many studies have linked mindfulness meditation to lower anxiety levels. One study in Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, for instance, concluded that mindfulness meditation significantly reduced anxiety, while breathing focused exercises did not.

Improved emotional processing. A study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston University and other research centres, found that doing an eight-week meditation training program measurably impacted brain function even when participants weren’t meditating. Brain scans after meditation training showed positive changes in the amygdala, the part of the brain connected with stress response and processing emotion.

Thanks for reading. May you be peaceful, happy, and safe. 

Forest Guider

213.400.9603