why I am interested in guided meditation:
With all of my shoots i have been guiding my subjects back to visions or experiances they may have had when they were young. I am sure to give them time to digest the senarios i create and that is relatable to their life. I have gone on to research guided meditation techniques particularly for writing and memory retention. this has led me to investigating recal habits and falce memory caused by outside forces. but for this post I plan to stick with memory and guided meditation research. I am having a hard time finding artist that deal with guided memory retention in their work primarily because the search is so narow it is dificult to find any information at all of other artist using such techniques on their subjects.
I am mainly interested in playing the roll of directing and also guiding my subjects back to past experiances so that they can create their own language to play with while in the same space as the other subjects, therefore creating an intierly different experiance in the same phisical space.
TIME Magazine
Calming The Mind
Source: Dr. Gregg Jacobs, Harvard Medical School, author of The Ancestral Mind.
mind body solutions referencing the Time Magazine artical from above.
"One recent study found evidence that the daily practice of meditation thickened the parts of the brain's cerebral cortex responsible for decision making, attention and memory."
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"Meditation directly affects the function and structure of the brain, changing it in ways that appear to increase attention span, sharpen focus, and improve memory."
Transcendental Meditation Techniques
Many religious groups, as well as adherents of Transcendental Meditation techniques, talk of using a sound, or “mantra” to help with learning how to meditate, and indeed this can be helpful. The constant repetition of a phrase, focus of attention upon the sound. The Hare Krishna movement is well-known for its repetitive chant that is repeated over and over again, and can lead to its members seeming to become “high” – showing the effects of endorphin release as one of the benefits of meditation.
With these guided meditation techniques, an effortless sound, repeated with the natural rhythm of breathing, can have the same soothing, mentally liberating effect as the constant natural sound of running water, rustling leaves or a beating heart. The single sound, or mantra as it is known, is used to blot out the “chatter” of intrusive thoughts, allowing the mind to find repose.
Speaking or chanting a mantra as a stream of endless sound is a very ancient method of heightening a person’s awareness by concentrating the senses. The simple gentle sound “om”, or “aum”, is sometimes known as the first mantra, which is literally an instrument of thought.
The curving Sanskrit (the ancient language of Hindus in India) symbol for this primordial word represents the various states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, deep dreamless sleep and the transcendental state.
However, when using these guided meditation techniques, or if you are just learning how to meditate, the sound need not be a special word, or incantation; something simple and meaningful will be as, if not more, effective. The sound of the word “calm” spoken or thought with each breath breathed out can be very, very effective, especially while imagining tension leaving your body and a calmness developing.
The word “relax” when used with these meditation techniques seems to match other people’s needs in a similar way. Any word that appeals to you will do, repeated with the flow of breath, silently in the mind, or out loud. This clears the mind, slows the breathing and allows relaxation, both mental and physical, to develop – the true benefits of meditation.
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