Do you remember being conceived? How about being born? Or the time in your mothers womb? Even if you can’t call forth specific memories might your cells or your morphogenic field hold the imprints of this time? If so, how could this be impacting your life, your decisions and your experience of the world today?

My friend Logan has a great podcast called Practically Ideal, “the podcast for idealists who like to keep it practical.” Aside from having a great name they offer a somewhat Libertarian take on technology, media and politics.

We know that Breathing Exercises have an amazing number of positive effects on your physiology. The breath is the link between our conscious and unconscious processes, the way to establish a conscious link between our awareness and our autonomic nervous system. Well, when you combine meditation and breathing exercises with visualizations the results are astounding.

Increasingly, scientists are conducting studies looking at how practices such as yoga and meditation effect the brain. For centuries in the east there has been a tradition of rigorous practice and acceptance of yogic techniques as being beneficial for people in innumerable ways. For better and worse the west is not often convinced by anecdote or public consensus alone. We love to attempt to create a controlled environment and then adjust one variable and see what results. This is the basis for our scientific method.

Integral New York (disclosure: I am an organizer) hosted Alexander Belser for a presentation and discussion titled “Taking Mushrooms Before Dying: Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy”. Belser and his research team at New York University are part of a small group of scientists who, in recent years, have gotten government approval to conduct studies on the potential health effects of psilocybin, the active compound in “magic mushrooms”. Currently, psychedelic mushrooms are a schedule 1 drug. This makes them the most illegal of all drugs.

A 2000 study published by the American Psychological Association looks at over 100 previous papers and studies and suggests that self control is a muscle. Like all muscles, it appears to fatigue during a period of extended use.

Sometimes when I’m in a funk I know that a good workout will do me wonders. When it comes to cleansing myself emotionally yoga is one of the best workouts.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the studies saying that smiling in the mirror is more effective than Prozac? It feels ridiculous. Then it works. Today I love my life. I got here through a wealth of techniques, some detailed below, all of which are now a part of my approach to coaching others through shifting their consciousness.

In 2004 a team of scientists led by Rollin McCraty and funded by the HeartMath Institute set out to explore the role that the heart plays in intuition. Although few media channels covered the findings of the study (which was published in The Journal of Alternative and Complimentary Medicine), the results were simply shocking.

Anyone who has ever had trouble getting enough sleep knows just how much exhaustion effects every aspect of your life. Being under slept has been linked to problems with everything from our immune system to learning. But did you know that meditation can help to transform your sleep?

Studies that look at the impact on individuals in a testing environment are becoming increasingly common. Less common are attempts to look at how meditation effects people inside a work environment. Can meditation really help us at work?

Statins are the biggest money maker in pharmaceuticals right now. This is an incontrovertible fact. The scary thing is that this does not appear to be based on a comprehensive understanding of available data. For the first time in history we have scientists doing meta-analysis of many years of research and assumption.

Once again, scientists are showing that meditation is great for you. This time we get to see how even a short, 8 week course, can have a lasting impact on how people are effected by emotionally challenging stimulus.

My friend Nara and I went to Blue Light Floatation today to float for an hour in a sensory deprivation (float) tank. The effect is that you float, free from touching anything other than the water, which, because of the temperature, is hard to distinguish from your skin.

Correlation and Causation seem to me to be two of the most commonly confused terms in the modern world. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the reporting and interpretation of genetic research.

I am just finishing reading Consciousness and Healing. It is encouraging to know that some 67 doctors feel strongly enough about an integral approach to medicine to put such a book together. It doesn’t quite make we want to break my decade long moratorium on paid medical assistance, but I feel good knowing that should the need arise, they will be there.