The ability of thinking, understanding, or awareness.
Cognition is defined as the mental function of assembling information and understanding it.
We use cognition for every single one of our mental processes. Cognition intervenes and surrounds our perception of reality, memory creation, attention, evaluation, judgment, reasoning, calculation, comprehension, learning, problem solving, decision making, and the use of systems of communication like language.
Every new experience that we have creates neural pathways in our nervous system making possible, in this way, the sharing of electrochemical between neurons located in different parts of the brain and nervous system.
And when we repeat a specific experience we create a new neural pathway each time we repeat it. Also, we relate those new pathways created with the ones created previously (while having the same kind of experience) and we related them with the subconscious perceptions, reactions, thoughts, and other memories surrounding the experience.
Because of the accumulation of information surrounded an specific experience, the brain makes sense of what it is and how it makes us feel, the effect it had on us, emotionally and physically, all according to the unconscious memory associations created by the brain.
In terms of reward, depending on how strong the memory associations are, we tend and can be motivated to repeat pleasant experiences and try to avoid the experiences that gave us an unpleasant effect. And, as well, to be indifferent or neutral about stuff we didn’t create associations yet.
We have limited control of how we store information but knowing how this works. we can tell why we react in ways we do when in contact with certain information and what drives our actions and behavior. Including why get motivated to decide taking distinct actions when presented with particular perceptions.
Motivation and reward to take specific actions are triggered by our memories relating to specific subjects. This system of neural pathways and associations is known as motivational circuitry or motivational neural circuit or reward system.
Stimulus is the impetus, the stimulation, the inciting thing or event that provokes a particular and detectable physical or chemical change or functional reaction in an individual, organism, organ or any other biological unit.
Neural pathways are the structured neural connections between different parts of a nervous system that enables the propagation and process of electrochemical information from and to neuronal units.
The axons, nerve fibers projected from neurons —also known as one of the two types of cytoplasmic protrusions— enable the transmission of electrochemical impulses between neurons and between neural units and muscles and glands.
Stress, in its most basic meaning, denotes and represents the pressure or tension that is exerted on a material object.
In psychological terms, stress is defined as a state of emotional or mental strain resulting from a perceived adverse or above normal levels of demanding situations.
This psychological stress can be emotional, cognitive and outer perceptual.
In behavioural psychological terms, the stress response can be compared with an alarm for awareness, and sustained over time can cause health harm.
Acute Stress
The less damaging and the most common of the types of stress. It is experienced immediately after the perception of threat, either emotional, psychological, or physical danger.
The physical reaction to acute stress is the shunting of blood from extremities to big muscles to rapidly prepare the body to action into a corporal state of something called fight or flight response.
Acute stress can be especially dangerous to people with pre conditions like heart diseases.
Episodic Acute Stress
Acute stress becomes episodic acute stress when it presents itself suddenly and triggered easily becoming an ordinary event in the life of the individual affected by the condition.
Chronic Stress
A stress condition is considered chronic when the feeling of stress is long-lasting and constant.
Some causes of chronic stress can be challenging times, in terms of relationships or financial situation, or high-pressure daily activities.
Stress can be relieved, managed, prevented and even avoided, using relaxation techniques, developing stress coping skills, changing the situation, environment, and implementing habits to manage the influence of stress in our health, behavior, mood and sense of well-being.
Acute stress is the easiest to manage because it doesn’t long after it is triggered by the perception of threat.
There are additional kinds of stress that can affect your wellbeing and daily life, and some are easier to cope, to prevent, or to manage than others.
In psychosocial terms, we can consider stress as the outcome of personal relationship difficulties, professional relationship challenges, job and opportunities loss, material loss, personal loss, lack of resources, lack of satisfactory amount of social interaction, and social values crisis.
In physical terms, stress can denote a trauma, intense physical labor, environmental impact, illness, fatigue, hormonal or biochemical imbalances dietary, substance abuse, lacking, dental, and musculoskeletal imbalances.
The word ‘stress’ can be used in a sentence to emphasize and denote certain and distinct value and importance to a statement that someone makes in a given speech or writing.
The practice of meditation can bring many life-changing benefits to you. And incorporate the awareness of your full potential in your experience of life. How profound the effects of these benefits are going to affect your daily life depends on the intensity and/or regularity of the meditation practice.
It has been scientifically proven that the practice of meditation can provide practitioners with the following benefits:
All meditation techniques differentiate one from the other on what their aims and approaches are.
Remember that you don’t have to follow a strict approach or align your and with the traditional ones. You can feel free to adapt any of the techniques according to what feels more natural and beneficial to you.
In the following list, I mention and describe some meditation techniques with high adoption across the world. These meditation techniques are easy to learn for you to start to practice, or to experience and decide to try another one:
Goals and Benefits: Reduce stress levels in your body, reduce the possibility of burnout for caregivers, regulate better your body’s reaction to fatigue and stress, better manage struggling situations like pain, helping to overcome depression — among others.
Approach: Mindful breathing by focusing only on your breathing performance and ignoring other thoughts that can distract your disconnection from ‘reality.’
Goals and Benefits: Improve focus, increase creativity, improve memory, restore energy, acceptance and empathy building, ability to prioritize and plan, better manage struggling situations like pain, helping to overcome depression, and to foster a positive work attitude — among others.
Approach: Focusing on your breathing performance, and mindfully observing your thoughts — all without judgment.
Goals and Benefits: Boost mindfulness and rise above the person’s current state of being.
Approach: Breath slowly while repeating selected powerful mantras, chosen by the teacher or by the practitioner. Sometimes you can repeat a word or even a sound, to maintain concentration on the practice.
Goals and Benefits: Feeling of calmness, release body tension, and sometimes pain.
Approach: Mentally scan your body for areas of tension to be released.
Goals and Benefits: The practice of Kundalini Yoga energizes your brain, give you the feeling of bliss, give you the feeling of awareness of a eternal cosmic power, and you become a more conscious person.
Approach: It blends yoga movements with deep breathing and repetition or chanting of powerful mantras. These mantras can be given by the teacher or can be personal ones, as well.
Goals and Benefits: The practice of Mindfulness Meditation can improve your power of focus, your memory capabilities, a better managing of your thoughts and emotions, a better managing of reactions and to lessen impulsive behaviors.
Approach: Awareness of your present moment and your surroundings without any judgmental thoughts.
It depends on how badly you need to disconnect from the world. To determine the frequency of meditation practice and how long it is needed to last each time depend directly on how much your mind feels it needs it.
Take into account that the more you practice meditation the better you will know what is best for you and the more natural its practice becomes for your body and mind.
Recommendation about how often: Once or twice a day. There was some moment in my life when I had to meditate 5 times a day (while working in offices).
Recommendation about how long each time: about the time you start to feel you are connecting enough with your unconscious and connecting more naturally with the rest of the universe or other high energy concepts you choose to connect with. It can go from 5 minutes(or less) to as long as you feel comfortable and have the time to practice it.
You will feel and recognize which technique and which ways are working better for you, as well as the time and intensity.
The changes in your mind processes and the feeling of a better connection with yourself, the others and what you want in life will be obvious enough for you to notice, and the situations that caused you anxiety before are going to have less power over your feelings and attention.
There is no need to carry expectations to the meditation practice. The experience you will have can be very unique, different from the others’, also different from time to time you practice it.
This diversity of experiences is one of the fascinating characteristics of the meditation practice.
You don’t have to follow strictly any position. There are no strict rules for it. For example, practicing meditation with kundalini yoga or another kind of yoga you don’t need to sit. You can lie on your back or put yourself in any position, as long as you feel comfortable enough, so your mind doesn’t distract from trying to be in the ‘right’ position.
When the true goal is to connect with higher levels of energy, there’s is no space for the classification of right or wrong. Judgemental views are not compatible with the meditation practice when your goal is to achieve spiritual growth.
As long as you feel meditation provides you with positive effects in your daily life, and you feel you are practicing meditation enough and with an intensity that makes you feel good; everything is amazing, you can be grateful, enjoy it all.
A playlist of some of the Brazilian songs that I like and admire, with a nice variety of instruments and styles. Lots of the music I make and produce have some Brazilian culture as an influence.
Rosa Passos – É Luxo Só
Tim Maia – O Descobridor Dos Sete Mares
Our brainwaves become slower and more regular when we close our eyes in comparison when our senses are fully alert. These brainwaves are called Alpha Waves.
They signify a relaxed yet still wakeful state of our brain, similar to meditation. Alpha waves are neural oscillations (repetitive patterns of neural activity) in the frequency range of 8–12 Hz — it is worth to mention that some researchers believe that these waves are not necessarily stable in their conventional range.
The alpha waves increase in frequency with brain maturation, from approximately 4 Hz in infancy to approximately 8–12 Hz in adolescence, where consequently stabilize.
Alpha wave intrusion occurs when the alpha waves are presented with non-REM sleep; when delta activity is expected.
Alpha Waves Related To Sleep Disorders & Depression
Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) have a higher prevalence of alpha-delta sleep. Alpha-delta sleep is associated with daytime sleepiness in patients with major depressive disorder. Study limitations include the retrospective nature of the project and the fact that the principal investigator, who scored and interpreted alpha intrusion, was not blind to group membership. According to Study by
Marcel Proust published the first volume of his most famous novel, “À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu” (In Search of Lost Time), in November 1913. A masterpiece many people can’t get enough of, as they find themselves coming back to it again and again. And many of my personal favorite Marcel Proust quotes come from the mentioned novel. Although, I favorited quotes from other novels of him, like “Swan’s Way.”
Proust is, historically, one of the most admired authors among other authors, and has reached a status challenging to surpass or even achieve. We can tell why by reading his work and books. Among so many quotes of him I identify with, I present you my favorite ones:
“Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way
“Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”
― Marcel Proust, À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu
“Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer’s work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader’s recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book’s truth.”
― Marcel Proust, À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu: Volume VII – Time Regained
“Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”
― Marcel Proust, À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu
“Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.”
― Marcel Proust, À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu
“The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.”
― Marcel Proust
“It comes so soon, the moment when there is nothing left to wait for.”
― Marcel Proust
“We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.”
― Marcel Proust
“Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade. ”
― Marcel Proust
“Love is not vain because it is frustrated, but because it is fulfilled. The people we love turn to ashes when we posess them.”
― Marcel Proust, À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu: Volume II – The Guermantes Way & Cities of the Plain
“Le véritable voyage de découverte ne consiste pas à chercher de nouveaux paysages, mais à avoir de nouveaux yeux. ”
― Marcel Proust