Posts Tagged ‘meditation’

John Soriano (one of my EFT for ADD buddies) already told me about it, the Zpoint technique, and I was reluctant: yet another EFT-inspired healing technique… This morning however, I checked the site out, and I decided to just give it a try. Not necessarily related to any symptoms of ADD, but definitely useful for us parents coping with our ADD children. It’s a very simple process, and there is a free MP3 meditation in which Grant Connolly leads you through the process. I literally just finished, and I am feeling in a blissful relaxed state of mind.

—- When you’re ready to go, just click here to download the MP3 file —-

So I’m not going to say much about it, I just suggest you find 15 minutes and just do it, whatever you are feeling at this moment. It is a great way to start your day, or to finish your day at night I am sure – I am going to put the meditation on my MP3 player and trying how that feels that tonight. (I’m pretty sure it will work wonders for my feeling of peace before I go to sleep!)

And now I really feel ready for a focussed and happy day – Thanks John, for sharing this!

PS: Did I say it is a process you can do anywhere, anytime, even with people around you? The effect is immediate and I do admit, Grant does not make any empty promises. Click here to download the Zpoint meditation (and if you wish, you can listen to it online too, on the same page.) Go ahead, and tell me what your experience is!

PPS: Not only for you, but for your kids too. I want to see if Grant is in for making a special version for children – I would love to hear your ideas about that: For which age group do you prefer it to be, how long should the recording be, should it be general or specific for certain ADD/ADHD problems, and if yes, which ones? Please comment below, so that we can make something which will be more than useful for you – my loyal readers!

I stumbled upon an article from the University of Miami, School of Medicine. It is probably quite an old study, and I was even more amazed by the results and statements. Could it be that we just do not learn? We are probably talking about a study that was conducted a decade ago!

Maria Hernandez-Reif, Tiffany M. Field and Eric Thimas, observed thirteen adolescents with ADHD symptoms that participated in Tai Chi classes twice a week for 5 weeks. Teachers rated the adolescents’ behaviors before the test began, after the 5 week Tai Chi period and two weeks later. After the 10 Tai Chi sessions the adolescents displayed less anxiety, daydreaming behaviors, inappropriate emotions and hyperactivity and improved conduct. These changes persisted over the two-week follow up (no Tai Chi) period.

In their report, Hernandez-Reif, Field and Thimas state: “Although short-term improvements have been reported in academic and social functioning, drug therapy such as methylphenidate or Ritalin (Schachar & Tannock, 1993; Swanson et aI, 1995), side-effects such as motor tics, insomnia, headaches, and social withdrawal make this treatment controversial (Handen, Feldermann, Gosling, Breaux et al., 1991; Parraga & Cochran, 1992). (…) Of the non-drug treatments, relaxation therapy has alleviated depression in adolescents (Platania-Solazzo, et al, 1992), but is has shown limited effects in treating ADHD (Field, Quintino & Hernandez-Reif, 1997) perhaps because of its demands on concentration. Massage therapy, in contrast, has been effective in increasing time spent on task, reducing fidgeting, improving mood and lowering hyperactivity scores in adolescents with ADHD (Field, Quintino & Hernandez-Reif, 1997)”.

The adolescents in this study engaged in Tai Chi postures for 30- minute sessions twice a week for 5 weeks. Each mid-afternoon session began with slow raising and lowering of the arms in synchrony with breathing exercises for 5 minutes. The adolescents were then taught to perform slow turning and twisting movements of the arms and legs, shifting body weight from one leg to the other, rotating from side to side and changing directions in a sequence of Tai Chi forms.

Statistic tests suggested the following baseline to Tai Chi therapy changes:
1) less anxiety,
2) improved conduct,
3) less daydreaming,
4) less inappropriate emotions, and
5) less hyperactivity during Tai Chi versus before Tai Chi
These improved scores persisted over the two-week follow-up (no Tai Chi) period.

I think it is worthwhile to investigate the effects of martial arts and massage on symptoms of ADD and ADHD; in addition to EFT it seems a good way to go!
If any of you has experience with the influence of martial arts and/or massage on the symptoms of ADD and ADHD, please let me know.

PS: If you find this post useful, please comment and share it on the social bookmarking sites below!

The other day, my eye fell on a press release about an experiment with TM, Transcedental Meditation used with children with ADHD and ADD symptoms. I don’t have experience myself with TM, although I have some friends that do. I went on a quest to see if I could incorporate the idea of meditating into my way of treating symptoms of ADD and ADHD. I’m always learning and searching for ideas to improve even more!

I decided to make a list of the techniques I use myself (some not so much, others daily), to share them with you. Only when you are informed, you can decide for yourself and for you child what fits best. Remember: no cookie cutter solutions here

Let’s first read the press release:

Meditation seen promising as ADHD therapy
Mon Jan 5, 2009 12:32pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The practice of transcendental meditation may help children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder manage their symptoms, research suggests.

In a pilot study, researchers found that lessons in transcendental meditation, or TM, appeared to calm the anxiety of children with ADHD, and improve their behavior and ability to think and concentrate.

TM is considered to be one of the simplest meditation techniques. Practitioners sit comfortably for 10 to 15 minutes with their eyes closed, silently repeating a mantra — a sound, word or phrase — to calm the mind and body. Some researchers believe that meditation affects the nervous system in a way that can alter a range of bodily functions, including breathing, blood vessel dilation and stress-hormone regulation.

The current findings indicate that children with ADHD can not only learn the TM technique but also benefit from it, the researchers report in the online journal Current Issues in Education. “The effect was much greater than we expected,” lead researcher Sarina J. Grosswald, a cognitive learning specialist in Arlington, Virginia, said in a written statement. “The children also showed improvements in attention, working memory, organization, and behavior regulation,” she added.

The study included 10 children between the ages of 11 and 14 who were attending a school for students with language-related learning disabilities. All had been diagnosed with ADHD and, though most were taking medication, were having problems at school and home. The students were taught the TM technique and then practiced it at school twice a day, for 10 minutes at a time. After three months, Grosswald and her colleagues found, the students reported lower stress and anxiety levels, while their ADHD symptoms also improved, based on questionnaires given to teachers and parents. “Teachers reported they were able to teach more,” Grosswald said, “and students were able to learn more because they were less stressed and anxious.”

Larger studies, she and her colleagues write, are now needed to see whether TM can be used as an ADHD therapy, either in addition to standard treatment or by itself. “TM doesn’t require concentration, controlling the mind or disciplined focus,” Grosswald noted. “The fact that these children are able to do TM, and do it easily shows us that this technique may be particularly well suited for children with ADHD.”

SOURCE: Current Issues in Education, December 2008.

When I read this, I realised that I often use EFT as a way of easy getting into a meditational state. The reminder phrase serves as a kind of mantra, and I often use Theta Brainwaves to reach the inner focussed state easier. (The CD I use can be found at Amazon:

I found that in my quest for focus and inner peace, I needed two elements in place:
1. An easy, usable meditation technique.
2. An easy, workable technique to balance my energy; whereby I needed to reach first a certain state of awareness about what happened inside of me.

1. Meditation techniques

I started off with Vipassana meditation. Below I will share with you a simplified form of it, but I recommend that you search for the term on Google, and get yourself familiar with the basics of the technique. Vipassana is a very good way to start your meditation practice. After Vipassana, I proceeded to Holosync (Centerpointe), not so much for myself, but because I have clients who do better in a guided meditation.

Vipassana: Easy simplified version
Make yourself comfortable. Make sure you have at least 15 minutes for yourself: no phone, doorbell, children etc. Now you start observing your own thoughts. At first they come very fast, they kind of come together, one thought has not yet left before the other one already arrives.

Just observe it.
No judging!

Then you start picking a thought, you place it in a little cloud, and you let the cloud drift away to your left.
When the next thought arrives, you also put that in a cloud, and let the cloud drift away again to your left.
The next thought: same thing.

Over and over again.

After a couple of minutes, you will observe that your thoughts are actually slowing down a bit.
This is the first sign that your brainwaves are slowing down.
Just keep putting your thoughts in clouds:
“Oh, a thought. Let’s put it in a cloud.”
Remember, no judging!

Every time you play this game with your mind, your mind will become faster in slowing down.
After some days, you will actually get little spells with no thoughts at all in between the clouds.
That is meditation.

Simple, isn’t it?

Centerpointe, an easy meditation technique.
Bill Harris, Centerpointes founder, created a series of audios that teach your brain to go in meditative state.
So if normal meditation is not for you, or you do not have the patience to learn it, Holosync, as it is called, is a good way to get round it. They do a free CD, so just try it out for yourself.

2. Balancing your energy

Most of you will remember Einstein’s e=mc2 . Many will not remember exactly what it means, but for now it is enough to remember that “Everything is Energy”… What does this mean?

Quantum physics discovered that even the most solid material, if looked at under a big microscope, exists of mainly space. The actual particles only are a very smart part of the volume of the object, and even those particles will turn into energy fields if we magnify the picture even more. Imagine a big tornado: If you try to drive through it with your car, it will feel as if you hit a brick wall. Now, if you imagine an enormous amount of very tiny little tornados, spinning around with a very high velocity, that would be more or less the most accurate picture you could make of the energy field and thus the matter of which your body exists. This means that everything basically is made of the same material, namely energy. Your body, your car, your house, the tree in your garden… everything.

And, even more: All these energy fields resonate with one another. This has widespread consequences, which no one on earth has yet fully understood. It means that whatever we do or think towards another being or object, resonates with ourselves in the first place. Any energy we send out, reflects immediately and strongly on our own energy field.
Working on this energy field consist of two steps: First we have to be aware of what energy we radiate, and then we can clean and protect our own energy field.

1. Awareness.
I used Karim Hajee’s Creating Power. This is an example of an inexpensive but very effective step by step course, and I can full heartedly recommend it. His website is http://creatingpower.com.

2. Cleaning and Protection.
EFT is a great way to celan and balance your energy field, together with The Healing Codes and the Sedona Method.

EFT – Emotional Freedom Technique
Founder Gary Craig developed this method some 20 years ago, and it is all free available on his website http://emofree.com. You can download the free manual there.

The Healing Codes
The Healing Codes is an expensive, but very thorough treatment. I managed to overcome serious and long term ailments, under which a severe tinnitus (following a bad concushion 5 years previous), debilitating headaches and allergies. A warning beforehand: You need perseverance to go through the first phase.
Unlike with EFT, the symptoms did not subside straight away, but took some time to dissolve. The healing, in my experience, took place on a deeper level than with EFT: I simply did not reach the deeper levels with EFT I discovered later, because I was too happy with the first results to actually persist.

The SEDONA method
This one is not free, but I had great results with it too. IF you still have emotional issues after using EFT, or if you need some more guidance, the Sedona method is a good bet. Sometimes it can be difficult to “look in your own neck” (or in you own ear!), and where with EFT you might need a practitioner to solve those issues, the Sedona method generally helps you without outside help. The training course is not cheap, but parts of it you can find for free on the internet. Check the free DVD and CD out at http://sedona.com.
The Sedona method is a very easy way to resolve emotional stress.

I encourage you strongly to investigate the possibilities of using meditation for your child AND for yourself. If you have a child with symptoms of ADD or ADHD, your own peace of mind certainly is challenged too; and because many hyperactive children are hypersensitive too, they do react extra strong on the emotional state of their parents. So, you have homework to do too!

The simplest way is to incorporate EFT into a simple mediation technique: Just use the simple Vipassana technique and tap the points at the same time. Alternatively, you can explore TM, and tap the points while meditating. The Theta Brainwaves CD is highly recommended in either case.

And don’t forget to share your experience!

Charlotte