Ok, so school is right around the corner. Maybe you and your children are finished with the school years but struggling to keep up with work, projects, daily responsibilities, and this crazy economy. Regardless, studies have shown the importance of mindfulness on our wellbeing. Mindfulness is a spiritual or psychological faculty which involves maintaining a calm awareness of one's body, feelings, and mind. It's an attentiveness of the reality of things in the present as opposed to delusion and can be a powerful force in combatting runaway thoughts such as those experienced by people suffering from worry, anxiety, ADD/ADHD, insomnia, or even PTSD.
You see, success in any area of life depends on our ability to focus and achieve goals, whether it be in the classroom, workplace, society, or even in the home. Without a calm awareness of the mind and task at hand, this can be a challenge!
But STRESS often undermines our ability to achieve this optimal state of being, hijacking our emotions and actual physiology away to another path which often leads us astray. Fortunately, although stress can negatively affect cognitive functioning in a number of ways, our brains are quite adaptable to learning under stress. In fact, researchers have pinpointed how certain receptors in the brain can help us move from conscious to unconscious (that's that stress hijacking thing) learning processes when we are under stress. This switch in gears is spurred to action by proteins activated by the adrenal glands in response to the release of stress hormones. You may ask, "So what does all that mean to me?" It means you can still learn and function under stress but a different part of your brain is activated but it is NOT AS EFFICIENT! Kinda like good news and bad news. The other good news is we can practice techniques to improve mindfulness in our daily lives. You see, everything about you mentally, physically, and spiritually has its roots in the brain... It all begins with our THOUGHT life: Meditation is a powerful tool in gaining that calm, centered platform from which to launch our thoughts. While we cannot control the world around us, the economy, or other people, we CAN control what goes on or not within our own heads! And that, folks, is where it all begins, eh? With a creative thought, an open, healthy mind, a good decision... Now don't get hung up on the word meditation, which often connotes philosophies and religion. meditation is simply a state of mind, a specific set of EEG brain frequencies no matter how a person chooses to get there be it some form of meditation, it could be prayer, or it could be just simply focusing on one's own breathing pattern, tuning out all other distractions. It's about dwelling for a time in as little as a few minutes daily in a clam state of inner focus to quiet the mind and focus on being still in the moment, meditating on positive things in life or in prayer. Mindfulness practice is being employed in psychology to alleviate a variety of mental and physical conditions, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, and in the treatment of depression and drug addiction. The other good news is if you are struggling to learn this skill, can't quiet or focus your thoughts, or are so stressed you can't imagine what that would even be like (or have a kid who is all over the place or maybe stuck in their own head, LOL) we have modern technology that can help! That's right! With EEG Biofeedback, aka Neurofeedback, we can actually train your brainwaves to tune in and focus, just like we tune in to a TV or radio channel. How cool is that? | 
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