transcendental

Vigilance and Anxiety When you’re awake and not doing anything in particular, the baseline resting state of your brain activates a “default network,” and one of its functions seems to be tracking your environment and body for possible threats (Raichle et al. 2001). This basic awareness is often accompanied by a background feeling of anxiety that ke

You can activate the PNS in many ways, including relaxation, big exhalations, touching the lips, mindfulness of the body, imagery, balancing your heartbeat, and meditation.

As you can see, your brain has a built-in “negativity bias” (Vaish, Grossman, and Woodward 2008) that primes you for avoidance. This bias makes you suffer in a variety of ways. For starters, it generates an unpleasant background of anxiety, which for some people can be quite intense; anxiety also makes it harder to bring attention inward for self-a

As the saying goes, pain is inevitable but suffering is optional. If you can simply stay present with whatever is arising in awareness—whether it’s a first dart or a second one—without reacting further, then you will break the chain of suffering right there. Over time, through training and shaping your mind and brain, you can even change what arise

Happiness, love, and wisdom aren’t furthered by shutting down the SNS, but rather by keeping the autonomic nervous system as a whole in an optimal state of balance: Mainly parasympathetic arousal for a baseline of ease and peacefulness Mild SNS activation for enthusiasm, vitality, and wholesome passions Occasional SNS spikes to deal with demanding

Parasympathetic activation is the normal resting state of your body, brain, and mind.

Since your brain learns mainly from what you attend to, mindfulness is the doorway to taking in good experiences and making them a part of yourself

when a fear arises, ask yourself: “What options do I actually have? How could I exercise power skillfully to stick up for myself and take good care of myself? What resources could I draw upon?”