Meditation

Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Donovan, who traveled to India four decades ago to study transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, will be joined by Eddie Vedder, Sheryl Crow, Ben Harper and several others at an April 4 fundraiser in New York for the David Lynch Foundation, which promotes the use of meditation by at-risk youths. The two surviving Beatles, however, are not planning to use the opportunity to come together, a spokeswoman for Starr said Wednesday. "They are doing their own sets," she said.

There's something healing about simply watching "Free the Mind," Danish filmmaker Phie Ambo's gentle, compassionate documentary spotlighting the use of such drug-free options as meditation and mindfulness to treat anxiety and trauma. Writer-director Ambo focuses on three main subjects: Will, an endearing 5-year-old with ADHD and a fear of elevators; Steve, an Afghanistan war veteran haunted by his stint as a military intelligence soldier and interrogator; and Rich, a former battalion leader in Iraq wracked by guilt and horrific memories of combat.

As business classes get underway at the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, MBA students open their laptops and professors fire up PowerPoint presentations in many classrooms. In the Executive Mind class, however, professor Jeremy Hunter pulls out decidedly different tools: a brass singing bowl and leather-wrapped mallet. The chimes from three strikes on the bowl quiet the dozen or so students, who have put away smartphones and other devices. They close their eyes.

Mark Coleman has been practicing meditation for 30 years. In a conversation with the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday morning, he offers some thoughts and advice about how to get started. If you've ever been intrigued by the idea of mindful meditation, he provides all you need to get started -- and the entry bar is low: just five minutes a day. Mindfulness is being used in prisons, public schools, corporations and the military to help people focus and improve their reactions. It can even help make the traffic more bearable.

The brains of experienced meditators appear to be fitter, more disciplined and more "on task" than do the brains of those trying out meditation for the first time. And the differences between the two groups are evident not only during meditation, when brain scans detect a pattern of better control over the wandering mind among experienced meditators, but when the mind is allowed to wander freely. Those insights emerge from a study to be published next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which looked at two groups: highly experienced meditators and meditation novices, and compared the operations of the " Default Mode Network " -- a newly identified cluster of brain regions that go to work when our brains appear to be "offline.

The phone is ringing, bosses are hovering and the deadline is just about here. You can't prioritize, your muscles are tense, and all you can think about is how awful it all is. If only you could escape, maybe you could get it all together. Companies including Bethesda, Md.-based Acacia Life Insurance Co. and New York City's PT & Co. realized a need for mending the worker's soul, and both provide that escape in the form of a meditation room.

My little bit of a nervous breakdown started 10 years ago, when my daughter — then five — was diagnosed with epilepsy. After six weeks of smiling through neurologist appointments, EEGs, blood tests and boatloads of worry, I started having panic attacks, which are aptly named. They feel like total, uncontrollable panic. Mine started with a tingling in my head and quickly spread to tunnel vision, sweaty palms, thumping heartbeat and the belief that I was about to die. One panic attack invites many, and in the weeks to come I had them in stores, at home, in the day, in the night.

HONOLULU -- Home-based caregivers of ill or elderly family members are under enormous physical and mental stress, but daily meditative yoga may be a simple, effective strategy for maintaining health, according to a study presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Assn . UCLA researchers Helen Lavretsky and Michael Irwin conducted an eight-week, randomized trial on the effects of meditation exercise on 49 people who...

If meditation sounds intriguing, you can try it out -- in as few as 10 minutes a day -- without leaving your office. "I'd say there's quite a range [of styles]," says Mark Coleman, a longtime teacher. "Sitting. Stillness. Movement. Yoga, tai chi, chi gong. Ones that cultivate the heart, mind and awareness and clarity. Concentration meditations -- mantras. Various New Age meditations that focus on energy. Once you choose, you have to give it some period of time to evaluate. " There are many free or low-cost downloads available and classes at meditation centers, universities and such sites as Kaiser Permanente, which offers meditation programs for members and employees.

There's something healing about simply watching "Free the Mind," Danish filmmaker Phie Ambo's gentle, compassionate documentary spotlighting the use of such drug-free options as meditation and mindfulness to treat anxiety and trauma. Writer-director Ambo focuses on three main subjects: Will, an endearing 5-year-old with ADHD and a fear of elevators; Steve, an Afghanistan war veteran haunted by his stint as a military intelligence soldier and interrogator; and Rich, a former battalion leader in Iraq wracked by guilt and horrific memories of combat.

Feel too scattered to be mindful? Trying to calm your mind but meditation seems way out of your reach? Here's your chance to get some advice from a longtime and well-known meditation teacher, Mark Coleman. He'll be taking questions from people who join our Spreecast chat from 11 to 11:30 a.m. PDT on Tuesday. Coleman has lived in a monastery and has taught meditation for many years - both inside and in nature. Please join Coleman and reporter Mary MacVean on this post. MacVean, very much a novice at meditation, spent five days at a silent retreat with Coleman as one of her teachers.

Terrence Malick, as unconventional, esoteric and spiritual as ever, has created an ocean of love in "To the Wonder," filling it with calm seas, treacherous storms, incredible beauty and a god who watches over it all. Love in all its many facets is distilled and dissected by the writer/director from first flame to dying embers, between couples and between mankind and God. There is no new ground, really, the distinction is in the way Malick covers...

If you're a meditator, there's an app for that, but you can take a more Zen-like approach with the new Zenergy Chime Solo Mini, from Woodstock Chimes . The Solo Mini is a single 5-inch-long silver-polished aluminum solid rod permanently nestled in a cherry-finish ash wood cradle. Lightly strike the rod with the included black wooden mallet, and you are ready to focus. Namaste. The chime costs $8.95. Info: Woodstock Chimes , (800) 950-2754. Follow us on Twitter @latimestravel and like us on Facebook

If meditation sounds intriguing, you can try it out -- in as few as 10 minutes a day -- without leaving your office. "I'd say there's quite a range [of styles]," says Mark Coleman, a longtime teacher. "Sitting. Stillness. Movement. Yoga, tai chi, chi gong. Ones that cultivate the heart, mind and awareness and clarity. Concentration meditations -- mantras. Various New Age meditations that focus on energy. Once you choose, you have to give it some period of time to evaluate. " There are many free or low-cost downloads available and classes at meditation centers, universities and such sites as Kaiser Permanente, which offers meditation programs for members and employees.

Some meditation resources: Against the Stream: classes, retreats and practice sessions in East Hollywood and Santa Monica, including some for targeted groups including teenagers, people of color and others. http://www.againstthestream.org . Detroit Street Zen Center: a Zen Buddist temple with classes and retreats; and the home of the Great Patience Zen Stitchery, which sells meditation cushions and clothing. http://www.detroitstzencenter.com . Dharma Seed: talks, news and other resources.

The vocabulary of meditation can be a barrier for people who feel that they're entering a strange world, experts say. Here are some common words. Buddha : meaning one who is awake, in Sanskrit. The Buddha was a person, not a god, who lived more than 2,000 years ago; from a privileged family, he became a seeker of truth and eventually became enlightened. Dharma : often used to mean the teachings of Buddhism and meditation. Mantra : a word -- "om" being perhaps the most famous -- repeated as a way to keep the mind focused on one spot during meditation.

Meditation appears to be a powerful way to take away pain -- just a short session is more potent than even morphine, if we’re to believe the headlines -- but let’s take a closer look.  In a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience , meditation rookies reported feeling less pain after meditation training than they had felt before the training. The novice yogis weren’t simply being polite -- scans of their brains backed up their “less-hurt” claims.

Memoir of a chattering mind . . . Now, I'm a down-to-earth kind of guy, not given to imaginative extra-corporeal explanations for the mysteries of existence. Nonetheless, I don't rule out that human life might have some sort of spiritual component. Accordingly, it seems to me reasonable to explore that which reasonably promises to transcend the din and scramble of everyday life. Meditation, I think, falls into that category.

Day 1 My anxiety grows as I get to Larkspur, several hours into my drive to Spirit Rock. I stop for a snack, worried the food will be hippie-style brown rice casseroles. When I pull into the parking lot, I'm told I can carry my bags up the hill or put them in a pickup. I heft them, worried it's too indulgent to do otherwise. Later, walking to dinner, people talk tentatively; it's our last chance to speak to one another, and rather than motivating a full-on chat stream, that makes me pretty uninterested in small talk.

On the third day of silence and meditation, I said just 14 words, all of them in the course of chopping vegetables for dinner. Days two, four and five were not much different. I'm not the quiet type. But this was my idea. So earlier this year, I drove most of a day to reach Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County to immerse myself in the practice of mindful meditation. To be still, clear of worry over career, my teenage sons' futures, the renovations of our old house. To see whether I could stop -- just stop -- for five days and perhaps for a little bit each day afterward.