The Conscious Collective Blog

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness is an ancient Buddhist teaching taught by the Buddha in the Satipatthana Sutta. In this discourse on the four establishments of mindfulness, the Buddha teaches that these foundations make up the essential components of mindfulness practice. They are the four foundational objects that practitioners focus on and practice with to cultivate and find stability in...

An excellent way to practicing mindfulness in everyday life is to practice walking meditation. It is possible to walk in such a way that we arrive in the present moment with every step. Wherever we walk, we can practice meditation.

Walking in meditation means to walk in such a way that we know we are walking. We walk leisurely, enjoying each step. We become aware of the contact of our feet with...

The extinction of species is taking place every single day. Researchers estimate that every year over 20,000 species go extinct, and this rate is only accelerating. This is what is happening right now; it’s not something in the future. Scientists are referring to this rapid species die-off as the “sixth mass extinction event” to happen on planet Earth.

We live in a critical...

Breathing is essential to most forms of meditation practice, as the breath is something that is always happening in the present moment. Wherever our mind wanders, we can bring it back to the body with a single conscious breath.

It can be a bit intimidating (and for some utterly frightening) to embark upon the journey of looking within and observing our minds. Modern education gives us plenty of...

As we quiet our minds still our bodies, and begin to listen and observe within, many things will present themselves to us. The superficial chatter of the mind clears, allowing for deeper, underlying emotions to arise. It is important that we know how to process these emotions when they arise, that we be willing to acknowledge them and feel them, rather than suppress them or try to escape them.

Mindful Eating: How to Eat With Awareness

Eating is something many of us are fortunate enough to do each day, and therefore, eating offers us a wonderful opportunity for mindfulness practice. Often times people do not eat because they are hungry or in need of nourishment, they eat because they are bored, upset, sad, uncomfortable, feeling various unsettling emotions, or simply seeking...

A mantra (from the Sanskrit words man, meaning mind, and tra meaning to save or rescue) is a sacred utterance, sound, syllable, word, or group of words used to still and focus the mind.

There are many, many mantras that one can use for meditation practice. In this practice, we will simply use the mantra Om. Om meditation (also known as Pranava in Sanskrit), is similar to Mindfulness meditation,...

The 6-3-9 Meditation practice is a simple practice that utilizes the breath as a focal point for our attention. In this practice, we simply breathe in, hold our breath, and exhale, releasing the breath—and we do so in a ratio of 6-3-9.

So, we breathe in for a count of 6 seconds, hold our breath for a count of 3 seconds, and exhale for a count of 9 seconds.

This retention of the breath for...

A paradigm may be defined as “the basic way of perceiving, thinking, valuing, and behaving associated with a particular vision of reality.” Basically, a paradigm is the underlying worldview that shapes all of our thoughts, words, and actions. It is the model that we have created to make sense of the world—the way that we “see” the world in terms of our perceiving,...

The brain is the most complex, and arguably the most important, part of the human body, and yet, it is something that most people know very little about. To get a better understanding of how meditation affects the brain, we’ll first want to understand the basics of the brain itself.

What is the Brain?

The brain is a three-pound organ that is the seat of the intellect, the interpreter of...