7 Free Guided Relaxation Sessions

Just relax.

When work and life stress increases, I tend to get into a state of feeling like I always have to be "on".  It's at these times, when things get really complicated, that I find it hard to know when it's O.K. to relax, unwind and let go of all the worries.

When I'm "on", the last thing I can do is relax.  I'm just too jacked up on an adrenaline-laced need to get shit done that when I sit down and try to unwind, I end up getting more frustrated because I just can't come down.  More frustration and I'm even less likely to relax: the stress goes through the roof.

For me, I've found that relying on guided meditations increases the likelihood that I'll be able to relax successfully, because it takes the pressure off of me to think about how to relax: someone has done all the work for me.  I highly recommend using guided relaxation sessions, especially when you're really having a hard time calming down.

I've personally listened to the following free, guided meditations and can vouch for the quality.  I also selected the following because they promote many of the concepts outlined in The Relaxation Response, a classic in the science of relaxation, especially passiveness and a focus on breathing.

Try them out!  I always feel so relaxed after doing any of these.  Hopefully you'll find they work for you.

From Diana Winston of the UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center:
1. 19 minutes - Mindful meditation with instructions
2. 12 minutes - Body, breath and sound mindfulness
3. 7 minutes - Meditation for working with difficulties
4. 10 minutes - Empathy and compassion

From Duke University's Student Health Resources:
1. 19 minutes - Progressive deep muscle relaxation
2. 20 minutes - Basic meditation exercise
3. 10 minutes - Quick, relaxing meditation

Fruit Ninja and flavors of focus

Slice that bananna!

Recently, my wife and I have been obsessed with the game Fruit Ninja.  And, having been simultaneously obsessed with the idea of focus and obtaining metacognitive control over my intensity of focus, I couldn't help but start to analyze Fruit Ninja as a tool for fine-tuning my already ninja-like ability to focus.  Let me explain. (Also, I'm not getting paid to write this, I just like Fruit Ninja).

For those of you who don't know, Fruit Ninja is a game that originally became popular on the iphone and has since expanded to the Android platform, the iPad and (I think) to an online game.

The game is simple, grasshopper.  But not easy.  The goal is to slice up fruit by swiping your finger across the screen of your touchscreen device.  That's the easy part.  The hard part is that, in addition to fruit, there are bombs that fly into the scene and occlude your target fruit.  Hitting the bombs earns a point penalty in some versions of the game, and in other versions of the game can lead to instant failure. Check out some video footage.

What does this silly game have to do with flavors of focus?  Well, cynical adult, the game offers three "modes" of play: classic, arcade, and zen.  Ooooh, zen!

Just one more game, please?

Each mode places different cognitive demands on the player.  In classic, the number of fruit slowly increases over time and if you miss three fruit in total, your game ends.  In addition, hitting a bomb results in instant failure.  For these reasons, classic mode require intense focus and precision.

Flexibility of focus: what and how much?

Multitasking?

Attention deficit: another modern malady of excess.  Too much food, and we became larger.  A surfeit of sitting, and we grew softer.  Now, with the information revolution, we wrestle with an excess of ideas, and we grow distracted.

Recently, science has begun to unearth the pitfalls of poor focus.  In one study, researchers at Stanford examined the cognitive consequences of multitasking and found that the chronically distracted lost the ability to control attention.  Cognitive performance suffered as a result.  Gross.

But regulating our attention is more interesting, and complicated, than focusing on one task at a time.  Yes, we must choose where to place our attention. However, we must also decide how much to focus.

A recent article in the Journal of Neuroscience, emphasizes the importance of intensity of attention as it relates to cognitive performance.  In this fascinating study, the authors rely on recordings from a group of neurons in the monkey brain that correlate with attention: the more neurons firing in this brain region, the more focused the monkey.  Intriguingly, the authors found that as the focus of the monkeys increased, so did performance on a visual discrimination task... To a point.  Surprisingly, when the monkeys were most focused, they often performed poorly when the task demanded recognition of large changes.  In these cases, focused monkeys were very good at detecting minute changes, yet large visual changes resulted in more errors for dialed-in monkeys.  Did the monkeys miss the forest for the trees?

Good hands and the Goldilocks zone

Stay focused.

As an amateur molecular biologist, I often wrestle with lapses of concentration.  This can be linked, I speculate, to the simultaneous terror and boredom that molecular work entails.

Picture this: six, clear tubes, labelled in a simple code that belies the complexity of the underlying experiment.  I add liquid, typically clear with no discernible color, hue or other distinguishing features that might signal that this is anything more than water.

I set a timer.  Ten minutes of incubation at room temperature.  I place the tubes in a centrifuge and spin, 15,000 cycles per minute.  I wait fifteen minutes more, remove some clear liquid and add more, but a different kind.  I repeat each step six times, one for each tube.

In between actions, I change the tip of my pipetman - the device that allows microliter control over the liquid added to the evolving biochemical reaction.  Change tip, add liquid, next tube. Repeat.

During these day-long exercises in repetition, I've experienced some failures.  These mistakes fall into one of two broad categories: external or internal.  In the external class, I become distracted by something happening outside my head.  A conversation between colleagues or a conversation I've started.  When these conversations reach some mystical level of distraction, I will realize in a moment of panic that I've skipped a critical step.  Or, I've lost track of the tubes.  Or, I've lost count.  Failure.