The Effortless Mind

The Early To Bed Experiment

(See Page 110)

Given that by far the most rest and repair takes place between 10pm and 2am, we have set a challenge in the book to try three days of going to bed at 10pm and waking at 6am and three days of going to bed at midnight and waking at 8am to see the difference. You might be surprised by just how much of a difference the earlier bedtime routine makes!

Digital Free Haven

(See Page 110)

In order to optimise your sleep, we highly recommend that you eliminate digital devices from your bedroom as much as possible, as the electromagnetic activity of those devise at night will compromise your sleep quality quite significantly. We also recommend using a sunrise alarm clock to wake up the way your body has been programmed to for millions of years.

Yoga Nidra

(See Page 113)

This is one of our favourite pre-bedtime rituals. Lie down in bed, with lights off, and listen to this playing in the background and follow the guidance to settle you down prior to sleep. Try and avoid listening to it on your phone (see above point), and try and learn the moves so you become self sufficient in your practise and are not reliant on a device of any description. If you have a willing partner who can read the exercise to you from the book, then all the better, it’s a beautiful thing to share!

Focusing on the good

(See Page 150)

If you’re going through tough times in your relationship, here’s a tip for keeping things on an even keel.

Before you start to get truly angry with the other person, try to focus on one good thing about them. It might be that they have nice eyes, or that they’re always kind to children, or that they’re a great cook, or that the way they’re dressed today is lovely. It doesn’t matter what it is; the important thing is to focus on that good quality. Just that simple action will change your body language, making you less threatening to the other person, and therefore lessen the potential for conflict. It’ll also distract you from whatever negative thing you were thinking about them and help to diffuse the situation. Win-win!

Journaling

(See Page 163)

Each morning, as soon as you get up, start writing your thoughts and feelings down in a journal. It’s really important that you don’t edit or censor the material in any way; it needs to be a pure stream of consciousness. Even if it feels weird to write down some of the things that are going through your mind, celebrate that weirdness, because it’s all about unloading that irrelevant content onto a page, and freeing up some bandwidth in your mind. Try and do this exercise for ten to fifteen minutes. There’s no wrong way to do this. Whatever comes out is representative of what’s playing out in your consciousness in that moment. If it feels dark, or negative, don’t worry. This is you giving expression to that voice that’s coming from the shadows in a healthy way. If you keep these thoughts and feelings bottled up, they will only fester inside you. By letting them out onto the page, they are released from your psyche. You can learn to accept yourself and life’s situations much more easily when you do this. Allow yourself to be innocent, not all-knowing, to be vulnerable about any lack of knowledge you may have. Be inquisitive. Be open. Be observant. And be responsive. And then, when you’re done, get on with your day. You can always burn the paper you’ve written on afterwards to let go of whatever negativity was written there.

Breathing for Calm

(See Page 171)

In order to optimise your sleep, we highly recommend that you eliminate digital devices from your bedroom as much as possible, as the electromagnetic activity of those devise at night will compromise your sleep quality quite significantly. We also recommend using a sunrise alarm clock to wake up the way your body has been programmed to for millions of years.

Our Retreats

Throughout the book, the participants refer to the retreats we host. They are utterly brilliant and totally game-changing, so to give you more of an understanding of what goes on at them, we have prepared a video for you to peruse…

Self Love and Gratitude exercise

(See Page 193)

Each night, as you lie in bed before going to sleep, think of three things that have happened that day or three things in life for which you’re grateful. It could be a time when people showed you kindness, a lucky break, or a delicious meal that someone prepared for you. It could be something that made you smile, something that deeply touched you, or something that inspired you. To mix it up, you could also consider things you take for granted, like your health, your best relationships, the fact that you have enough to eat today, or that amazing possession that you’ve become so accustomed to that you’ve stopped appreciating it as much. You can even be grateful for someone who behaved badly, because it’s helped you to clarify ways of being that don’t work, and learn ways to do things that are more harmonious and inspiring. And, of course, if the practice of this exercise starts to make you feel good, you could even be grateful for being grateful!

Now, having expressed gratitude for three things to do with people or life, now find three things that you did really well today, and give yourself some praise for a job well done. Whether it was making someone a cup of tea, offering a sincere compliment, hitting a deadline, writing a really well-constructed email, or maintaining your integrity even when someone was encouraging you not to. You might even have tried something new that you’ve never done before. You could even congratulate yourself for simply doing your two meditations! This is a brilliant exercise for lifting your mood just before bed. It is alleged to improve your biochemistry, and it will also help fire the neural networks in your brain that promote a more positive outlook. If you feel like doing this in combination with the yoga nidra exercise (above) do this one first, and then move straight into the nidra.

Peak performance brain function

(See Page 206)

For information and tips on how to create a peak performance work space, please read the relevant box on page 206.

Boosting your creativity with Music

(See Page 236)

We have created a very special binaural beats audio track (1 hour) to stimulate your creativity

As per our comments on The Power of Resonance and Sound (pg. 17), we have recorded this music in 432Hz = Proponents of this tuning claim it promotes meditation and relaxed states, and that the tuning as a whole resonates with the heart chakra. The track is constructed with precision using the following frequencies to help you relax and feel inspired.

• 1-10 mins:
  • 16Hz= Beta Waves Release Oxygen And Calcium Into Cells
  • 11Hz= Alpha Waves Calm And Relaxed Thinking, Paying Attention, Stress Reduction, Alert States
• 10-38 mins: The track shifts to a base tone of 136Hz, based around C#. It uses a binaural beat of 4Hz.
  • 136Hz= Sun: light, warmth, joy, animus, Resonates with the earth year (Note=C#) The effects are calming, meditative, relaxing, centering, balancing and harmony with the cosmos. It’s a very significant tone in Indian music (called the “sadja” or “father to others” – it was a keynote) and it corresponds to “OM” & the Christian “AMEN”
  • 4Hz = Theta State, present in dreaming sleep, deep meditation, storehouse of creative inspiration, spiritual connection, subconscious mind, creative insight, twilight (“sleep”) learning, vivid mental imagery. Found in advanced meditators.
• 38-48 mins: We lift up to 360Hz, a tuning of F#
  • 360Hz= The “Balance Frequency” – brings sensations of joy, healing and balance of health. It is derived from the Golden Section and according to NASA astronauts, corresponds to the frequency the Earth creates in space.
• 48-58 mins: We rise back up to 432Hz and increase the binaural beat to 10Hz, to overcome fatigue, and reduce stress.
• 59-60 mins: The last two minutes bring back to full wakefulness at 20Hz

As you can see we’ve put a lot of thought and knowledge into this track, and it works brilliantly. The truly remarkable thing is, that using a personalised mantra for 20 minutes gives you even more than all of the above in 1 hour! This is the true genius of the ancient sages of India. Even with all our modern technology, we still struggle to induce such deeply relaxing and meditative states as the ancients did.

On The Other Hand - stimulating your right brain

(See Page 236)

Getting lost in an activity is usually an excellent way to get your creative mojo flowing, and if you haven’t got time to tune into the binaural beats exercise on our website that I mentioned just above, then use your non-dominant hand to write or draw for five minutes. It’s an excellent way to activate your right brain, and with it your creativity. By using your ‘wrong’ hand, and doing this in a focused way, you will find yourself more creatively and emotionally attuned. You’ll also be more intuitive.

Recalibrating your notion of success

(See Page 240)

For an in-depth discussion recalibrating your notion of success, please read the section in and around page 240 of the book. It's an incredibly important exercise for us all to do.

Violet Flame Exercise (for cleansing your spirit)

(See Page 260)

If you wish to cleanse your energy field of debris and blocks that are otherwise preventing you from feeling as light and clear as you like, this is the best exercise I know of that I can teach via a web resource and a book.