Remarkable research paper published on the National Institute of Health website about LOVING-KINDNESS MEDITATION (LKM):

“One of the most deflating concepts facing positive psychology is the hedonic treadmill.” (Classically stated, the hedonic treadmill implies that all efforts to improve happiness are doomed to failure)

However…… upon further review…..

“The evidence reported here reveals that one way to outpace the hedonic treadmill is to begin a practice of Loving-Kindness Meditation (LKM). Participants who invested an hour or so each week practicing this form of meditation enhanced a wide range of positive emotions in a wide range of situations, especially when interacting with others.

We find these data especially promising. LKM appears to be one positive emotion induction that keeps on giving, long after the identifiable “event” of meditation practice.”

Here’s a link to the full research report:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3156028/

The “Lightstone” was Wild Divine’s first generation hardware, and is no longer manufactured. It was replaced by the current “Iom” hardware.

Currently, all our software, including those events running online and within Facebook, work with BOTH the Lightstone and Iom.

With this first version of IomOnline, be sure to have your hardware connected, then the controller running, and then launch or refresh your screen. So far, it’s worked with 100% of the systems and configurations out there. If you have any issues, please let us know, and our crack tech support team will get you up and running. We want to get as many issues taken care of before rolling this out to a larger audience.

The older "Lightstone". Was nicknamed "The Turtle"

Wild Divine's Current Hardware: The "Iom"

Using Wild Divine on Facebook is very near reality. If you’ve got a Lightstone or Iom, all you need to do is download the Iom device drivers for Mac or PC and visit http://apps.facebook.com/iomonline

The Iom device drivers for Mac and PC can be found at:
http://www.wilddivine.com/iom-online.html

These drivers work with MacOSX (including Lion) and Windows XP, Vista, and Win7.

This is a new system and product for everyone, and we are VERY interested in your feedback. Be sure to let us know what you think, good or bad.

Watch for the newsletter announcement, coming shortly.

Enjoy!

I’ve been wanting to post this for some time, in fact, wanted to shout it from the rooftops, but wanted to make sure it was working properly.

Wild Divine has been hard at work on a revolutionary idea: Using the Iom with active events in a browser window. No install disks, no configuration issues. Simply go to a webpage, install the Iom driver, and begin using Wild Divine right there, online.

The team has taken it a step even further…. simply login to Facebook, and access Wild Divine content. That’s right, instead of Mafia Wars and Farmville, how about a nice meditation to open The Elephant Doors?

But wait, we’re not done yet. What if you could work together with other Iom/Lightstone owners and collaboratively complete active feedback events, within Facebook? Well, it’s here, it works, and it is very, very cool!

Our upcoming newsletter will have all the details. For everyone in the Wild Divine community, this will be a FREE experience. Look out for the next newsletter for more details.

Exciting times, my friends, exciting times!

Remember CliffNotes from school? (I wouldn’t have made it through High School without them) Well, Imagine a collection of CliffNotes style summaries for personal development and transformation books. That’s exactly what Brian Johnson has created at PhilosophersNotes.com. I just finished “Letters from a Stoic” by Seneca in about 20 minutes. It would have taken me weeks to get through the original text. What a time saver!

Also, on the site, Brian shares 822 Big Ideas, 3,366 Quotes and 29 Videos he’s collected.

Here at The Wild Divine, we see dozens of books, products, gadgets, gizmos, and ideas every week. We only share with the wider Wild Divine community the ones we think are truly valuable. This is one of the most amazing projects we’ve seen. http://www.philosophersnotes.com/

Kyle

Melons and Stress: French Study

Do you like Melons?

A French study has identified a key ingredient in melons called superoxide dismutase, which is thought to have beneficial antioxidant properties which prevent damage to the body’s tissues. The study was published in BioMed Central’s open access Nutrition Journal.

The positive effects on perceived stress and fatigue reported in the group of 35 who took the enzyme capsules were much greater – and much longer lasting than a control group that was given a placebo.

The bottom line seems to emphasize that fruit and vegetables are packed with compounds which, in combination, have a beneficial effect on health.

Click to see the full article on BBC here:

With back-to-school on everyone’s mind, here’s the results of a study that shows positive results from meditation and mindfulness training, two of the core principals in our Healing Rhythms product.

The full text of this study can be read here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17940025

Recent studies suggest that months to years of intensive and systematic meditation training can improve attention. However, the lengthy training required has made it difficult to use random assignment of participants to conditions to confirm these findings. This article shows that a group randomly assigned to 5 days of meditation practice with the integrative body-mind training method shows significantly better attention and control of stress than a similarly chosen control group given relaxation training. The training method comes from traditional Chinese medicine and incorporates aspects of meditation and mindfulness training. Compared with the control group, the experimental group of 40 undergraduate Chinese students given 5 days of 20-min integrative training showed greater improvement in conflict scores on the Attention Network Test, lower anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue, and higher vigor on the Profile of Mood States scale, a significant decrease in stress-related cortisol, and an increase in immunoreactivity. These results provide a convenient method for studying the influence of meditation training by using experimental and control methods similar to those used to test drugs or other interventions.