Perceiving double

About a week ago I changed up my morning routine. Instead of rushing around the kitchen and then clicking around on the internet for a bit, I began sitting in my bed for 15 minutes to follow my breath and/or listen to myself saying a mantra.

After doing this, I can immediately perceive the changes in my consciousness. I don't end up losing any time, because I get ready for the day in a more mindful manner. I have an easier time concentrating at work, since concentrating on something interesting becomes easy compared with the obscure task of following the breath. Most importantly, I start to notice things. For example, I notice that a church the shuttle bus passes every day has an arch composed of superbly detailed angelic creatures. I begin to not only listen to every word people are saying, but how they are saying it. I start to notice what thoughts are creeping into my head.

In case you don't believe me, there's an amazing study I just discovered from the University of Wisconsin. It was published in 2004, and, according to Google, has been cited 307 times since then.

What the Wisconsin researchers did is measure brain activity, through an electroencephalogram (EEG), of two groups: Buddhist monks, who have logged tens of thousands of meditation hours over their life, and a group of college kids who spent a a week learning to meditate. They tested both normal, relaxed mental states and states of active meditation. They then compared something called gamma synchrony, which is "thought to reflect large-scale neural coordination."

What they found is astounding. The monks had levels of gamma synchrony which is "the highest reported in the literature in a nonpathological context." During meditation, the level of gamma synchrony in monks was over twice that of the control group. Even while, relaxed, the monks had consistently higher values of gamma synchrony.

What this means is that "the endogenous gamma-band synchrony found here could reflect a change in the quality of moment-to-moment awareness." In other words, meditation actually allows you to perceive the world more fully, to really see everything that is there.

It's like the difference between a flip-book with ten frames per second and a movie shown at 24-fps. I was blown away by this research.

The article is Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice by Lutz, et al.

Wide Angle Weekend

I got a new camera that has the amazing capability of stitching together three images into panoramas. Then I biked all over New York City during the course of the weekend.

Here's where I went and what I captured:

The pictures:

• George Washington Bridge

• Brooklyn Bridge (from the river level, at night, and during the day)

• Marine Parkway

• Riis Beach

• The Party

Shroomin' Queens

Kicked off the 2010 mushroom season yesterday with a safari through the New Cavalry Cemetery in Queens, NYC. Expectedly, an interesting bunch arrived. (One woman confessed her past hatred for mushrooms and efforts to kill them.)

At this time of year, just as mushrooms are beginning to pop up around the NYC area, open grassy areas (such as cemeteries) are the best place to look for fungi. (Mushrooms will begin to appear in cooler, forested areas in a few weeks).

We found

• Mower's mushrooms (http://www.mushroomexpert.com/panaeolus_foenisecii.html)
• Oyster mushrooms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_mushroom) Oyster mushrooms metabolize oil and could be used to clean up the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
• Old, crumbly shelf mushrooms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetiporus)

Some tidbits for prospective mushroom hunters:

• Small mushrooms are almost never edible.
• Parks are the best places to look, but any bit of dirt or tree is a possible substrate.
• Mushrooms like it hot. Some species require multiple days above 90 degrees to grow.
• The mushroom is the fruiting part of a vast, underground system of hypha. An event, usually a period of drying after rain, triggers the mushroom to sprout up. The fruit is a spore dispersal system - allowing the mushroom to expand.

See everyone June 27th in Central Park for the next walk! (http://www.newyorkmyc.org/nymsfuse/viewpage.php?page_id=3)