Comments for Guided Meditation CDs

Comment on 8 Minute Meditation: Quiet Your Mind. Change Your Life. by Tess Harding

Tess Harding — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 12:15:33 +0000

98 of 104 people found the following review helpful:

Now I know why Time Magazine says it's so great., April 19, 2005

This review is from: 8 Minute Meditation: Quiet Your Mind. Change Your Life. (Paperback)

Time Magazine calls 8 Minute Meditation "The most American form of meditation yet"--and now I know why.
I've always wanted to meditate, but thought it too confusing and difficult. Besides, who has the time? But 8 Minute Meditation changed all that for me.
Davich has totally stripped the mumbo-jumbo and complexity out of meditation. He has chosen 8 minutes a day as the optimal time for us folks to use for meditation. Why? Because it's the time between 2 TV commercials! He says that if you can watch 8 Minutes of CSI, the Simpsons, or American Idol, you can learn to meditate--for real.
The book offers more than just a fun and informative read: It's a complete meditation program that starts you meditating as soon as you pick it up. All you have to do is meditate for 8 minutes a day! After one week, you move onto a new meditation technique. After I did this for just 8 weeks, I found myself for the first time in my life, a real mediation habit.
Part 3 of 8Minute Meditation is called The Upgrade. And in it Davich shows you how to take your 8 minute a day practice and expand and deepen it. It also shows you how to bring your meditation into yout daily life. Like the meditation technique Davich calls Just One Dish. So you can even be practicing meditation while you are doing household chores or at the supermarket. (Be careful though in your car!).
After the 2nd week, I ordered the 8 Minute Guided Meditation CD from his website 8minutes.org. I found it extremely helpful alongside what was happening in the book. All I had to do was sit down, find the meditation technique of the week, push the play button. I heard a sonorous gong, and then Davich lead me through my 8 minute meditation for the day. He doesn't talk alot, but when he says something it's perfectly timed to bring me back to the meditation. It worked so well for me. Let me actually sink into what I was doing.
Using the CD and use the book together was for me really powerful. It gave me a meditation practice. Finally. And easily.

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Comment on 8 Minute Meditation: Quiet Your Mind. Change Your Life. by San Diego Guy

San Diego Guy — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 11:39:51 +0000

59 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

Build a lasting practice., September 5, 2005

San Diego Guy (San Diego) -

This review is from: 8 Minute Meditation: Quiet Your Mind. Change Your Life. (Paperback)

This book is an 8 week program on meditation for beginners where each week the book teaches you a different meditation technique. The program has you meditate for just 8 minutes a day every, which taught me to concentrate on my meditation more while building a habit of meditating every day. Although I have tried some Zen meditation in the past, the techniques I learned in this book gave me better tools to meditate. After completing the book I have been able to keep up with my meditation practice. If you would like to build a lasting meditation practice in your life, I highly recommend it.

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Comment on 8 Minute Meditation: Quiet Your Mind. Change Your Life. by Ron Cronovich "Ron"

Ron Cronovich "Ron" — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 10:43:24 +0000

335 of 341 people found the following review helpful:

An excellent book for beginners, but skip the companion CD, August 12, 2004

Ron Cronovich "Ron" (Kenosha, WI) -

This review is from: 8 Minute Meditation: Quiet Your Mind. Change Your Life. (Paperback)

This is an excellent book for beginners and skeptics (and I was both). It makes meditation easy. Really! It's also very well-written, reader-friendly, easy to read, and witty.

The book plugs a companion CD, available only at the author's website for $17. I bought the CD, have used it, and would like to review it here, so that those of you who buy the book can better decide whether you should spring for the CD.

The CD contains 16 tracks.

The first eight tracks are very short (e.g. 2-minutes), and summarize some of the content from the book. These short tracks are useful reminders of some of the key points in the book, but as the CD tells you, it is not intended to substitute for the book.

The rest of the CD consists of 8 "guided meditations," one for each week of the book's 8-week program. In each of these tracks, the author spends a few seconds telling you what activity you're supposed to do, then he tells you to start, then 8 minutes later a gong sounds, signaling you to stop. About every two minutes during the meditation, the author interrupts you to say things like "Has your attention drifted? That's okay, just return your focus to your breath." This type of reminder might be useful, especially at first, but after a while, I found it intrusive. Also, the sound of his voice is not especially soothing or gentle. For me, it's better to just do as the book says - use a common kitchen timer set to 8 minutes.

Aside from the occasional interruptions, there is complete silence during the 8 minute meditations. I prefer the silence to the soft new-age music or nature sounds on some other meditation CDs.

In my opinion, the CD is not a good value: the total amount of content on the CD is about 20 minutes, maybe less. This is due to the fact that the CD has a lot of silent parts during the guided meditations; this silence is appropriate, but it reduces the amount of time available for spoken content. And, more importantly, all of the spoken content on the CD--and much more--is already in the book.

On the plus side, the service was excellent - the CD arrived two days after I ordered it.

In summary, I recommend the book highly if you're a beginner. But my opinion is that you skip the CD and save your money.

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Comment on The Ease of Being: Guided Meditations for Centering and Healing by Terry "TERRYSJEWEL"

Terry "TERRYSJEWEL" — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 01:50:39 +0000

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

A Really great CD! Anxiety / insomnia GREATLY IMPROVED!, March 8, 2005

Terry "TERRYSJEWEL" (United States) -

This review is from: The Ease of Being: Guided Meditations for Centering and Healing (Audio CD)

I can't begin to say how much peace and relaxation I've gotten from this CD. The voice of Mary Maddux is very smooth and soothing, while the music composed for the background lulls you into a feeling of peace. I have a severe anxiety disorder that requires medications daily, many types of these have not helped me much at all. This CD really helps me to slow down and relax, especially after a difficult day. This CD is easily as effective as some anxiety medications I've tried , and I'm so glad I found it. I hope others give it a try. It's truly a gift to oneself, that you can afford to give yourself each and every day. As far as "sound quality" Ive had NO PROBLEMS< I listen to mine on a 5 speaker surround sound and its wonderful, EVERY TIME. Perhaps a poor quality of stereo is creating some kind of interference?This is a must have for anyone who has to relax, and finds it incredibly difficult.

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Comment on The Ease of Being: Guided Meditations for Centering and Healing by Graham Mercer

Graham Mercer — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:55:18 +0000

128 of 130 people found the following review helpful:

The ease of listening to "The Ease of Being" CD, April 24, 2004

Graham Mercer (Orpington, Kent, England) -

This review is from: The Ease of Being: Guided Meditations for Centering and Healing (Audio CD)

With all the wordly pressures of living here in the 21st century Mary Maddux's CD "The ease of being" is a "Must have". The calming music and Mary's kind and compassionate voice take you to a place where there is true peace, security, and total contentment.

Track 1: "A centering meditation" is just wonderful for bringing oneself into a focused state, where you can concentrate/meditate on any chosen subject, or embark on a journey into the far off reaches of your mind.

Track 2: "A healing meditation" is just that, this works just fine for mental & physical healing (I had a "Thumper" of a headache that just refused to vanish, but it went after I listened to this track) it helps you to look at the problem in hand and, as is most often the case, once you look at problems they're put into perspective and they either shrink to a size where you can acknowledge and work with them, or they disappear completely.

Track 3: "Flowing freely: An emotional healing meditation" works great when one has been emotionally battered and bruised, it recharges one's "Batteries" and and makes one emotionally whole once again, ready to take on those difficult and rough people/situations (that can leave you all too drained) with renewed vigor and enthusiasm.

All in all a 10 out of 10, or in this case a true 5 star recommendation, this is such a down to earth CD, and one that you'll surely not regret buying.

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Comment on Guided Meditations for Stress Reduction by Leigh Meryl Attridge "Leigh Meryl"

Leigh Meryl Attridge "Leigh Meryl" — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 08:05:19 +0000

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

excellent introduction to meditation on the breath, February 27, 2006

Leigh Meryl Attridge "Leigh Meryl" (Beverly, MA USA) -

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This review is from: Guided Meditations for Stress Reduction (Audio CD)

This is the best cd I've ever tried for practicing "breathing" meditation. Bodhipaksa leads you through some common sense exercises focusing on the breath. His voice is gentle and soothing. This is a great cd for beginners.

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Comment on Guided Meditations for Stress Reduction by Karen Z. Ellis

Karen Z. Ellis — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 07:17:22 +0000

57 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

Essential for Life & Practice, December 9, 2004

Karen Z. Ellis (Texas, USA) -

This review is from: Guided Meditations for Stress Reduction (Audio CD)

This CD is instrumental in my meditative practice. I consider it essential, as are the other materials by Bodipaksa. These meditations are quiet and focused; exactly what they should be for undistracted guidance. I doubt very much that I would have continued in my practice without these important CD's.

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Comment on Guided Meditations for Stress Reduction by Patrick D. Goonan "see profile for URL"

Patrick D. Goonan "see profile for URL" — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 06:53:12 +0000

66 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

Top-notch material, very effective (review by meditation instructor), March 22, 2007

Patrick D. Goonan "see profile for URL" (Livermore, CA) -

This review is from: Guided Meditations for Stress Reduction (Audio CD)

I am a personal development coach who was a teaching fellow in physiology and a research chemist. I also have a background in psychology and meditation and work with stress management and biofeedback in my practice. I've studied meditation for years, have reviewed a lot of material in this area and I also give workshops on meditation in the SF Bay Area. As such, I think I'm a good person to judge the merits of this material.

In my opinion, Bodhipaksa does the best job of presenting the body scan as a means to relax of anyone out there thay I know of. His voice is calm, soothing and comes from a relaxed place. This meditation also is detailed enough to bring someone into a very relaxed place and overall tone of the audio is encouraging.

The rest of the tape is just as good and if I were going to recommend two practices for stress reduction purposes, these would be what I include on a CD. There are no gimmicks here, just good solid material delivered in the most high quality manner. While Bodhipaksa doesn't use music, he doesn't need to induce a relaxed state and his voice is pleasant.

If you are under stress, this CD is definitely a good place to start. It is also a very nice introduction to meditation for people who haven't done any work in this area and want a simple, effective practice. The other CDs I've reviewed by this author are just as good.

You can see even more meditation and stress management resources on my listmania lists, which you can reach through my profile. Another more Western approach and a comprehensive program is FULL CATASTROPHE LIVING. I also recommend the book WHY ZEBRAS DON'T GET ULCERS or THE END OF STRESS AS WE KNOW IT. You can think of the second book as a simplification of the concepts in the first and it is even endored by the author of the first book. WHY ZEBRAS DON'T GET ULCERS is wonderful, but it's a fairly technical read, the other book is geared more toward the general population, but the presentation isn't as brilliant as Sapolosky (the author of the first book and an authority in his field).

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Comment on The Sharper Image EC-B100 Sound Soother Alarm Clock by L. Stegman "joggermum"

L. Stegman "joggermum" — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 13:12:12 +0000

66 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

Much Better than regular Alarm Clocks, March 8, 2010

L. Stegman "joggermum" (Wyoming) -

This review is from: The Sharper Image EC-B100 Sound Soother Alarm Clock (Electronics)

Found this sound soother at QVC for $36.50. I hated waking up to a loud "give-me-a-heart-attack" buzzers on regular alarm clocks and was hunting for a more soothing wake-up call. The beep on this clock is ok not near as screeching as some other clocks I've tried. The sound system and its many nature sound options are great. I don't know why other buyers complain about the quality of the sounds, they must miss their big ole stereo system or something, its just a clock people duh! I love the rainforest sound and the summer night as well as the oceanside waves. I chose most often to set the alarm to the foghorn, its a nice soft realistic sound of boats in the harbor. If you're a deep sleeper, the beep probably would be better to use. I found the manual for this too sparse on instructions. There was no instructions on how to set either the beep or the sound option, by accident I found out how. The luminous figures are not too bright, good grief I can't believe other buyers complained about that too. It's like having a very, very, low night light on - not too bright at all. I am pleased with having bought this item, I like the fact it has battery back up. Only down side for me was that it was made in China, would have preferred finding an alternative made in USA.

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Comment on The Sharper Image EC-B100 Sound Soother Alarm Clock by Will Klinger

Will Klinger — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:59:07 +0000

74 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

Good functionality and features, but a few design flaws, January 7, 2010

Will Klinger (North Carolina) -

This review is from: The Sharper Image EC-B100 Sound Soother Alarm Clock (Electronics)

The Sharper Image Sound Soother has a very sleek and modern design, however, there are a few flaws that detract from the overall experience.

First, the digital display is very bright in a dark bedroom. Unlike a regular, cheap alarm clock where only the time is lit, the entire display of the Sound Soother is backlit. If your bedroom has little ambient light at night, this display will emit a glow that some people may find too bright. Although there are three display brightness settings, there is little difference between them and the lowest setting is still bright. We have to turn the clock away from the bed at night so it's not directly in our face, but the glow is still significant.

Second, the sound quality could be better. This could be a tradeoff for the sleek design, but the sounds are not very natural coming out of the small rear speakers and are a bit tinny as another reviewer has noted. The volume control is not very good either, as the difference between the first, second, third, etc. volume selections are very noticeable. In other words, 1 is too soft for some sounds, but 2 is way too loud. The audio loop on some of the sounds is too short as well, and if you are concentrating on the sound you may be able to detect the pattern, which can be distracting as you are trying to fall asleep. Also, the control buttons themselves make a very loud and abrasive "click" sound when you push them, which seems odd for a machine designed to relax you.

Overall, the Sound Soother is a decent alarm clock that gets the job done, but it could definitely be improved (display too bright, audio quality is lacking, and buttons take away from the overall experience). Although it is made by Sharper Image, it has a somewhat "cheap" feeling to it. Despite the flaws, it is one of the better sound machine/alarm clock I came across that was less than $50.

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