“Mindfulness is the ability to know what’s happening in your head at any moment without getting carried away by it.” “The proposition here is not that you should be rendered by mindfulness into some lifeless, non-judgmental blob. The proposition is that you should learn how to respond _wisely_ to things that happen to you rather than just reacting blindly.”

Dan Deacon discusses how meditation inspired his new album, Mystic Familiar, the music of Philip Glass and John Cage, and what happens before you’re born. --- I realized I wasn’t even relaxing enough to know why I was meditating. I was meditating with an end goal in mind, but I didn’t know what that end goal was. I thought the sheer act of meditating would bring it on, if that makes any sense. Then, I started realizing that it wasn’t a capitalist exchange of meditation for inspiration.

Crysknife007 specializes in extended ambient space and spaceship sounds. He also enjoys working with other scifi soundscapes. Fans of ambient starship noise from TV and movies, look no further than this Bandcamp, which also includes loops of ambient noise from the Starfox video game, a submarine, fans and air conditioners, and ‘Every Super Mario Brothers Sound Effect At Once.’

Guided meditations are offered freely by Tara Brach, Ph.D, psychologist, author and teacher of meditation, emotional healing and spiritual awakening.

For an introduction to mindfulness meditation that you can practice on your own, stream or download the guided meditations below. Recorded by UCLA MARC's Director of Mindfulness Education, Diana Winston.