Waging Peace

by Cate Montana

Peace is breaking out all over.

If you get your news from mainstream TV and radio, you probably haven't noticed. But here are a few startling statistics the networks have overlooked in their rush to promote the usual stories of crime, corruption, terrorism and war.

• More lasting peace initiatives have been successful in the last 15 years than over the last two or three centuries combined.
• More individuals and private groups are involved in effective grass roots peace-making and conflict resolution efforts than ever before.
• Thirty years ago the great majority of the world's governments were autocratic, totalitarian regimes with democracies far in the minority. Today approximately 70% of world governments are democratic.¹

With our attention fixed on "the problems," we rarely hear stories like the one about the philanthropist who subsidized a group of 8,000 Transcendental Meditation practitioners to engage in group meditation twice a day from 1988 to 1990, near New Delhi, India.

Take an intuition break

by Laurie Nadel, Ph.D.

Do you find yourself losing concentration during certain times of the day? Perhaps it comes as a sudden touch of fatigue, or a subtle mental fuzziness. All of a sudden, you feel droopy. Your eyes may tear. You can't stop yawning, you sigh. Maybe you find yourself staring out the window, your mind faraway from the tasks at hand. If somebody speaks to you, you find yourself startled by the sound of his voice. Or you don't understand what was said the first time and ask the speaker to repeat himself.

These are signs that your body is entering an ultradian rest response. If you observe yourself carefully during the day, you will find that this pattern recurs approximately every hour and a half. Noticing this pattern can help you tap into your intuition during the times when your physiology is naturally attuned to it. During those periods when you lose concentration or get tired, the four main regulatory systems that link mind and body realign.