Reviews: Guided Meditation CD Being In Flow

The Ridgewood, NJ, Whole Body Whole Foods has fully endorsed and backed the guided meditation CD, Being in Flow: Meditations for Peace, Insight, Clarity, and Focus. It is available in the yoga section of Whole Body. All profits go to Sivananda Math, the charitable trust associated with the Bihar School of Yoga. The trust feeds, educates, and provides medical care to some of the poorest and most neglected children in the world. It also has many outreach programs for several villages.

Here are some of the ways in which the CD has been helpful to people who have used the meditations:

Benefits to Creativity

Numerous studies have highlighted the benefits of meditation in terms of fostering creativity; a group of Dutch researchers, for instance, found that the practice promoted “divergent thinking”, in which many new ideas are generated. After listening to this CD, I definitely agree: while my mind often feels freighted with clutter, these tracks have brought a sense of calm and awareness, which in turn bring about heightened perception and creative abilities. I can see why Disney’s creative team has hired a meditation teacher! 

There are a couple of features that set this CD apart from the other meditation offerings. For one, the narrator has a wonderfully soothing voice that allows me to instantly relax and achieve the desired mental calmness. With other meditation tracks, I feel that this relaxation often spirals into a deep stupor and leads me to eventually fall asleep; here, however, the relaxation does indeed promote Insight into Problems and convert Stress to Rest.

Furthermore, each track has clearly been carefully considered, with a clear and logical progression guiding the individual through the practice. I have given this CD to a couple of friends, who have similarly spoken of a clear mind and enhanced creativity after going through the tracks. There is something very peaceful, almost addictive, about the ability to redirect your mind away from endless distractions and toward a more useful goal.

Barry J.

Improve productivity

When I first read about flow in a paper by the Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the idea of complete immersion in a single, well-defined task sounded great. I had even experienced being in flow at times — it felt like the distinction between a task and my performing that task completely disappeared. The only problem was that I couldn’t get myself into this state whenever I wanted: sometimes I happened to fall into it, but most of the time I didn’t and wasted a lot of time trying to force it.

This CD actually helps me get into flow whenever I want. Different tracks work well for different types of tasks. For example, if I’m about to practice the piano, I will listen to Still Body Clear Mind, whereas if I’m about to work on a math problem, I will listen to Insight into Problems. Now, I’m finding that I don’t always need to listen to those two tracks whenever I want to get into flow since the CD effectively trained me to get into flow on my own. So while I do continue to listen to both of those tracks, now I’m listening more to Stress to Rest and Sound of Silence to get into flow for tasks that are less well-defined than music practice or math problem sets.

If you’re looking for something that’s relaxing, this CD works very well, but its real benefit comes from improving productivity. Once you’re in that state of flow in which you get things done so much faster than before, stress goes away on its own.

Max W.