The Quiet Mind

Six short films on what meditation, breathing and sleep actually do to your brain. Free: just sign up with your email.

Lessons

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1 min Lesson 1 · Start here Mindfulness Is About Your Life A short film about what mindfulness is actually for: not an empty mind, but the ordinary moments you get to be present for.
1 min Lesson 2 · The wandering mind Where Is Your Mind Right Now? In 2010, Harvard researchers pinged 2,250 people at random moments of their day. Nearly half the time, their minds were somewhere else, and that mattered more...
3 min Lesson 3 · The wandering mind The Network That Never Rests What your brain does when you are doing nothing: the default mode network, how it was discovered, and what four studies show meditation does to it....
1 min Lesson 4 · Breath Your Heart Slows When You Breathe Out Your heart speeds up a little as you breathe in and slows a little as you breathe out. A long exhale is a brake you have...
3 min Lesson 5 · Breath Your Breath Is a Door Breathing is the one automatic rhythm you can also steer. Three studies show how it talks back to the brain, and the film ends with a...
1 min Lesson 6 · Rest Sleep Is How You Begin Again In deep sleep, slow waves of fluid wash through the brain. Scientists think this may help clear away the day.

How these films are made

Each film starts from the published studies, not from summaries of them. The numbers are checked against the papers, the limits of each study are said out loud (a mouse study is called a mouse study), and simplified diagrams are labelled as simplified.

Want to go deeper?

The films are a starting point. The full courses go further, with practice, and the articles take one claim at a time.

The Quiet Mind

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How these films are made

Want to go deeper?