Blog
We Said Meditation Is Measurable. Today, We’re Showing You.
I’ve been teaching meditation for over a decade, and in almost every workshop I’ve led, someone asks the same question: “How do I know if I’m doing this right?”
It’s a tough one to answer. When you go to the gym, you know you worked out. You’re sore the next day. Your muscles grow. Eventually you can lift more. Meditation doesn’t give you any of that. So most people stop.
What 15 Years at Carnegie Mellon Taught Us About Building Stress Resilience
By Mathew Polowitz, CEO and Co-Founder of Equa
If you found us after hearing David Creswell on the Mind & Life podcast or elsewhere, welcome. You probably want to know what's actually behind the science he talks about. Fair question.
David runs the Health and Human Performance Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, and the lab has spent years chasing one question. What makes people resilient under stress? It's a different question from what makes people feel calm for a few minutes, and that difference shaped everything we built at Equa.
What Your Breath Can Tell You About Your Nervous System (and Why We Built a Way to See It)
You know the feeling. A tense email lands, and before you've finished reading it, your breath has gone shallow and your heart rate has jumped. Nobody told it to. Your body read the situation and answered on its own.
That's your nervous system talking. Your breath is one of the clearest places to hear it.
How to Meditate Properly: What the Research Actually Says
In a 2014 study, researchers asked people to sit alone in a room for 15 minutes with nothing but their own thoughts. Many chose to give themselves an electric shock instead.
That's the honest starting point for anyone learning to meditate. Sitting with your own mind is hard. Most meditation apps work around that with a soothing voice, soft music, and a few minutes of taking your attention somewhere else.
Leaning In: How Equanimity Skills Training Works
Pennsylvania recently emerged from a bitter cold snap, the kind that forces you to brace yourself every time you step outside. A colleague of mine noticed something interesting: although the cold wasn’t comfortable, it didn’t really bother him much either.