Todd Hilker's Profile

Todd Hilker

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Following: 40
Following Blogs: 7

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Weekly Recap

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 28, 2009, 7:27 am
This week I discussed the RAS, which is a structure in your brain that acts like a switch that goes back and forth from your rational brain to your emotional brain. I also brought up some dietar...
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Taste Buds

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 27, 2009, 9:03 am
Scientists have found three levels of taste bud ability: nontasters, tasters, and supertasters. Tasters make up about 50% of the population with nontasters and supertasters taking up 25% each.&n...
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Happy Thanksgiving!

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 26, 2009, 8:30 am
This week I started writing about diet and nutrition topics as far as they affect overall health and brain, just in time for the big meal! Whereas I don't expect anyone to eat an actual heal...
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Omega-3 Fatty Acids

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 25, 2009, 9:16 am
Omega-3's can benefit the cardiovascular system and the joints, as well as being used to treat diabetes. There are also a host of mental problems that the omega-3's help including depres...
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Chocolate

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 24, 2009, 9:01 am
Research has found that eating chocolate is healthy (see Science News, Mar18, 2000). Real cocoa contains flavonoids, which is a natural antioxidant. One 40 gram serving, (about the size of...
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Back To The Brain

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 23, 2009, 8:06 am
Way back when I started talking about a structure in the brain called the RAS which is an abbreviation for reticular activation system. You can read the original article here. I have just ...
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Weekly Recap

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 21, 2009, 8:32 am
This week saw me looking at various aspects of Buddhism and meditation, from descriptions of reality being like a waterfall, all the way to depictions of heavenly mind states. These posts have b...
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States Of Mind

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 20, 2009, 8:50 am
Have you ever thought of your mental state being like an actual place? Such as when you are in an intense state of joy, it's like for the moment that is where you are living. I know this is ...
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Big Claims

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 19, 2009, 8:34 am
Apparently according to the Buddhist texts I have been reading, practitioners of meditation after years and years of work result in uprooting all the negative aspects of mind. Greed, anger, jeal...
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No Self

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 18, 2009, 7:47 am
Buddhism proclaims that there in no self, no you to which things happen. This is a pretty alien concept for people in the western world to swallow. But I think I now know what they are try...
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Negative Emotions

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 17, 2009, 9:56 am
Meditation has a curious outlook about negative emotions. The way it goes about dealing with them is to simply accept them and experience them. That can be pretty tricky to do, it is so easy and...
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Waterfall

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 16, 2009, 12:12 pm
I was reading a description of reality in my meditation book that described it as a waterfall instead of a river. This was because the water arises and then disappears. It's like it is...
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Investigation

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 13, 2009, 8:25 am
One of the reasons I love meditation so much is because it doesn't pretend to be something it's not. What I mean by that is that there isn't some great vaulted book of meditation tha...
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Enlightnement

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 12, 2009, 12:18 pm
Most of this week I have been helping my parents prepare for the winter by cutting up and splitting several dead trees on their property, so preparing a post for my blog this week has been a real chal...
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Levels of Practice

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 11, 2009, 7:56 am
The book I'm reading about meditation outlines several levels of practice. Arriving, observation, opening and being. At the level of arriving, you are basically spending your time confrontin...
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Knots of Energy

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 10, 2009, 11:33 am
Today I was reading my book about Buddhist meditation, and it mentioned that as your practice begins to deepen you may encounter "knots" of energy as feelings of pain in your body. According to the bo...
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Big Questions

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 9, 2009, 7:34 am
Have you taken the time to explore and try to answer for yourself the really big questions in life? Questions like, "Who are we?", "Where do we come from?", "Where are we going?" "What should we...
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Weekly Recap

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 7, 2009, 8:22 am
This week I spoke about the benefits of meditation, things like improved focus and concentration. But I think it also deepens your connection with reality, which is what this blog is all about.&...
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Buddhist Structures

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 6, 2009, 9:08 am
Like I said, Earlier this week I received several new books about meditation and Buddhism. I have been reading the first book everyday, but have not written anything out of it until now. T...
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The Present Moment

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 5, 2009, 7:51 am
More often than not, we spend time thinking about the past or the future, rarely experiencing the present moment. Few people are content with what they have now. Instead we while away the ...
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How To Meditate

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 4, 2009, 9:11 am
On a side note, I just wanted to mention a synchronicity that occurred today. I received my latest issue of Scientific American Mind today, and in it was an article about science and Buddhism!&n...
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Science and Buddhism

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 3, 2009, 7:14 am
This is going to be a strange post. When I started this blog, I didn't expect it to lead me here. But here I am. The last few weeks I have been re-reading my manual on meditation...
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My Practice

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Nov 2, 2009, 7:20 am
I began meditating a little over two years ago, and of course like anything else, when I started I didn't know what I was doing. I had bought a course that explained what to do, but I added ...
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Weekly Recap

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 31, 2009, 7:35 am
I started this week off discussing some products that you could use to help creating more effective neural networks in your brain a lot easier, namely NeuroProgrammer. Then I discussed how your ...
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Meditation

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 30, 2009, 7:41 am
The last couple of days I have discussed how routines and patterns of thinking can create structures in the brain and body that support those patterns and routines. Most people live their lives ...
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Emotional Molecules

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 29, 2009, 5:58 am
Yesterday I talked about the dangers of habits and routines. I only mentioned the neurological component, being the existence of a neural network that supports the habit. There is more to ...
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Groundhogs Day

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 28, 2009, 8:03 am
Did you ever see the movie "Groundhogs Day" with Bill Murray in it? In the film he gets caught in a 24 hr time loop, and has to keep repeating the same day over and over again. This kinda ...
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More Products

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 27, 2009, 8:35 am
I decided since I went ahead and reviewed NeuroProgrammer yesterday that I would talk about two other products I started using recently. It's a little off topic, but I have really enjoyed using t...
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NeuroProgrammer

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 26, 2009, 8:50 am
I have been using some software for about two years now called "NeuroProgrammer 2" and it works wonderfully. It comes with some pre-made sessions, or with the professional version you can also create ...
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Weekly Recap

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 24, 2009, 9:49 am
Your subconscious is incredibly powerful. It is able to control all of your body's processes all at once. Your subconscious comprises about 92% of your brain. It is so powerful that with people wh...
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Subconscious Communication

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 23, 2009, 9:18 am
Ok, so if you have been following the last few posts then you have an idea of just how powerful your subconscious is. So what if you were able to ask it some questions? I'm going to show you a w...
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Conditioning

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 22, 2009, 8:29 am
Do you remember a guy named Ivan Pavlov and that experiment he conducted with the dogs? Every day when he brought out their food, he would ring a bell. Then one day, all he did was ring the bell wit...
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Three Brains

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 20, 2009, 6:06 pm
There are three main divisions of the brain. The first is sometimes called the reptilian brain or the brain stem. It controls functions necessary for life, including heart rate, breathing, fight or ...
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More Subconscious

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 20, 2009, 8:31 am
Elmer and Alyce Green from the Menninger Foundation began studying individuals like Indian fakirs who were able to perform superhuman feats from 1964 to 1973. Things like being buried alive for six d...
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Subconscious Continued

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 18, 2009, 9:41 am
Yale professor Bernie Siegel worked with people who had multiple personality disorder. The belief that these people had that they were a different person sent a powerful command to their nervous syst...
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Todd Hilker is the author of The Heart Of The River

Weekly Recap

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 17, 2009, 9:07 am
I started off this week talking about how the brain may manipulate information by creating it's own "hologram". This hologram is created by waves of energy which interact and are created by neuro...
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Todd Hilker is following the blog The Heart Of The River

Todd Hilker is following the blog Spirituality, Science and Technology

Todd Hilker is following the blog Tao and Zen Online

Subconscious

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 16, 2009, 9:13 am
Before I do my last product review, I want to diverge a little bit and talk about the subconscious. The subconscious is very powerful and has some interesting characteristics I want to describe. Firs...
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Mind Machines

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 15, 2009, 9:04 am
So we've been talking about brain waves and how through various means you can enter a specific brain wave pattern that is more conducive for a specific task. Yesterday I mentioned that you could ...
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Brain Waves

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 14, 2009, 8:38 am
Monday I discussed how the neurons in the brain fire impulses that propagate through the brain. These impulse firings synchronize and form what are called "Brain Waves". These brain waves can be mea...
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Fourier Transforms

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 13, 2009, 7:10 am
I won't lie to you, today's post is a little complicated. I've tried to simplify it the best I can, but if you hang in there it builds to a really cool idea. In the eighteenth century, a m...
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Holographic Brain

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 12, 2009, 10:26 am
Two weeks ago I discussed how the universe is similar to a hologram. Waves of energy interact with each other and form interference patterns. Not only is the brain included in this type of structure...
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Weekly Recap

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 9, 2009, 6:32 pm
I began this week discussing how a thought is a physical thing that can be measured in your brain. Thoughts can also direct the brain to change itself by altering it's structure, which is termed ...
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Like a Garden

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 9, 2009, 8:08 am
There have been many people who have used the metaphor for the mind that it is like a garden. This is very appropriate for the topic of habits. If you are the farmer, you can choose whatever you wan...
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Habits

Todd Hilker posted an article on The Heart Of The River - Oct 7, 2009, 1:29 pm
I've been talking about the brain's ability to change itself and the fact that it generates a representation of reality. I had the idea that with some effort you could improve how you experie...
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About Me

I have been reading books about the mind, brain, and quantum physics for about four years now, so I am blogging about what I know! I also took anatomy and physics in college. I meditate, practice Qi Gong, and flourishing which is a type of playing card manipulations which require a lot of dexterity.

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