olours, the faces, the conversation of the couple you've just seen, the traffic jam and the smell and taste of the apples you bought in the supermarket. All this input is processed and stored for later use. When you are absorbing all this, seemingly without an effort, you brain is working overtime to process and you might feel stressed without being able to pinpoint the reason.

A lot has been said about the ways to regulate this overload. Stress management actually tackles this from different angles. One way to handle stress is to try to divert our attention from the thing we consider the problem, where in fact we don't have any idea which i

These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future. - Vernon Cooper

Two hundred years ago, collecting information was the name of the game. The world was ruled by those who mastered the skills of information gathering. Knowledge was power.

In today's world, the TV world, the world of live broadcasts, of information at your fingertips, a fast track world loaded with information, the advantage changed sides. Today, the world belongs to those who master the regulation of the flow of information. Today, it's not how much you know but how effective you are at finding what you need in the overwhelming rush of new facts coming straight at you from all around.

When I started my teaching journey, believing that all the people around the world were gifted, I faced a dilemma. As a person who brought information collection to a level of art, I was actually giving my students the greatest disadvantage of the 21st century. I was guiding them to where "they couldn't see the forest for the trees."

After I realised this, I spent years looking for the balance between collecting and regulating. Everything around us encourages collecting. At school, we learn how to gather and process information for our assignments, but not how to handle the enormous stream of information we absorb anyway.

Imagine that your brain is an office, where every piece of information is like the people seeking your service or incoming messages requiring your processing and filing.

Most of the processing happens while you're a sleep. The more information you receive, the more time it takes you to process it. Have you noticed that when you're stressed you feel tired? Have you noticed that kids sleep much more than adults do? That's because the load of information they need to process is greater - almost everything is new.

Because the world moved into "fast forward," we receive information that is much greater than twenty years ago. To realise this, think about kids. Their knowledge nowadays is diverse and they know much more than what their parents knew at the same age. Gifted children, for example, have very superior collection channels. They can collect a lot of information at any given time.

Unfortunately, not long after, the child will have loads of information without the time to process and the "clerk" in the "office" will scream, "That's it. Too much input. I can't handle this any more," and the child will feel overload and pressure. A simple thing like walking in the street stimulates a lot of incoming mail. The colours, the faces, the conversation of the couple you've just seen, the traffic jam and the smell and taste of the apples you bought in the supermarket. All this input is processed and stored for later use. When you are absorbing all this, seemingly without an effort, you brain is working overtime to process and you might feel stressed without being able to pinpoint the reason.

A lot has been said about the ways to regulate this overload. Stress management actually tackles this from different angles. One way to handle stress is to try to divert our attention from the thing we consider the problem, where in fact we don't have any idea which in

e overwhelming rush of new facts coming straight at you from all around.

When I started my teaching journey, believing that all the people around the world were gifted, I faced a dilemma. As a person who brought information collection to a level of art, I was actually giving my students the greatest disadvantage of the 21st century. I was guiding them to where "they couldn't see the forest for the trees."

After I realised this, I spent years looking for the balance between collecting and regulating. Everything around us encourages collecting. At school, we learn how to gather and process information for our assignments, but not how to handle the enormous stream of information we absorb anyway.

Imagine that your brain is an office, where every piece of information is like the people seeking your service or incoming messages requiring your processing and filing.

Most of the processing happens while you're a sleep. The more information you receive, the more time it takes you to process it. Have you noticed that when you're stressed you feel tired? Have you noticed that kids sleep much more than adults do? That's because the load of information they need to process is greater - almost everything is new.

Because the world moved into "fast forward," we receive information that is much greater than twenty years ago. To realise this, think about kids. Their knowledge nowadays is diverse and they know much more than what their parents knew at the same age. Gifted children, for example, have very superior collection channels. They can collect a lot of information at any given time.

Unfortunately, not long after, the child will have loads of information without the time to process and the "clerk" in the "office" will scream, "That's it. Too much input. I can't handle this any more," and the child will feel overload and pressure. A simple thing like walking in the street stimulates a lot of incoming mail. The colours, the faces, the conversation of the couple you've just seen, the traffic jam and the smell and taste of the apples you bought in the supermarket. All this input is processed and stored for later use. When you are absorbing all this, seemingly without an effort, you brain is working overtime to process and you might feel stressed without being able to pinpoint the reason.

A lot has been said about the ways to regulate this overload. Stress management actually tackles this from different angles. One way to handle stress is to try to divert our attention from the thing we consider the problem, where in fact we don't have any idea which i

andle the enormous stream of information we absorb anyway.

Imagine that your brain is an office, where every piece of information is like the people seeking your service or incoming messages requiring your processing and filing.

Most of the processing happens while you're a sleep. The more information you receive, the more time it takes you to process it. Have you noticed that when you're stressed you feel tired? Have you noticed that kids sleep much more than adults do? That's because the load of information they need to process is greater - almost everything is new.

Because the world moved into "fast forward," we receive information that is much greater than twenty years ago. To realise this, think about kids. Their knowledge nowadays is diverse and they know much more than what their parents knew at the same age. Gifted children, for example, have very superior collection channels. They can collect a lot of information at any given time.

Unfortunately, not long after, the child will have loads of information without the time to process and the "clerk" in the "office" will scream, "That's it. Too much input. I can't handle this any more," and the child will feel overload and pressure. A simple thing like walking in the street stimulates a lot of incoming mail. The colours, the faces, the conversation of the couple you've just seen, the traffic jam and the smell and taste of the apples you bought in the supermarket. All this input is processed and stored for later use. When you are absorbing all this, seemingly without an effort, you brain is working overtime to process and you might feel stressed without being able to pinpoint the reason.

A lot has been said about the ways to regulate this overload. Stress management actually tackles this from different angles. One way to handle stress is to try to divert our attention from the thing we consider the problem, where in fact we don't have any idea which i

tion that is much greater than twenty years ago. To realise this, think about kids. Their knowledge nowadays is diverse and they know much more than what their parents knew at the same age. Gifted children, for example, have very superior collection channels. They can collect a lot of information at any given time.

Unfortunately, not long after, the child will have loads of information without the time to process and the "clerk" in the "office" will scream, "That's it. Too much input. I can't handle this any more," and the child will feel overload and pressure. A simple thing like walking in the street stimulates a lot of incoming mail. The colours, the faces, the conversation of the couple you've just seen, the traffic jam and the smell and taste of the apples you bought in the supermarket. All this input is processed and stored for later use. When you are absorbing all this, seemingly without an effort, you brain is working overtime to process and you might feel stressed without being able to pinpoint the reason.

A lot has been said about the ways to regulate this overload. Stress management actually tackles this from different angles. One way to handle stress is to try to divert our attention from the thing we consider the problem, where in fact we don't have any idea which i

olours, the faces, the conversation of the couple you've just seen, the traffic jam and the smell and taste of the apples you bought in the supermarket. All this input is processed and stored for later use. When you are absorbing all this, seemingly without an effort, you brain is working overtime to process and you might feel stressed without being able to pinpoint the reason.

A lot has been said about the ways to regulate this overload. Stress management actually tackles this from different angles. One way to handle stress is to try to divert our attention from the thing we consider the problem, where in fact we don't have any idea which information is sorted while we are asleep. The clerk processes the information as he sees fit without us having the conscious ability to control it. An example of diverting the attention for the supposedly a stress source, is the attempt to divert kids' attention from academic stimulants and encourage them to move into sports, art or music. This attempt only oils their superior machine and, instead of filtering out information, they open new channels of input as if the clerk now opened new doors to his office.

Another method to overcome stress is to avoid dealing with some of the issues. Some people prefer the ostrich approach but are not aware of the fact that the office is open to the public as long as they're awake. Every minute you are not asleep, your office is receiving input. Sleep is just the way your clerk is working quietly with no disturbance. Has it happened to you that you wanted to stay at work after hours, when no one was around, so you can do the job without disturbance.

Meditation is one of the best ways to regulate the incoming flow of information. In our model, meditation is like hanging a sign on the door, which says, "Away from the office. Back in 20 minutes." During this time, we allow our clerk to file the information without letting any new information to come in. Mediation research shows that it's being neither asleep nor awake. It's a state between the two, in which the brain is very calm, yet very sharp.

My first encounter with meditation was when my inspiring sister, 16 years old at the time, went to study Transcendental Mediation. I remember her taking time off, closing her eyes and sitting still for a while. She looked a bit ridiculous, but she was brilliant at every thing she did.

My first meditation experience happened when Gal and I went to study all kinds of meditation - affirmation, light, sound, eating, dancing, walking, mantra and visualisation. It was fun! I remember coming back home dead tired from meditation class, remembering that our instructor said, "Your body knows exactly what it needs. Listen to it. You probably need to sleep."

Some time afterwards, I was working in Texas with a group of 2-year-old toddlers that used to wreak havoc during sleep time, so the centre had to reorganise the place and bring 10 adults to put them to sleep. The grownups sat there tapping the kids' backs and patting their heads for an hour and a half, until the last one fell asleep. In our staff meeting, I suggested to introduce visualisation. Familiar? "Close yo