Speaker - June 2017

accustomed to being active, alert and productive throughout your day, be prepared that your first experiences in meditation might be less than ethereal.

In fact, you could find it irritating.

Don’t expect the earth to move simply because you are sitting still. Your body may protest. You might itch or twitch. You may feel anxious and wiggle or jiggle. You may sneak a peek at the time and discover that only three minutes have passed. But hang in there.

Attendees from my stress manage-
ment workshops complain that my sug-
gested 10-minute trial meditation
“doesn’t work.” They lament, “I end up
more stressed after spending 10 min-
utes trying to sit than I was before I
started. I kept thinking about all the
things I should be doing instead of sit-
ting here doing nothing.”
Then, I explain why “sitting and
doing nothing” is stressful for them. It’s
because they’re not used to it. The lack
of activity is foreign and uncomfort-
able. “Being” is harder than doing.

Maybe meditation is called a practice because you don’t have to work at it.

Like expertise in speaking, coaching and consulting, it’s an acquired skill. In the learning phase, not only will your body protest, so will your brain.

There’s mindfulness and
mind-FUll-ness

Warning: In your first attempts to meditate, do not expect your mind to magically go blank. Your thoughts will regenerate like fruit flies:

• Whatever happened to that jean jacket I liked so much?

• How did Barry Manilow ever make it so big anyway?

• Why hasn’t that client sent the contract yet?

• That mole on my face—I think it’s growing—I need to get it checked.

• Whatever happened to __________?

• I swear, my butt has gone to sleep. And I’m bored.

• What was that sound? I’m hungry. I itch. What time is it? Are we there yet?

Now, for some comforting thoughts. Your creative mind will keep pumping out thoughts, so don’t expect them to disappear into the ether. Let them happen. I had almost given up meditating when a friend said, “Imagine those thoughts coming into your head through the front door.” She touched her forehead and continued, “Instead of trying to banish the mental cavalcade, let each thought freely flow through your mind and exit out the back without grabbing onto it.” She waved her hands on either side of her head as a tree limb might blow in a gentle breeze.

It works! The parade moves on with no intervention, no judgment, no trying to stop the flow, you just let it all march by on its own. Focus on your slow, steady breath, in and out, in and out. (“In…Out…” is my mantra). When your mind drifts, go back to your breath. Get comfortable with that uncomfortable state of doing nothing; adjust to simply being, even for just a few minutes. As our mothers would say, “It’s good for you.”

Sitting Serves You

It may sound paradoxical, but as Teplitz
says, meditation can help you be both
more relaxed and energized, especially
when you’re on the road. You see,
Consider how easy it would be to
meditate while you’re flying home from
a speaking engagement—after all,
you’re already sitting. Instead of arriv-
ing home wired and tired, you can
recharge your battery on the plane and
enjoy quality time with your family or
friends later.

Even if you don’t “feel” it, meditation can bring about subtle changes. If you’re curious, conduct some Internet searches on the subject, and you’ll find research papers, articles and documen-taries describing what meditation can do for you. You can read about how an MRI can record brain wave changes in Buddhist monks, thanks to their years of meditation practice. In the Netflix documentary Happy, you can see actual footage of a monk’s prefrontal cortex lighting up as he engages in Compassionate (Loving Kindness) meditation.

Some Breath-taking Benefits Recent studies on breathing have unearthed some new findings about brainstem neurons and their connection to various breathing states (known as the respiratory pacemaker). By blocking various groups of cells, scientists think they have isolated a subgroup of calm-ing neurons that connect to breathing. One article posits that even if you don’t believe that calm breathing can make a difference, you should try it because it might help you.

You can find studies on how meditation calms individuals who suffer from panic attacks and other disorders. Or how violence-prone teens become more self-regulated and civil after participating in regular meditation practice.