Humans have a monopoly on dying the strangest deaths.
Common human diseases like cancer and heart disease are rare among the animal kingdom. Some of it is hereditary. But the overwhelming majority of our diseases are a result of unsustainable lifestyle and behaviors.
Think about it: a bear can’t decide he’s not going to hybernate for the winter because he doesn’t want to miss the Super Bowl. And when it’s time for wilderbeests to migrate, they all go. None of them stay behind to start a band.
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Meditation is one of those rare practices that is both universally admired and dreaded at the same time.
Across the board, people acknowledge the value of a consistent meditation practice, but despise having to do it. Why is meditation so dreaded? Because it’s such a difficult skill to figure out – even with all of the information in the form of videos, books and CDs, you’d rather pull your fingernails out than sit in meditation for longer than three minutes. The irony is that meditation can be one of the easiest life skills you’ll ever learn, that requires surprisingly little effort to practice.
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“The road to enlightenment is paved with riches.”
Back in my yoga teaching days, I had the honor of having Russell Simmons attend a few of my classes at Maha Yoga in Brentwood.
I would say to the class, “Okay, now lie down on your back,” and Russell would quip, “Hey, that’s my line.” He’s a very funny guy.
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There was a time when meditation felt like torture for me.
And experiencing even the smallest hint of inner bliss was, at best, elusive.
I actually found it very difficult to justify spending the time to meditate, even though a part of me knew it would be good to keep plugging away.
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No matter who you are, in the beginning of your meditation career, committing to your daily meditation practice can oftentimes feel like a chore, even though you know it’s good for you.
It’s common for people to admit that while they felt better when they were meditating (or when they were eating better, or working out regularly), for some reason they just stopped. It happens to the best of us. I certainly wasn’t very consistent with my meditation at the very beginning.
It’s not just that we get lazy either. There are biochemical reasons for not doing the things that we know are good for us (and we can delve into some of those reasons in another post). But for now, let’s just discuss some ways that you can get your daily practice back on track:
Read More Post a comment (0)Light Watkins is a meditation expert, and teaches beginner meditation classes across North America. You may read more about him here. Follow Light onFacebook and Twitter
Light Watkins is a meditation expert, and teaches beginner meditation classes across North America. You may read more about him here. Follow Light onFacebook and Twitter
Use the force Luke. Let go of your feelings. ~ Obi Wan Kenobi
Growing up in Alabama, I was a certified Star Wars junkie.
I lived and breathed any and everything having to do with Star Wars. I’d collected all of the action figures they had. Every Christmas there was never any question as to what I wanted from Santa. Could’ve been a Millennium Falcon, an AT-AT Walker, or perhaps an upgraded Light Saber to replace my worn-out one.
I remember one afternoon, my brother and my neighbor and I were dangerously balancing on the bed of a pickup truck, sparring with our Light Sabers, while riding through traffic (my neighbor’s crazy Dad was driving), pretending like we were cruising on our speeders through the Endor forest in Return of the Jedi.
Those were the good-old days when a kid would tap into the Force whenever he needed something extra to defeat the evil villains of the world.
If you’ve been meditating at least somewhat consistently, you’ve had moments (or entire meditations) where you didn’t know whether you were transcending – that is, stepping beyond your thoughts – or merely sleeping.
Although it happens to everyone, new meditators in particular have the knee-jerk tendency to fight sleep off, or chalk it up as a less successful meditation. But in fact, meditations where you thought you slept through most of it are extremely valuable experiences.
You see, meditation has a surgical way of correcting the physical, mental and emotional imbalances we’ve been dragging around for years.
Read More Post a comment (1)Light Watkins is a meditation expert, and teaches beginner meditation classes across North America. You may read more about him here. Follow Light onFacebook and Twitter
Light Watkins is a meditation expert, and teaches beginner meditation classes across North America. You may read more about him here. Follow Light onFacebook and Twitter
Light Watkins is a meditation expert, and teaches beginner meditation classes across North America. You may read more about him here. Follow Light onFacebook and Twitter
I’ve been getting better at packing for my monthly teaching tours. I used to take 3 or 4 books with me. Now I just take one. This past trip, I chose Catching The Big Fish by David Lynch. This is a book that has come up over and over in my work, because people (especially in LA) get inspired to learn meditation after reading it.
It’s a short book, with daily musings and anecdotes related to Lynch’s film career and daily meditation practice (he claims to never have missed a day of meditation in 33 years).
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I met someone this past week who told me they’ve been teaching meditation for 20 years. They even teach a university course on the topic. Then this person started telling me what was most important as a meditator was to spend long stretches of time in one-pointed focus and concentration, away from society and everyday life.
On this point, I quietly nodded, but he seemed so adamant about his position that I declined to voice my point of view on this approach to meditation.
What I’ve learned throughout the past decade is that whenever we over-concentrate or over-focus, it keeps our mind active. When the mind is active, the body stays active. Under these conditions, studies have shown that the mind and body aren’t resting very much, if at all.
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Westerners tend to have this idea that a quiet mind will bring about happiness and bliss.
But that’s backwards.
First, let’s get clear on what it is we really want. No one walks around with a blank mind. The nature of the Waking State is that you’re going to have thoughts – and lots of them.
It’s a well-known fact among people who study the brain that the average human has somewhere in the range of 60 to 90 thousand thoughts every day, and that about 90 percent of those thoughts get dumped into the next day.
So technically, everybody has a busy mind.
But last I checked, nobody was complaining about having too many creative thoughts, too many insights, or too many big ideas.
I suspect that’s what everyone is really after: a higher quality of thoughts.
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When people find out that I’m a meditation teacher, one of the comments I hear is “I could never meditate because I can’t stop my mind from thinking.”
Well, I’ve got news for you: neither can I, and I’ve been meditating consistently since 2003. And neither can my teacher, who’s been meditating since 1967.
As far as I’ve seen, nobody can stop their thoughts by thinking about not thinking. Why? Because “don’t think” is a thought. “Why am I still thinking” is another thought.
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