Myths & Facts About Meditation

Meditation is one of the best & easiest things you can do for yourself. We break down the myths from the facts and show how you can implement it into your life.

Transcript

Welcome to Life, Lessons and Laughter with your host Glenn Ambrose. Let's do this thing. That's my new opening. I like it. Welcome to Life, Lessons and Laughter with Glenn Ambrose. How are we today, Ben? We are good. Good. Good. Good. Today, We're talking about meditation. What do you think about that, Ben? Do you have any questions about meditation, Ben? I have a lot and I think they're going to unfold over the next hour. Ooh. Boy, I'm on edge of my seat. I'm sorry, Half hour. Half hour. This is a half hour show. Yeah, Don't freak me out. I can only sit still for so long. Which is why I meditate. Right. You wanted me to… See what I did there? Did you want me to start off with the definition? No. Okay. I don't know why you had me look them up. I think they're going to come into play at some point. Okay. But we're just going to walk blindly for a little bit. Just sit idly by. Yes. I actually want to start with one of my favorite definitions of it. Michael Bernard Beckwith. He said, Meditation is the indestructible attention to what is. Because he says that a lot of people try to do something before understanding what it is and they have to understand what it is first. So there's lots of different definitions. That's why I want to say that one first because there's lots of different definitions of it. Can you say it again? It's the indestructible attention to what is. Indestructible attention to what is. So it can be what is at the moment. Like you can go into meditation by just sitting there, Closing your eyes or not closing your eyes and just being, Okay, I'm here. I'm seated. I'm okay. Nothing's wrong at this particular moment. And just bringing yourself into the present moment of what's happening at that exact moment. That's what is, Is what is happening at this moment. So if you bring yourself into the present moment or bring yourself into what is right now, Just the focus on that and nothing in the future, Nothing in the past, No fears, No worries. That is the basis for meditation. Wow. You just blew my mind, Man. Meditation I don't know, Because people have been meditating forever, Right? Oh yeah. And it feels like it's becoming more popular? Oh definitely. At least, Or like popular again? Yeah, I think, Well everything is. And there's lots of reasons for that. I mean one, The world is shrinking. So we're exposed to more things that other cultures have been doing for a long time. Plus the scientific studies have advanced. So every scientific study has shown that meditation does something good for you. So it's been proven scientifically. All religions have had their form of it since the beginning of man. So there's really no drawback and only benefits. Health benefits, And all this stuff's been proven. And like I said, We're being seen by, Shown by other cultures that it's been a way of life that's been effective for groups of people for thousands of years. So when you bring that knowledge in, It expands things. You can see it with yoga and all kinds of Eastern medicines and stuff like that. We're actually finding what works and incorporating it into our lives, Because a lot of things that we've been doing don't work. I feel like, And I'm sure I've heard other people say this, And this is not an original thought, But meditation feels like recharging your batteries. Yeah, It definitely can. I saw, You can't believe everything in studies, But what I try to do is look at general concepts and see if they make sense. So the numbers might not be exact, But the general concept makes sense to me. And that's like 20 minutes of meditation can equal like two hours of sleep or something, Because it's just your body does. It can be still and recharge itself and you can get energy out of it. And you're also not, You're functioning at a more peaceful level when you meditate on a regular basis. So your energy doesn't spike and drop to every little situation as much. That's one of the benefits that I get from meditation, Because I'm all over the place. I mean ADHD, The passionate, Enthusiastic. I can get pumped up and mellow back out and my energy can spike many times throughout the day. But when I'm meditating on a regular basis, There's that underlying peace. I don't drop down real low or even if I get enthusiastic about something, There's underlying peace underneath it. It's not just pure out of control excitement. So that peaceful undertone kind of makes me a little more or a lot more even-keeled. I don't get surprised by things and upset at the spur of the moment so much when I'm meditating on a regular basis. It really smooths out the ride throughout the whole day. And who should meditate? Only people whose name starts with the letter G. Everybody should meditate. I think what we have to do is most people need to find what works for them. Find the type of meditation that works for them and not be so locked in on quieting your mind. Because there's been so much talk about meditation. That's why I wanted to bring the definitions in and discuss the definitions a lot on this podcast. Because people get so locked in on what it is and what they think is expected of them that they're kind of holding themselves to an unrealistic standard and then they can't do it so they stop. It's just attempting to slow the mind down. One phrase that I like is you can't do it wrong. Take that pressure off. If you sit still for five minutes just in one spot, Not even completely still, If you just sit down for five minutes with the intention of doing something loving for yourself, You're going to get a benefit out of that. That's it. And anybody can do that. You can sit in the same chair for five minutes with the intention that I'm going to attempt to do something loving for myself. If you do that, You will start getting benefits. And it takes time. There's days when I meditate that my mind is racing the whole time. Sometimes that goes on for periods of time, But I don't stop taking that time for myself. And eventually I'll find some sort of trick that clicks with me at that moment. Sometimes it's letting my mind run out. Just letting it think until it decides to stop thinking. Sometimes I have to put effort into slowing down my thoughts. There's a lot of different things you can try. How often do you meditate? I meditate about six days a week on average. Sometimes I do seven days a week, Sometimes I do five. I try to meditate every day, But I miss the mark. There was something that I heard several places, But I'm pretty sure one of them was you. Maybe they were all you, And it's just been multiple times as tends to happen. Like a businessman was told that he, Or somebody, Somebody was told, Just meditate ten minutes a day. And they responded with, I don't have ten minutes. And the person that was telling them to meditate responded with, Okay, Meditate twenty minutes a day. If you don't have ten minutes to do it, Then you need to do it more. Yeah. If you think you don't have ten minutes to do it, Then. . . Then you need to make it a bigger priority in your life. And that's true. That's true, But it turns a lot of people off that aren't willing to make adjustments in their life. When I'm talking to people, I only say that to certain people. Sometimes I say it as a joke, Sometimes I explain it after. Because most people, You have to meet them where they are. And if you say, If they can't even wrap their brain around doing ten minutes, Then they're not going to do twenty. But that just goes to show that they need it more. Because if they can't wrap their brain around being able to stop for ten minutes a day, If you step back from that, Because I've had a lot of people say that, I can't do that. I just don't have time. I've had many people say that. And if you. . . It kind of sounds funny, But if you follow that thought a little bit. Because twenty-four hours in a day, This is going to benefit your life. Every scientific study has said it. Every religion has had their form of it. And you're definitely going to benefit from it. And you can't find ten minutes in a twenty-four hour period to give yourself some self-love, To attempt to better your life, To find some peace and happiness in your life. You can't dictate that much time. That's really bad. You literally have a hundred and forty-four opportunities of ten minute increments per day. Yeah, See there you go. And you can't take one of those to pursue any type of peace or happiness in your life. And you will not have peace or happiness in your life. I'm not saying that you won't have it if you don't meditate. What I'm saying is you won't have it if you can't set aside ten minutes to look for it. If you don't put any effort into finding happiness throughout your day, You will not have it in your day. It's that easy. So I have a couple questions that are, You know, Whatever. Number one, So to meditate I have to sit on a large pillow with my – I really want to say the term that was used when I was a kid but it's racist. Kind of – I have no idea where you're going. I'm going to say crisscross but my legs crisscross. I don't want to say the other one. With my legs crisscross with my hands resting on my knees and going, Oh, Right? That's how you meditate? No. Is that the only way to meditate? No, Of course not. Because that's what I pictured it as. And sometimes I do that. Until maybe like three months ago. Yeah, It's – I mean, There are a lot of – Is that a certain kind of meditation or is that – Yes, It's endless. Is that just – Well, Meditation is – A style? Yeah, It's a style. And I mean – but like there's – you can't do meditation wrong. There's as many meditations as there are people. So like it's, You know, There's all types. It's endless. You can sit – a lot of meditations actually recommend that you don't cross your legs because it interrupts the flow of chi through your body. So a lot of them don't recommend that. I know like John of God in Brazil when they have people meditating in a room near where he does his healings and they don't allow anybody to cross anything because they feel it interrupts the flow. So there's as many beliefs as there are meditations but it's just a matter of trying to be still. You know, It's be still and know that I am God. That's a very famous line from Christianity. It's in the stillness. That's where you can listen to yourself. That's where you can connect with whatever you believe in as a higher power. It's in that stillness. If we don't slow down enough just to be still for a little bit, It's – you know, We really don't – how can we even know what we want if we don't slow down enough to listen to ourselves? You know, We're always going 90 miles an hour and our brain is in control of us. We're not in control of it. That's what meditation does. It helps us be in control of our brain. Our brain is a tool. We're supposed to be able to use it to go, Hey, What's two plus two? Four? Okay, Thank you. And then turn it off. But if we don't ever turn it off, It's incessantly running and dictating and there's that conversation going in our head that's where – not even in control of. I just thought of a story that I'll tell you off. Anyway, The – man, Yeah, That's – there was a story that I heard that I read about a guy. I don't know if you've heard about it. There was a guy in like England I think that was in a coma and they thought that he was a vegetable. They thought no brain activity. It's probably also an offensive term. No brain activity. And then – but he was awake for years. And they eventually figured out that he was awake but he was trapped in his head. He had no motor skills. He couldn't talk to them. He couldn't tell anybody. He was there. Wow. And he could hear everybody and then like years later, They realized that he had brain activity and that he had been awake for 20 something years and they – I think they set him up with one of those eye readers so that he can like communicate now by like looking at things. And he said like it was obviously it was torture but the way that he said that he got through it was meditating. He would spend hours and hours and hours and hours and hours a day meditating to get through – to just hold on and to get through it. So he literally couldn't do anything. He couldn't cross his legs and sit on the pillow. He couldn't communicate. Yeah. That's kind of a cool – I haven't heard that story. That's kind of a cool – I love learning from extremes. So if you're – because it makes the lesson that much clearer. So yeah, I could imagine that would be torture to be sitting there trapped like that. So – but he – even he in that very, Very, Very, Very difficult situation was able to find peace and that's what it's all about. It's just finding peace. If you can be still, That's what's there is peace. It's just becoming peaceful. Just being still, Being peaceful for a few minutes. That's it. That's meditation. And if you do that on a regular basis, It obviously helps you in the moment that you're doing it because you're feeling peace and that feels good. So that's nice. Then it also helps you from spiking out throughout your day and just reacting to everything – excuse me – every little thing that comes up, It's – you're more even-keeled throughout the day and it's – it also helps you reset throughout your day. I mean before I started meditating, If I get upset about something, It was more difficult to bring myself back down. But once I started meditating, I could just take a moment and go, Okay, Just relax and almost instantly, I would just get control of myself and all that emotion would just relax right back down. That was a skill I didn't have before I meditated. So there's multiple benefits that you can get throughout your day and throughout your life by just that five minutes or ten minutes or twenty minutes. I mean I don't – I've gone periods where I've meditated longer but very rarely does that fit into my life schedule. Generally my meditations, Depending on what I'm doing – like Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey do these meditation challenges, These 21-day challenges. I usually do those when they come out for the 21 days and those are like 20 minutes. They talk about stuff first and they give you a little life lesson in there and then you go into a meditation. So it's a total of about a 20-minute period. Usually I'll do those. When those aren't going on, Generally my meditations a lot of times are more like ten minutes. But I mean I usually tell people if you're going to start meditating, Start with a guided meditation because somebody talking you through it is usually better than somebody not talking you through it. You're just sitting there trying to be quiet. Have somebody guiding you, Telling you to focus on your breath or – focusing on your breath is a good way because it gives you something to focus on other than trying to focus on nothing. In the beginning, Just don't think. I can't do that. Okay, Well think about your breath. I can do that. I can think about my breath. All right, Cool. So you think about your breath. It's helpful if you're thinking about something, Your chest rising, Your chest falling, Your stomach rising, Your stomach falling with your breath. That gives you something to focus on. I did a ten-day guided meditation like two months ago. Yeah, What was that called? Headspace? Headstart? Headspace? Yeah, Something like that. I think it was Headspace. Headspace, That makes sense. Yeah, On that app that Dave found. Yeah, It was good. Yeah, It was good. I was really impressed with the way he – I did that too. I was impressed with the way he really talked about meditation and how he brought somebody that had never meditated before through it. The first ten days is free, So it's a great way whether you're going to end up purchasing the app afterwards or not, It's a great way to get some guidance and have somebody walk you through the beginnings of meditation. And after those ten days, You really do feel like, Okay, Maybe I could do this on my own, Which is fantastic. And there's so many free apps out there and I usually tell people, Google five-minute guided meditation and start with five minutes. Maybe like a year or two ago, It might be two years now, I was having a lot of anxiety problems and that's what you suggested was to Google five-minute meditation, Find one on YouTube and do it. What I noticed about trying to do the ten-day guided meditation was a couple of days it was easy and then I kept getting interrupted by things. Like just people trying to contact, I ended up doing it in my car every day, Not driving, But I would park or before I would go out to my car 15 minutes early before I had to leave and put it on and just do it in my car because it's very quiet, Nobody's bothering you, Nobody's going to come over to you. And that's a beautiful example of finding a way to make it work. Most people will be like, Oh, I keep getting interrupted so I can't do it. Like seriously, That's your, I mean, I get it. I understand that we get interrupted, But I mean find a way. What if there was some extreme situation and they're like, Okay, If you can't find a way to be quiet for ten minutes, You're going to lose your job tomorrow. I bet you'd find a way to be quiet for ten minutes. But generally, People just, They're looking for an excuse so they don't have to finish, So they don't have to follow through with it. And it's like something like that, You can find a way to be still. And even if it takes you, Let's say it takes you three months to find a way to be still for ten minutes a day, Fine, Who cares? Take three months to find a way to be still, Just don't give up on it because after that three months, You can be still for ten minutes for the rest of your life. If you give up, Then you don't get it. I mean I'm a parent and I have a lot of parents saying that have kids, Oh, I can't find, They won't leave me alone for ten minutes. Teach them. Teach them to leave you alone for ten minutes. You can put a little door hanger on your knob that says meditating, Do not interrupt. You can put an egg timer outside your door so the kid can see when your meditation is going to be up. There's ways to do it. You can do stuff like that and I've done stuff like that. I used to set my microwave timer when I meditated in silence or just music because I had to go to work. And if I felt myself going deep into a meditation, I would prevent myself from really going deep because I wouldn't know how much time had passed. So I set my microwave timer for ten minutes and then it would go off. I'd be like, Oh, Okay, My meditation is done and it would allow me to drop deeper. But there is a way. I did that with my phone and I have to remember next time to pick a gentler alarm because my alarm is like the fire horn. Oh my God. Yeah, You don't want to come out of it like that. Very, Very freaky to do that. I have a couple more questions as we wind up. Something that brought meditation to the forefront of my mind in the last couple of months is the popularity of TM, Transcendental meditation. I almost said medication. Transcendental meditation, Which is very popular with and has been, I guess, For a long time with celebrities and a lot of people. The reason why it's talked about that I've heard it is Jerry Seinfeld does it. A ton of people. Jerry Seinfeld is a huge advocate for it. Yeah, Oprah does it. I believe Oprah does it with her whole company. Her whole company has a meditation period, I believe. It's transcendental meditation. I just had someone over that word, Transcendental meditation. But it's weird because you say transcendental. Fine. Right. Then as soon as – anyway, 20 minutes a day, Twice a day, I believe is what that does. I looked into it at one point. I mean, It's phenomenal. Why? Because it's meditation twice a day for 20 minutes. That's why it's wonderful. There's some structure to it. Generally, When I looked into it, I didn't do it just because I didn't have whatever it was at the time, $300 or $500 to go learn it. I looked into it and some people said, Oh, Yes, It's wonderful. Some people said it's meditation. If you meditate, You're going to get the benefits. Pete Holmes is a big advocate for meditation. He has the podcast that I've mentioned like a hundred times now on here. But he says the same thing. He's like, TM is amazing but it's meditation. It's expensive. If you can't afford it, Just find a different way to meditate. Right. If you've got $300 or $500 laying around, You'd like to get some instruction on it, Go do it. Yeah. Absolutely. But if you don't, It's not the end-all, Be-all. Meditation is meditation. And finally, I think that it would be weird if we went through an entire half-hour conversation about meditation and we didn't say the word mantra once. Mantra, Yeah. So what is a mantra? Is a mantra necessary? It's not necessary. Is anything a mantra? You can use anything as a mantra. Is saying OM a bunch of times actually a mantra? Yes. Okay. Explain what a mantra is to me. Yeah. I mean the best definition I've heard was from Deepak Chopra and he said that a mantra is kind of like the taxi that takes you to the place where you're going. And the place where you're going is peace, Stillness. So that's where you're going. The mantra gives you something to focus on that can take you there. So it's just generally it's a phrase, A word that's repeated over and over. Sometimes they say it has a specific vibrational quality to it that helps you go there. But I mean you can use anything. You can use anything. I mean it's kind of focusing on your breath is sort of a mantra. It's just not a, It's a technique I guess. I don't know if it's technically a mantra because it's not a word or phrase. But it's just something to focus on because it is difficult just to focus on nothing especially in the beginning. So it's, But what I like that Deepak said is it's that taxi that brings you there. So it can kind of help keep you focused as you're going deeper. And then once you get to that place of stillness, You can let it go. You don't need it anymore because it brought you there. And if you find yourself drifting into thought, You can grab the mantra again and use it to bring you back to that stillness. I have a quote as we wrap up. The thing about meditation is you become more and more you. David Lynch. Yes. That's perfect. That was a great way to wrap it up because that's exactly what it does. You are not the voice in your head that's incessantly running. You are the consciousness that's aware of that voice. So to not be caught up in that voice 24-7 and just to be still and be yourself in peace, That's the point of meditation. It brings you closer to yourself. Right. Absolutely. And I know that you do guided meditations with people. Every other Thursday night, I do them at my location. We have a little life class before. So we kind of get some tools to take back into your life. And then we do a meditation to kind of seal it in, Relax, Recharge. So yeah, Check that out on my website. The schedule is on there. Life-enhancement-services. Com. And find me on Facebook. You can friend me on there and you can get invites to all my different events, Meditations. We actually have a gong meditation coming up this Saturday, Which is phenomenal. Well, It's going to have passed by the time this airs. But we have those every other month. So there's all types of sound meditations that can bring you really deep. All kinds of things out there nowadays. Look into it. Find it at my place or some place near you. Awesome. Very cool. Thank you very much. This was an awesome talk. We even went into the plugs really seamlessly this time. It wasn't just me telling you to plug stuff. That was awesome. Awesome. So professional. Definitely. Definitely. Also, Our podcast, My podcast with our producer Dave, This Guy Is Falling, Is back every other Wednesday. Obviously you can find both of these podcasts on newshoreproductions. Com. But you already are on iTunes and you already know that because you're listening to this. Yeah, You're listening to all of them. And Glenn, We'd love to have you back as a guest on that. Oh yeah. That'd be a blast. I had a lot of fun doing that. That's what spawned this podcast. So all right. Thank you everybody for listening and just go take five minutes for yourself and become more of yourself. Thanks. Bye. This podcast is presented by New Shore Productions, Executive producers Glenn Ambrose, Benjamin Barber and David DeAngelis.

Reviews

Nice one gentlemen, I'm with you on this one, so transformational... Blessings to you both 💜x

Very interesting and helpful. Thank you!

Pefect explanation of how to meditate - ie, you can't go wrong. Very helpful and a great motivator. Thank you ❤

Good overview and open talk about creating a meditation practice.

I enjoyed the talk. Thank you Glenn!