Here is how you have it all! Step-by-step Meditation Guide!

As you might have guessed from reading my newsletters, I highly recommend you learn to meditate. Like, yesterday.

Hate me later. Love me now.  Like your fitness trainer, I’m your spirit trainer. You know the person you hate during and then want to marry after?  That’s me. Hi. You look great by the way. No, you don’t look fat.

Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?

 MEDITATION 101

I know why I didn’t meditate for years. I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. Sit on my ass and breath for 20 minutes? I’m good. You do it. I don’t need it. My To Do list is huge, thank you. 

My sister didn’t meditate for years because she’s a recovering control freak and she hated feeling even though she felt all the time. She’s like most of us.

Once you learn to meditate you’ll be able to find that elusive inner peace everyone keeps rambling about.  No longer will you want to inch that car into another lane on the road or kill everyone on the Maine turnpike from Massachusetts most people in Maine call Massholes.

Our world is imbalanced and we perpetuate that imbalance. We don’t do it intentionally. It’s the great malaise of today. We’re making ourselves mad and we’re blaming the world.

Most of us either err in doing too much or too little.

We learned how to be in childhood, but we can relearn how to be now.  But it takes work.

Meditation is you’re the answer and it’s free. Literally.

I like to kick it old school, meaning, I’m not a big fan of people babbling into my ear when I meditate. A few I love. But mostly I prefer to be left alone with me and my breath. You can listen to a fan, birds - your dog farting. Whatever works! The point is you want a sound that’s consistent and one you can focus on. So, forget your farting dog unless they have horrible flatulence and do it like all the time. #DontHaveMeOverForDinner

I’m going to suggest some people and apps who don’t make you memorize some Sanskrit term that sounds like the name of a new sandwich on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Impossible to remember or memorize. 

The first is Jonni Pollard who founded 1 Giant Mind. You can find the app on his website here.

Jonni is the sweetest Australian yogi you’ll ever heard purring in your ear.  I don’t know if he’s still active as he seems to have faded from the meditation radar but the app is alive and well as are their training courses.  

The other meditation that tickles my inner being (that sounds dirty) is from my homeboy Eckhart Tolle. It’s right here.

His meditation is like you’re inside of an airplane with a wacky German guru telling you what to do. It’s a strange meditation that gets right to the flow of going inward. The sound design is clever. It’s meant to mimic the tone of your external breath. It literally draws you deeper inside. Oh, Tolle. What don’t you know?

My sister is obsessed with saying it’s like being stuck in a wind tunnel so she cracks up while doing it. But she laughs a lot during these things because they make her uncomfortable so I see that as a good sign.

Meditation takes practice.  If you do it once a week you may think it’s dumb, ineffective, a waste of your time. You may say as a so-so playwright once noted, much ado about nothing. 

It’s not. Decide already. What have you got to gain?

The whole world. That’s what.  

HOW TO GET STARTED

I recommend you give yourself a goal of 10 minutes a day for 10 days to start. Give it 30 days for it to have the kind of effect that will literally change the quality of your emotional life, but start with 10. 

Yes, it can be scary and you can cry like a mofo but that’s why God made Dunkin Donuts. Have one nearby. It helps. Even those little Munchkin things. 

WHY DO WE NEED MEDITATION?  

There is, in the collective consciousness, a dominant bit of data proven by scientists that mental illness is an illness. That it’s a physiological imbalance and needs to be looked at something to treat. That to discuss how connecting to consciousness can cure it is something people called Rain and Skye in LA from some yoga center might say.

They’re wrong.

Look, we know the deal. Science is all about the tangible. Most doctors hate to talk about spirituality. It’s impractical and stupid to them. They want data and proof, otherwise they have no interest in any technique or process that can’t be proven on paper.

Years ago, I started to develop red spots on my skin. I went to Memorial Sloan Kettering, one of the biggest cancer centers in the world and they told me, “We don’t know what causes it or why it goes away, but good luck. Oh, here is some cream.”

I asked the doctor if she thought my being abused by my mother and being raped as a kid and having been a child prostitute had something to do with it. That perhaps it was my body’s reaction to the trauma. The woman, a highly decorated physician at one of the largest cancer treatment centers in the world said with a shrug, “I dunno. Maybe. Use the cream and let me know” and out the door she went.

Since I’ve begun meditation my spots have come and gone, and they always are nearly invisible when I wake, a time when I’m most relaxed.

You tell me.

New evidence is proving meditation is the blending of both worlds. Using the thought processes of the mind is now shown to affect physiological states. In other words, you do heal by using the mind. You create new neural pathways. You feel better. 

Meditation facilitates and accelerates the connection to consciousness which accelerates our feelings of well-being and health, aka, we finally realize we’re not our bodies, we are not our illnesses and our body listens.

Last night I had a panic attack. Well, not a panic attack per se - more like I listened to my mind...again. All the old fear, all the old anxieties came roaring to life. So, I did what I’ve now trained myself to do. I sat on my couch, lit my big ass candle and meditated. And connected inward and yes, I chilled out.

Most of us don’t meditate until nothing else works. Drugs, booze, meds, sex, food, voracious shopping – we seem to need to hit rock bottom before we say, Fine. I’ll friggin’ meditate already.  

I’m talking about myself. #Word

I’d rather you didn’t need to get to that point. Most of the people who come to me for help are in so much pain they can’t see a solution.

Let’s get ahead of that. Let’s talk about how meditation is a proactive practice to get us ahead, so you don’t make the same mistakes I did. 

Back to your meditation goal.  10 minutes a day for 10 days to start, then continue it for 30 days total. Decide to meditate for 30 days. You’ll see the benefits. You will.

You’ll react less to that dude who always pisses you off. You won’t piss and moan in traffic as much. You’ll flinch less at what normally causes you to flinch. You won’t lose your temper and not know why. You'll be aware of the endless litany of bullshit that your mind spews and you’ll learn how to choose thoughts. 

It’s fucking fantastic.

I used to make fun of journals for years until I started one and my life began to truly come together.

Get that journal out. Get whatever form of a calendar you have and make one note every morning before you day gets cranking: MEDITATE FOR 10 MINUTES.

Before the kids, dogs, emails, gerbils, bills, social media: MEDITATE. 

 A few quick things about meditation then I’ll let you go: 

1. There is no goal. There is no doing it ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ That’s your mind construct. You simply sit in a place that’s as still as possible. A couch in a quiet part of the house, a room where you’re not bothered by pets or children or needy mates – you sit there and simply note your breathing. I like breathing in for a count of three - hold it - breath again to the tippy top for two - hold for three - then blow out for a count of five. That one is amazing. Or you can use a mantra. More on that.

2.  The point of meditation is the feeling it provokes by connecting you to your true self. It’s why my sister sobs. She doesn’t always find it joyous and relaxing, but she always tells me later she feels lighter and more present. Praise Jesus! It’s meant to be joyous and relaxing. Many people find it extremely emotional because they have normally withheld expressing their true emotions because their fucking mother was a mean bitch who verbally slapped them as children and kicked them out of the house when they were 16 forcing them to be a prostitute causing them to spend their entire lives trying to heal or forgetting their childhoods altogether but hey – that’s me. You get the picture.  In time, it becomes less of a deeply emotional journey in the negative, and more a flowing ease of Presence. But you have to do it every day. If you do it now and then, or when you’re stressed it doesn’t get hold. Not really.  

3. Guided versus not guided is up to you. Many like the Oprah and Deepak’s 21-day meditations. I do even as I find having to memorize Deepak’s sayings annoying.  I find less chatter, and more stillness, deepens the experience. Many love 1 Giant Mind and the very simple mantra he uses.

4. I would encourage you not to talk to others about your mediation during the beginning of your practice as they will have strong views on its use (or lack thereof) and I don’t want that to influence you. Speak of it to a yogi teacher you like and feel isn’t too woo-hoo, or a trusted counselor or advisor who you feel is real and gets it. Like me!

 Tally-ho!