The Truth about Mindfulness Meditation...

I remember one day I was running late during a morning GP clinic. I was already stressed and frustrated but to add to the pressure I needed to do a home visit.

I knew I wouldn’t get a chance to eat never mind have a break before I had to start my afternoon clinic.

So I rushed out to see the unwell patient in a care home I’d never been to before.

I was driving up a narrow road of double parked cars whilst searching for the care home entrance.

All of a sudden a massive Lorry appeared out of nowhere coming towards me. I was forced to curb my car in the only available space…

“Pfffsssssssssssss.”

Yep that’s my car tyre blown…

Time froze as I realised

1) What had happened

2) Exactly how I needed to respond

Somehow in that moment all the stress that I’d been carrying from my horrible morning just seemed to fizzle away.

It was as if the Anxiety and Panic was snapped out of existence just before it could reach me.

There was a deeper unconscious part of my brain that just calmly pulled up and said to me,

‘Well that’s unfortunate, but we can handle it’

‘You have breakdown cover, they can change the tyre while you go and see the patient’

‘Everything is okay, you are calm’

And it was, I just sat back and let everything unfold.

I walked to the Care Home sorted the patient and came back just as the breakdown guy arrived.

He was happy because it was an easy job that took him less than 5 mins. I didn’t have to waste time trying to change a tyre. The patient got treated. Everyone was good.

To this day I’ll still never forget that moment of hearing “Pfffsssssssssssss” as my car sunk down. It was like in that moment I could see all the different possible reactions I could take and had the ability to choose the best one.

This was the first moment when I realised something felt different, something had changed about me…

Over the month prior to that incident I’d been practicing Mindfulness Meditation daily. But it was in that moment..

I realised that mindfulness is just like any mind altering drug. You have to wait for it to kick in.

It might take a few weeks or a few months but the payoff is well worth it and the high lasts forever.

The problem is that people don’t want to sit still and meditate 15 minutes every day. They see it as a waste of time, there’s no immediate benefit so its not prioritised.

The reasons people give for not meditating are exactly the reasons why they should meditate.

Its simply a matter of changing your thinking. Think of it as a process of accumulating enough positive energy until it eventually reaches a therapeutic level and has an effect

If you were dehydrated you wouldn’t take one sip of water and expect to immediately feel hydrated.

If you were tired you wouldn’t sleep for 2 minutes and expect to immediately feel refreshed and awake.

So why would one 15 minute meditation make you feel enlightened immediately?

Meditation is a large topic and I’m no expert. I’ve tried it on and off for years and never been able to maintain it long term.

For the past 6 months I’ve been practicing consistently. And over the last few weeks I’ve been reading a book I never thought would set so many light bulbs off in my mind. Reading it is like a firework show!

‘The Power of Now’ by Eckhart Tolle, it’s a guide to spiritual enlightenment and it actually makes sense!

I’m learning to perceive the world and myself in a completely new way. It puts me in control of my thoughts and feelings. That unconscious part of my mind pulls up more frequently to freeze time and show me the right things to do.

I’ve wanted to write about meditation for some time but felt that I needed to wait until I’d achieved enlightenment or was some sort of expert.

Thats when I realised, that kind of defeats the point of meditation.

Focusing too much on a future outcome and 'trying too hard' is exactly what makes meditation so hard for people to do.

My goal is to become more present and be able to detach from my thoughts at will. With so many things on my plate at the moment from starting my coaching business and building a personal brand, its easy to get overwhelmed.

Being present essentially washes this all away and allows you to feel free and focused on one thing at a time.

I want to share my experience and the things I’ve started noticing before I become too wise and unrelatable. ;)

The Benefits

If we treated our mental and spiritual well being the same as our physical well being — then daily mindfulness meditation would be no different than brushing ones teeth twice a day.

Since ancient times all humans have had unlimited access to a magic pill that causes:

• Stress Reduction

• Improved Focus and Concentration

• Emotional Regulation

• Reduced Anxiety and Depression

• Improved Sleep

• Increased Resilience

• Enhanced Well-Being

Sounds ideal, the problem is that only a small proportion of them will take it.

Estimates suggest around 200 to 500 million people meditate worldwide, that’s 2-6.25% of the worlds population.

There’s an ever growing scientific evidence based for Mindfulness Meditation. For mild anxiety and depression it can work wonders.

Stress is often an exacerbating feature of many common diseases, so reducing it can help keep multiple illnesses at bay.

I personally feel like a broken record counselling patients about mindfulness. Every now and again I’m surprised when someone actually shows interest at least enough to tell me why it won’t work for them.

Before we look at peoples reasons for it not working lets look at the Theory behind mindfulness.

Theory behind Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness is a state of focused, non-judgemental, open-minded awareness directed towards thoughts and sensations present in one’s consciousness. It doesn’t matter whether they are positive or negative.

We often use the term ‘losing ourself’ when we become so absorbed in a task that we stop thinking. We actually do lose our sense of self and become one with the activity we are doing in the moment.

We stop thinking about ourself as a separate entity, we just blend into the scenery of open conciousness.

Think of a time you’ve felt really self-conscious. Maybe you did a really loud fart in a yoga class once and everyone heard?

Maybe something less embarassing but everyone has their moments of maximum self conciousness.

Now try to imagine feeling the exact opposite of that. And being able to feel that way at any moment regardless of the situation.

Its pure liberation.

Many people become obsessed with specific activities and drugs which give them the feeling temporarily.

F1 drivers for example require absolute focus to avoid mistakes that could cost them their life. They are forced into a state of oneness with the car and their surroundings. They can’t afford to be thinking about anything else.

Mindfulness helps us achieve this state as well. But instead of focusing on one task we can focus on anything we choose that is within our conscious awareness in the present moment.

Thoughts are just one part of our conscious awareness. We can choose to focus on them if they are necessary to our current activity, or we just let them be like we would with any other irrelevant sensory stimulus.

The problem isn’t that you can’t stop thinking, its that you’re thinking without being aware you’re thinking, you are lost in thought and therefore controlled by it.

This tends to occur during periods of idleness when we are not actively focusing on any particular task.

Neuroscience has linked this idleness or ‘mind wandering’ to an area of the brain called the Default Mode Network (DMN).

The DMN has also been found to light up in neuroimaging experiments when subjects are thinking about themselves.

Mindfulness has been shown to decrease activity in the DMN. This reduces the experience of being lost in thought and the sense of self.

Peoples Objections

• I can’t sit still

• I can’t stop thinking

• I can’t do that type of thing

• I know it won’t work for me

• I am not that kind of person

These are the most common objections I’ve heard against mindfulness meditation. Notice how they all begin with ‘I’.

This comes from peoples over identification with their sense of self. Its not really them talking its their ego talking.

As human beings we all have a core true self that is full of love, joy, creativity, peace and beauty. This is how a newborn baby is, they don’t have any concept of themselves as an individual. They just kind of hang out and Be, they don’t care whether their shit smells.

Then the ego develops to help us navigate the world and protect us from harm, this is our sense of self, our personal identity.

However what begins as a symbiotic relationship between the true self and the ego, ends up with the ego completely taking control.

The ego wipes our memory of the inner love, joy and peace of our true self. It says forget all that, you need to go and get some external validation to feel good about yourself.

It becomes a mask formed from the perceptions of other people, this creates a persona that it will protect regardless of the cost to our self development.

Therefore when people say ‘I am not that kind of person’ that’s basically their ego speaking and saying "Look at me, I am the Captain now."

What I’ve learnt

The ego has its purpose, it just has to relinquish control back to the true self.

That can’t happen until we become more aware that it has control in the first place. When people say ‘wake up’, this is what they mean.

My consistency with mindfulness meditation over the past 6 months has definetely been influenced by my life circumstances changing.

I think the dictatorship of my ego became vulnerable when I was forced to confront an extreme lack of satisfaction in my career.

This summoned my true self to say ‘enough is enough’ and ever since I’ve been working against my ego to push out of my comfort zone so that my true self grows stronger and stronger.

The other factors were reaching a point of realisation that external rewards wouldn’t bring me happiness and that drugs and alcohol were clearly less than ideal.

I learnt that our true self starts to revive in response to extreme conditions conflicting with our purpose and lack of true meaning in our lives.

We don’t have to know what our purpose is we just have to be brave enough to search for it.

Try it yourself

I like to use a meditation app called ‘Waking Up’, you can do guided meditations that give instruction and direction or you can do silent meditations. There are also different types of meditations depending on how you feel and what you want to achieve.

I’ll describe the basic Mindfulness Meditation structure with my own personal commentary that helps me make sense of it.

1) Sit in a comfortable upright position.

You can sit on a cushion on the floor or in a chair. I wouldn’t recommend doing it lying down as you risk falling asleep. You need to be in an upright wakeful posture- you’ll feel your head nod if you start to drift into sleep.

2) Close your eyes and start to notice the sensation of your breathing.

Notice the inhales and exhales wherever you feel it most, it might be the air moving in and out of your nose, it might be the rise and fall of your chest or your belly.

3) Observe thoughts as they arise

When a thought arises just notice it. This will happen a lot at the start, you will frequently get lost in thoughts, this is part of the process you’re doing fine. Try to come out of the cinema screen and instead sit in the theatre and just watch your thought from here.

4) Don’t judge

When you judge the thought whether its good or bad this just leads to more thoughts. This is how you get stuck on a thought or random song. Just observe non-judgementally and you will evaporate the thought. This takes practice be patient.

5) Return to focusing on your breathing

Keep repeating steps 2-4. As you get comfortable with this you can start to focus on other sensations like sounds, vision and the feeling of your body as well as the breath.

Summary

As I mentioned this is a big topic and my intention isn’t to force mindfulness meditation on anyone. Its simply to share my experience and clarify any beginner misconceptions.

To be honest I think the hardest thing about meditation is developing the intention to commit to doing it despite not feeling any benefit straight away.

I hope that this letter has shown you that:

• Mindfulness Meditation has a delayed therapeutic effect. You must practice regularly for long enough to experience it.

• The effect is well worthwhile and will significantly improve your experience of life.

• The scientific evidence behind Mindfulness Meditation is substantial.

• Most people are over identified with their ego or sense of self. The ego’s only agenda is to keep you alive, it doesn’t care about the quality of your life.

Again, we don’t have to know what our purpose is, we just have to be brave enough to search for it.

Thats all for now

Lewis

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