I first went to meditation about 15 years ago.
Not something I pursued myself, but I went along with someone very interested. It was a Transcendental meditation course (teaching how to focus our attention inward to induce a state of deep relaxation). I found the experience calming and pleasant but it didn’t really fit into my life. At that stage being as effective as possible with my time was my ultimate goal. Seeing how much I could fit into a smidgen of time was what preoccupied me. If I could get everything I had planned and more done at work, make all my necessary phone calls while commuting, do all my house-hold management and admin in the fastest and most efficient way possible, that would be a satisfying day for me. If I had time left over after this I would fill it up with other tasks that were unnecessarily important – like clearing out and organizing all the cupboards or going through all my personal financials and reevaluating reorganizing my budgets (and yes, I had a family and small kids at the time). Meditation didn’t meet my goals of managing and squeezing out time.
I realized that after years of attempting to show time who was boss, I had spent very little time connecting with myself. How am I feeling this moment/ what do I need/ how is my body/ why am I stressed/ what is dominating my thoughts / what am I apprehensive about/ what do I enjoy and choose/ what is my intuition telling me.
There is a quote in the book ‘Dubliners’ by James Joyce which goes ‘he lived at a little distance from his body’. This is a powerful quote for me.
And I chat to many people in similar stages with similar views on meditation, e.g. it sounds nice but not really a priority right now; or I have tried it and just can’t do it, or I’m outright just not into that hippy fluff. I know it is not for everyone.
I came back to meditation a few years ago, to a different practice, focused on mindfulness but with the same intentions as the previous practice. I viewed it as similar to exercise, something you repeat to tone muscles and get fit. Mindfulness was a tool to train my brain to be still and let go of thought traffic. I made it a priority, I kept an open mind, I learnt how to breathe, observe and regulate, I improved my stress levels by being more aware of myself in the moment throughout the day and I managed to slow down and focus my freeway traffic of thoughts dominating my mind and to create a calm space for more creative thought.
In the 70’s, Jon Kabat-Zinn (microbiology Ph.D. and a teacher at the University of Massachusetts Medical center) started demonstrating the impacts of mindfulness biologically. He recruited chronically ill patients not responding well to traditional treatments, put them in an 8-week program where he applied the basic principles of mindfulness meditation to patients in a medical research setting. His research assisted in moving medicine from a westernized view of mind and body being separate, to showing the critical link and importance of mind/ body interactions for healing. The program was a massive success, and he established the stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. His multi-award-winning program became the gold-standard for research into mindfulness-based interventions providing evidence of improved conditions such as pain, anxiety, cardio vascular disease and stress.
Stress is a normal part of living, and it has its benefits. In the short term the survival part of our brain kicks in, increases heart rate, breathing and blood pressure and causes our focus to narrow. A healthy and necessary process to make you alert and equip you to deal with a challenge.
Stress becomes a problem when it is ongoing and longer term. It results in prolonged high levels of cortisol in our bodies which impacts all our functioning such as:
• Cognitively, when we are stressed our thinking is narrowed, we are less creative and analytical, our problem solving is impaired, we retain less information, we either use denial or have a tendency to imagine the worst; and we are impaired in listening and empathizing with others.
• Biologically, our immune system (increased cortisol diverts attention from the immune system and makes you susceptible to illness) and
• Emotionally, our emotional control is reduced (can result in more extreme reactions, more impulsive or less decisive behaviour, anxiety, panic attacks).
And all of the above are the exact skills we need as leaders, especially in times of crisis.
We will never remove stress from our lives, but we can minimize the effects on our body. One of the easiest and most achievable stress-relieving techniques is mindfulness, which works via the sympathetic nervous system in the body, countering the effects of stress. AndI’ve found mindfulness to be more than this, there is a spiritual benefit to the practice too.
The regular practice of it aligns mind, body, and spirit and creates a sense of harmony within yourself.It does this by helping us detach from situations that are preoccupying us, reflecton ourself in the context of the bigger picture of the world, appreciate the people around us and what we have today, and brings us out of the past and the ‘what if’s’ of the future and into the present moment.
My suggestion on mindfulness, whatever your attempts have been so far, is to keep an open mind.For many I’ve spoken to, prayer is a form of mindfulness, as is carving out some time to sit alone, be in nature and detach from obsessive thought.
And whilst considering your thoughts on mindfulness remember the profound quote by Eckhart Tolle ‘Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now’.
References:
Gabor Mate (2004). When the Body says No: The cost of Hidden Stress. Vintage Canada Paperback
Kabat-Zinn, Jon (2013). Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to FaceStress, Pain, and Illness (2nd ed.). Random House Publishing Group.
Harvard Health Publishing, 14 July 2014. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/what-meditation-can-do-for-your-mind-mood-and-health
Matthias Birk (2020). Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/03/why-leaders-need-meditation-now-more-than-ever
James Joyce (1914). Dubliners. The London House
Eckhart Toll. (1999). The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. New World Library