“The shortest answer is doing the thing.” Ernest Hemingway
I once had a client named Yvonne. She had a skeptical cover but I knew she was just curious under it all. At least she wanted to be. But first her mind needed some information.
As a highly stressed corporate worker-bee, her nerves were always on the edge. She had heard that meditation could be a good answer to her stress. Yet as much as I wanted to explain how and why it could be of assistance, I knew Yvonne, and that meant I had to meet her at her nerves endings first. That was where she lived. So before we could ever get into the experiential act of meditating, before we could even get into a more supportive environment outdoors, Yvonne wanted me to feed her mind.
"Give it to me straight"
She folded her body - cut it right in half - by leaning her top half over her lower sitting self. Then she zeroed in on me. With unblinking laser focus she said something like: “no bullshit, Jonni. Give it to me straight up. What the hell is meditation? In simple, real words. None of the fluff. What is it and can I do it?” She said this all in one sentence. Then she took a breath.
Aware that my every word - every twitch - was being evaluated and possibly discarded, I began.
“If you want to meditate, Yvonne, then you should know that nowadays people use the word “meditate” as freely as they order a double-half-caf-non-fat-soy-milk-green-tea-no-whip-uber-foam-latte. (I smiled, just a bit. Humour, Yvonne? Apparently no.) Meditation has become the trendiest word outside of “yoga”. People say they “meditated on that” or they have to “meditate on it”, when really what they are saying is they will think on it, or reflect on it, or even sleep on it. Meditation is neither of those things. It’s actually much greater than that.”
I needed to make this point clear and up front, yet I could feel her antsy-ness with my statement. I’m sure she was thinking, what have I got myself into now? Just write me the prescription and let me go. The noisy exhale that vibrated her nostril hairs, told me she was impatient. So I took out all my John Wayne pauses and brisked through, giving her the brain bits.
The first stage of meditation
“Meditation is preceded by a slowed down conscious brain wave state. You and I are in beta brain wave right now and with a bit of relaxation, we would be in alpha.” (Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t want the lingo. Right. I attempted to create the feeling instead.)
“You know those chilled people who wouldn’t even blink if a gun shot went off behind them? (Nod) They’re no doubt in alpha. Their nerves are not as edgy.”
Yvonne’s eyebrows raised a micro: “I’m high-strung,” she volunteered. “Wired up tight.” (No kidding. The “edgy” word got her attention. Made it personal to her.)
“Then you know the feeling you want to have: the chilled, relaxed, even-keeled feeling. That’s the first stage of meditation: the ability to find that shift of emotion, that sense of letting an exhale rule you, rather than an inhale.”
I hoped that by subtly pointing out the breath it might draw her attention to her own more shallow breathing. I followed my words with actions, inhaling in short, staccato breaths while posturing like I was up for a fight, or a challenge. Then I switched the focus to my exhales and let them silently cascade out my mouth, repeating the action with my body, from the top, down. Ripple, ripple. She watched. She nodded. She got it.
Just a little bit of science
“If you have developed an emotionally matured life – if you respond emotionally to things in a more matured way - remember all the Daniel Goldman stuff we’ve spoken about on emotional intelligence? The books I asked you to read? – then you are behaving less reactive, less edgy, and the message that your response sends to the rest of your system, is “everything is fine, stay chilled”. It all loops together to keep you intact and calm. The brain is literally firing up differently to respond to your different thoughts and feelings. Scientific tests have been done to illicit what is specifically happening to the brain during meditation so we can document and measure and replicate the experience. They’ve put well-experienced meditators into a MRI machine and watched the brain’s functions during the meditative states. The frontal lopes lit up like the Christmas tree in New York Central Square.” (I remembered how much she liked seeing that tree the last time she was in New York. A good reference therefore.)
I could also tell she liked the science part of the talk. Ah, measurable, logical, practical. I was speaking her language. Now to get to the next part - the part that’s not as easily defined.
“First they relax and then they expand, wide-opened, in that relaxation. If they didn’t, they would just fall asleep. We have trained ourselves to either be awake or asleep. That lovely zone in between – teachers and parents may have called it daydreaming, playing, imagining, fantasizing – isn’t typically cultivated in our culture. We don’t see or understand the benefits of that state and so we get angry if someone isn’t 100% awake or 100% asleep. But artists know that zone. Songwriters download from that zone. Great ideas come from that inspired place. A-ha moments are realized from that state. These people are having an expanded state of consciousness. Expanded. Not just altered. Altered could be just another perspective. Not a bad thing, but not quite what meditation is. You can get into an altered state of consciousness by using something external – sex, drugs and rock and roll, for example. That can be fun, (I smiled and my eyebrows arched – hoping she was following me. Humour on my part. Stone face on hers.) but it’s not all there is to it. An expanded experience means getting into that zone and then, really getting into it. The wild life, unleashed. Letting it take you on a journey. A real experience. And there are a trillion possible experiences that you could have. We call those meditation experiences.”
I paused. Finally. And shifted the focus to her. I didn’t want to give her too much information, but enough to whet her appetite. An hors d’oeurve or two. Now I needed to know how it tasted. If I gave her too much it wouldn’t ignite her curiosity. She wouldn’t want more. I waited some more. Then finally she said, slowly, thoughtfully:
“Can you get me there? To those meditative experiences?”
“Yes. I can hold your hand and take you there. It’s what I do. But you can get there any number of ways. And you can set any number of intentions as to why you would want to have the experience. It’s like sex. Why do you want to have sex? Because it feels good? Because it’s about time you did? Because it can take you to a depth of experience that can change how you think, feel and act? (Pause for affect. She squirms. Good.) There are so many reasons. Meditation is like that too. It’s a modality. A tool. And it’s more than that too.”
Now I sat forward – practically in her face.
“Look. This is the tip of the iceberg. I can talk and talk and you can experiment and experience. And then we can do another layer of all this. And then another. It just adds. Modern Meditations are not repetitive. They’re always different. And it’s the single most important influence you can have in your life. ‘Nuf said. Times up. Are you in or out?”
******
More and more people come to me to learn to meditate, and one of the first things I ask them is, “Why you want to meditate?” It helps us both if they can get clear because most of them don’t really know. They just thought they should meditate - like eating one’s vegetables or working out – because it’s good for you. Or they are following the trends: first yoga, now meditation. Or they have heard a bit, read a bit and now want to sample it. But those are rarely committed enough reasons to really get at the great highs, to really widen the circle and integrate it into their lives. Commitment is such a big part of it. Even children commit to playing.
I want to meditate to feel more, to feel better, to have a better life. The more-factor is an experience. It’s an enhancer. All the goals and accomplishments won’t feel the way you desired them to - hoped they would - unless you increase your ability to feel more. How’s that for a reason?
I once had a client named Yvonne. She had a skeptical cover but I knew she was just curious under it all. At least she wanted to be. But first her mind needed some information.
As a highly stressed corporate worker-bee, her nerves were always on the edge. She had heard that meditation could be a good answer to her stress. Yet as much as I wanted to explain how and why it could be of assistance, I knew Yvonne, and that meant I had to meet her at her nerves endings first. That was where she lived. So before we could ever get into the experiential act of meditating, before we could even get into a more supportive environment outdoors, Yvonne wanted me to feed her mind.
"Give it to me straight"
She folded her body - cut it right in half - by leaning her top half over her lower sitting self. Then she zeroed in on me. With unblinking laser focus she said something like: “no bullshit, Jonni. Give it to me straight up. What the hell is meditation? In simple, real words. None of the fluff. What is it and can I do it?” She said this all in one sentence. Then she took a breath.
Aware that my every word - every twitch - was being evaluated and possibly discarded, I began.
“If you want to meditate, Yvonne, then you should know that nowadays people use the word “meditate” as freely as they order a double-half-caf-non-fat-soy-milk-green-tea-no-whip-uber-foam-latte. (I smiled, just a bit. Humour, Yvonne? Apparently no.) Meditation has become the trendiest word outside of “yoga”. People say they “meditated on that” or they have to “meditate on it”, when really what they are saying is they will think on it, or reflect on it, or even sleep on it. Meditation is neither of those things. It’s actually much greater than that.”
I needed to make this point clear and up front, yet I could feel her antsy-ness with my statement. I’m sure she was thinking, what have I got myself into now? Just write me the prescription and let me go. The noisy exhale that vibrated her nostril hairs, told me she was impatient. So I took out all my John Wayne pauses and brisked through, giving her the brain bits.
The first stage of meditation
“Meditation is preceded by a slowed down conscious brain wave state. You and I are in beta brain wave right now and with a bit of relaxation, we would be in alpha.” (Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t want the lingo. Right. I attempted to create the feeling instead.)
“You know those chilled people who wouldn’t even blink if a gun shot went off behind them? (Nod) They’re no doubt in alpha. Their nerves are not as edgy.”
Yvonne’s eyebrows raised a micro: “I’m high-strung,” she volunteered. “Wired up tight.” (No kidding. The “edgy” word got her attention. Made it personal to her.)
“Then you know the feeling you want to have: the chilled, relaxed, even-keeled feeling. That’s the first stage of meditation: the ability to find that shift of emotion, that sense of letting an exhale rule you, rather than an inhale.”
I hoped that by subtly pointing out the breath it might draw her attention to her own more shallow breathing. I followed my words with actions, inhaling in short, staccato breaths while posturing like I was up for a fight, or a challenge. Then I switched the focus to my exhales and let them silently cascade out my mouth, repeating the action with my body, from the top, down. Ripple, ripple. She watched. She nodded. She got it.
Just a little bit of science
“If you have developed an emotionally matured life – if you respond emotionally to things in a more matured way - remember all the Daniel Goldman stuff we’ve spoken about on emotional intelligence? The books I asked you to read? – then you are behaving less reactive, less edgy, and the message that your response sends to the rest of your system, is “everything is fine, stay chilled”. It all loops together to keep you intact and calm. The brain is literally firing up differently to respond to your different thoughts and feelings. Scientific tests have been done to illicit what is specifically happening to the brain during meditation so we can document and measure and replicate the experience. They’ve put well-experienced meditators into a MRI machine and watched the brain’s functions during the meditative states. The frontal lopes lit up like the Christmas tree in New York Central Square.” (I remembered how much she liked seeing that tree the last time she was in New York. A good reference therefore.)
I could also tell she liked the science part of the talk. Ah, measurable, logical, practical. I was speaking her language. Now to get to the next part - the part that’s not as easily defined.
“First they relax and then they expand, wide-opened, in that relaxation. If they didn’t, they would just fall asleep. We have trained ourselves to either be awake or asleep. That lovely zone in between – teachers and parents may have called it daydreaming, playing, imagining, fantasizing – isn’t typically cultivated in our culture. We don’t see or understand the benefits of that state and so we get angry if someone isn’t 100% awake or 100% asleep. But artists know that zone. Songwriters download from that zone. Great ideas come from that inspired place. A-ha moments are realized from that state. These people are having an expanded state of consciousness. Expanded. Not just altered. Altered could be just another perspective. Not a bad thing, but not quite what meditation is. You can get into an altered state of consciousness by using something external – sex, drugs and rock and roll, for example. That can be fun, (I smiled and my eyebrows arched – hoping she was following me. Humour on my part. Stone face on hers.) but it’s not all there is to it. An expanded experience means getting into that zone and then, really getting into it. The wild life, unleashed. Letting it take you on a journey. A real experience. And there are a trillion possible experiences that you could have. We call those meditation experiences.”
I paused. Finally. And shifted the focus to her. I didn’t want to give her too much information, but enough to whet her appetite. An hors d’oeurve or two. Now I needed to know how it tasted. If I gave her too much it wouldn’t ignite her curiosity. She wouldn’t want more. I waited some more. Then finally she said, slowly, thoughtfully:
“Can you get me there? To those meditative experiences?”
“Yes. I can hold your hand and take you there. It’s what I do. But you can get there any number of ways. And you can set any number of intentions as to why you would want to have the experience. It’s like sex. Why do you want to have sex? Because it feels good? Because it’s about time you did? Because it can take you to a depth of experience that can change how you think, feel and act? (Pause for affect. She squirms. Good.) There are so many reasons. Meditation is like that too. It’s a modality. A tool. And it’s more than that too.”
Now I sat forward – practically in her face.
“Look. This is the tip of the iceberg. I can talk and talk and you can experiment and experience. And then we can do another layer of all this. And then another. It just adds. Modern Meditations are not repetitive. They’re always different. And it’s the single most important influence you can have in your life. ‘Nuf said. Times up. Are you in or out?”
******
More and more people come to me to learn to meditate, and one of the first things I ask them is, “Why you want to meditate?” It helps us both if they can get clear because most of them don’t really know. They just thought they should meditate - like eating one’s vegetables or working out – because it’s good for you. Or they are following the trends: first yoga, now meditation. Or they have heard a bit, read a bit and now want to sample it. But those are rarely committed enough reasons to really get at the great highs, to really widen the circle and integrate it into their lives. Commitment is such a big part of it. Even children commit to playing.
I want to meditate to feel more, to feel better, to have a better life. The more-factor is an experience. It’s an enhancer. All the goals and accomplishments won’t feel the way you desired them to - hoped they would - unless you increase your ability to feel more. How’s that for a reason?
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