The Power of Meditation (E9)

Happiness for Cynics podcast

This week, we look at the ancient practice of meditation and its ties to happiness. Pete shares his knowledge and some research, while Marie cracks jokes and pretty much contributes nothing to the conversation.

Transcription

M: You’re listening to the podcast happiness for cynics. I’m Marie Skelton. I’m a writer and speaker focused on change and resilience. My co-host is Peter.

P: Hey there, I’m Peter Furness. I’m a believer in crystals, purveyor of energetic connections and saviour of chubby unicorns.

M: Nice [laugh]

P: Each week we bring you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology otherwise known as happiness. Marie has a blog.

M: I do, you can find me at marieskelton.com and there’s a whole lot of resources there for you on how to be happy.

P: Awe… Such a nice concept.

M: Yeah, [laugh] it is. It is, anyway. So today, today’s all about you, Peter, because today’s episode is about meditation.

P: Where’s my gong and my singing bowl?

M: So this –

P: – I really should have brought my gong and my singing bowl.

M: [Laugh]

P: That would have been a great intro!

M: I’m sure we can work that out, you know post production.

[Laughter]

P: Can we add that in later that would be so cool. I have three.

M: Done

[Gong – singing bowl – happy music]

M: Okay. And we’re back. And they were talking about meditation, so we’re going to have a little bit of a different format today. Meditation is so far out of my comfort zone.

P: [Laugh]

M: My understanding on meditation is that it’s on a spectrum. On one end, you’ve got mindfulness, which is putting your phone down at the dinner table, and then you move in to beginners learning how to sit on the cold, hard floor with their legs crossed. To, what normal people can do when they practise after years and years of meditating? And then you’ve got that weird, shave my head and take a vow of silence and sit on a mountaintop and meditate for days and days on end. That’s the other end of the spectrum.

P: It’s like the elite sports level of meditation.

M: Yeah. So that’s my very naive understanding off the mindfulness to meditation spectrum.

P: Right.

[Laughter]

M: Which is why today and in today’s episode we’re going to do more of a Q and A with Pete, because this is definitely more your domain of expertise.

P: Have you ever meditated Marie? Have you ever sat down and actually consciously meditated?

M: No one would want to sit quietly with my mind Peter.

P: [Laugh]

M: The answer is no.

P: So this is the interesting thing about people’s perceptions of meditation on what it is versus actually what it can be. I find quite interesting, it is a bit of a Pandora’s Box once you open up the concept of meditation you go ‘Oh my god! I’m going [through] the looking glass.’ It’s a really broad subject, everybody has their own interpretation of it and even the scholars all differ on their interpretations and understanding and meanings of meditation.

M: So we’ll park. As I said, I’ve got a very broad and basic understanding. We’re going to park mindfulness for another episode and focus purely on meditation today.

P: That’s good because the two are not necessarily the same.

M: Again for another time, I’m keen to just start us off so that we’re all on the same page on your understanding, your definition for meditation.

P: Right, so there are a couple of definitions that I do like. The most simplistic one that I like is meditation is a method for acquainting our mind with virtue.

M: That’s why it’s not for me… virtue?

P: [Laugh] So again virtue has many different connotations in and of itself, but when we talk about virtue in the context, we’re talking about that moral compass. We’re talking about the good things, the responsible things, the acolytes that we aim to aspire to. So we’re trying to get in touch with that in terms of where acquainting our minds with when we try to meditate. That’s the end goal I guess in a way, it’s the reason behind it.

There are other people that talk about different kinds of meditation and what it is. It’s a tool for happiness. Now, we, the concept of meditation, making you happy. Yes, it does. There is a little bit of science around this. Happiness is hard wired. It’s genetic in our brains, people who are happy have more frontal lobe activity. So meditation is a way of quieting the mind so that you can actually access some more of that frontal lobe activity. Because meditation stimulates the same cortex’s in the brain. And scientists have talked about this briefly.

Psychology today actually talks about it as a stronger mental practise that has the power to reset your happiness set point. And that happiness set point is that frontal lobe activity of the brain so meditation can access that it can start to train your brain to access that area a little bit more, thus leading to more happiness or the ability to experience more happiness.

M: OK fine…

P: [Laugh] Did I just get you with a scientific quote there?

M: Yes, yes!

P: Ha ha! See it’s not all gong’s and whistles. [Laugh]

M: Maybe, maybe. We’ll see. Anyway, let’s, let’s, let’s maybe start with how you got into this. So how did you begin practising meditation and why did you get into it?

P: I guess I got involved with Eastern Philosophy when I started University. I was very dissatisfied with the Christian experience and so I was still understanding of the need for some spiritually exploration for myself and managed to access a little bit of Tao-ism and a little bit of Buddhism through some very basic books that I found when I was in that second year at university. It’s also the time when I started spending some time alone, which we talked about in another episode and having quiet time at the end of the day and for me it came about from my practise of needing to be a little bit more… actually it came through yoga in a way. I was discovering the need for stretching and downtime and the physicality of yoga but then through that I also got access to the philosophy of yoga which is Indian, a classic Indian … principal. So those practises of being still with the mind and quieting became part of my daily routine. So I go home at the end of the day, I put a little candle in the window in my … flat and watch the sunset and do an hour of yoga.

M: I was in the pubs.

P: [Laugh]

M: My University days were very different from yours.

P: [Still laughing]

M: There was beer o’clock on Wednesdays and then Thursday night was Uni night and then there’s the usual Friday, Saturday, so very different.

P: I was ohm-ing and chanting and playing meditative gong music… [Laugh]

M: Whatever works for you.

P: [Laugh]

M: So you came from a country upbringing, Christian, came to university in the big city looking for something a bit different.

P: uh huh.

M: If I’m going to paraphrase your story here, and discovered yoga and then from there meditation. So what benefits has it given you?

P: Well that’s a big question. I think the big thing about meditation is quieting the mind so when you meditate it’s not about stilling the mind, you know people say ‘think of nothing, empty your mind.’ Emptying your mind is bad. It is not good. And I really like Gelong Thubten’s interpretation of meditation, in terms of thinking of your brain like a highway. So you’ve got lots of traffic, got lots of cars going to and forth. If you stop the flow of thought. If you stop your mind being active, traffic’s gonna jam. There’s going to be a backup of traffic. There’s going to be problems. There’s not going to be a transfer of thought processes going through and you’re going to miss a whole heap of stuff because the traffic’s backed up.

It’s more about bringing your attention to each individual car on that highway and allowing it to pass through. So you’re not necessarily stilling your mind. You’re allowing each thought to come up. You’re recognising it and then letting it go. In terms of being aware of that you’re trying to be bringing in mindfulness, so bringing in that mindful state of going ‘I see that car, I see that thought and I will let it go. And then you’re trying to make me focus on the awareness of thoughts that you need, the awareness of thoughts that you want to retain and the awareness of thoughts that you want to let through and just let them keep going.

M: So in a way are you practising reinforcing positive thoughts and dismissing negative thoughts is that part of meditation?

P: I believe it is. It definitely was from my experience, because it’s initially it was all about the negative thoughts and focusing on those negative thoughts and going ‘Oh, I’ve really got to address that!’ and that’s a lot of anxiety and stress around that, whereas the more reading I did about meditation, the more I understood about allowing that balance and flow to come through. But allowing my mind for a little while to focus on the nice thinks the positive things, the things that brought me quiet smiles, gentle thoughts the things that would make me unwind from my anxiety. [Whispering] Which were pretty great when I was only 21 years old.

[Laughter]

P: Just saying [laugh]

M: In all fairness millennials are struggling there’s an epidemic of anxiety. Our younger generations, we’re putting so many pressures on them nowadays that, you know, you and I didn’t have and out parents definitely didn’t have growing up and they’re anxious. So maybe meditation is something we should be talking about more.

P: Again we’re coming back to the Scandinavian example of instilling meditation into schools. Even at the ripe, young age of infancy school, there are certain schools and business, uh, organisations out there that are instilling meditation. There’s a wonderful example of one in China I think [actually Baltimore] it was where instead of having detention they introduce meditation.

M: Oh, I think I’ve seen that one.

P: Yes, it’s about changing the story, changing the process. You’re being punished because you did something wrong. Whereas they’re going, no let’s investigate the reasons behind why you’re acting in this way. It’s a game changer, it changes our awareness. And I think in this case, the millennials, I think this is something we really need to explore. We’re more conscious, we’re sifting through information now than we’ve ever done. It’s important to maybe be more aware of how we interpret that information, why we’re interpreting certain bits of it than others.

M: And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having a closer look at your own feelings. I know that there’s a lot of work right now in the men’s mental health space, particularly older generations who have traditionally been told, buck up and suck it up and don’t express emotions. And they keep sucking it up until they explode. And they either explode in anger or violence or both. And it’s not healthy, we know that now.

P: And I think anger and violence is very often turned on themselves. The suicide rate for rural men has been alarmingly high. I think, in America and in Australia, that example of clocking that and … the governments are investing money into mental health of people who are in isolated areas making sure that they have support, that they’ve got access to phone lines, medical support and the mate-ship factor. It was the pubs, in the country pubs it’s where you, upended you’re feelings, it was a safe place for blokes to go ‘Geez mate the crops are bad, the wife’s giving me hell.’ You talk things out.

M: I love you being a country man.

[Laughter]

M: A country bloke!

P: [Laugh] I spent my childhood years with my father driving around the western/ sub-western areas of NSW and Dad always pulled into the pub. That’s his way of dealing with the monotony of things and maybe getting some thought processes out, he didn’t have a counsellor or anything he could talk to. It was over a beer at the pub.

M:  And that sounds like meditation might be another tool that people could use to become more aware of their internal monologue and their feelings and their emotions and maybe short circuit the traditional way they’ve dealt with that.

P: Yep.

M: Just to bottle it until they can’t.

P: Yep, absolutely.

M: [Chipper voice] So Pete,

P: [Laugh]

M: There are various types of meditation, right? Can you tell us about that?

P: [Laugh] Oh my god, you sound like an infomercial. Yes there are. So I’m gonna try and make it really simple.

M: Please do. This is all over my head.

P: Yeah, I’m going to make it really simple about the two different types. There’s Analytical and Placement meditation.

So Analytical meditation is where we’re contemplating the meaning of the text. So we’re looking at a spiritual text such as the Bible or something, the Koran [Quran], something that a Taoist monk has said so we’re looking at a sentence and going we’re going to focus on the meaning behind that sentence. That’s analytical meditation, taking a text and interpreting it, so meditation upon that and all the different areas on that.

M: So it’s like Bible study by yourself?

P: Yep, you could put it that way.

M: Yep, alright with you… next?

P: [Laugh] which then leads to Placement meditation. Now Placement meditation is possibly where most people think meditation is it’s the cause of a specific virtuous state of mind to arise. It’s a very complex sentence. We’re allowing a state of mind to come forth. So we’re not thinking of a text, we’re not thinking of don’t do wrong by your neighbour. We’re allowing that analytical faze to give way to a much more subtle faze where we’re allowing thoughts and certain things to drop in, so it might be ‘I really shouldn’t pinch the roses out of my neighbours garden.’

M: [Snort] Is that a habit of yours?

P: Well… no, no.

M: For me, I know I would sit down and it would be ‘Oh! that’s what I should have said yesterday when I was fighting with my colleague.’ Darn it! Right?

P: [Laugh]

M: Or when my boss told me to do that, have a perfect come back now.

P: Yeah.

M: Those are the things I ruminate on in the shower, generally.

[Laughter]

M: Next time, next time!

P: I think if we take that case and point that could be your analytical meditation. So ‘I should have said this. I should have done this.’ If you can sit with that for a little while, quietly allowing your thoughts and those vehicles to pass through. You actually might find yourself thinking about the reasons behind why that conversation happened in the first place. ‘Could I have actioned something earlier than that to avoid this situation?’ And that’s more that placement meditation I’m talking about where you’re allowing the thoughts to come and go, and you’re picking out the ones that are relevant, all the ones that are going to lead to a better action, a more heightened state, more frontal lobe activity, more happiness.

M: So we’re coming to the end of the podcast. For our listeners. How would you advise getting started on practising some basics of meditation?

P: Meditate badly…

M: Ok, I like it.

P: He, he. It’s really hard to do meditation. It’s like running a marathon you don’t just get up one morning and decide you’re going to run 42kms, you can’t, it’s not possible, you are going to hurt yourself. So Meditation’s exactly the same, it’s about starting small and making the smallest little step towards that 42kms mark.

So that means one minute.

M: So, go sit on the floor, cross your legs for a minute and close your eyes.

P: Turn off the tv, silence the radio, sit down for one minute with your thoughts and don’t let anything interrupt you. That means locking the cat in the bathroom.

[Laughter]

P: Not allowing your kids to run in. It’s got to be one minute and you’ll find that it’s actually quite difficult to then go to 2, then 3, 4 and 5 that becomes that’s a forward goal.

M: Do you set an egg timer?

P: Absolutely.

M: I would spend that minute counting seconds [Laugh].

P: I guess that’s the thing. It takes you, it takes you more than a minute to quiet the mind, and quiet in the mind is a pathway to the meditative state that we are seeking. So before we even get to that state, before we even get to running, we’ve got to walk out the door and put our training shoes on. It’s exactly the same with meditation we’ve got to feel comfortable in our sitting on the floor, cross legged. It could be sitting on the couch. It could be sitting in your favourite chair, but it’s about bringing that mindful state and then accessing that state where you slow the traffic and that can take a good four weeks of attempts to try and get there. And once you can achieve that, then you can start going ‘right that was two minutes of quality meditative time there, let’s see if I can expanded that to five over the next two weeks.

M: OK. I’m going to ask a few beginners questions. There’s no such thing as a dumb question. Just remember that?

P: No [meaning yes]

M: Okay, what’s with the crossing the legs. Do you have to do that?

P: No

M: Do you have to close your eyes?

P: No

M: Do you have to sit on the floor?

P: No

M: Do you have to sit?

P: Being still, is helpful to bring awareness to your brain and to your mind so you can’t necessarily meditate when you’re on the treadmill. Although my initial experience of meditation was through the yoga, through doing physical activity and being in downward dog and noticing my breath now that was a pathway to able to access the stillness and then I used that when it came to actually sitting down. When you’re doing yoga practise, you finish with shavasana which is dead man’s corpse pose where you’re lying on the ground, on your back with your palms up, close your eyes and you’re just concentrating on your breath. You’ve done 45 minutes, you’ve done five minutes, you’ve done an hour and a half of a yoga class, that last pose is where the magic is because you quiet everything and you bring your awareness to that really calm, still point and that’s the meditative state where you can really focus on thoughts without being physical.

M: So last question for you before we sign off. For people who are just overwhelmed with life, we’ve got so much going on, we’ve all got busy lives at work and at home.

What is one tip for quieting the mind?

P: Don’t be judgmental. Do not be judgmental on yourself on your thought processes. There is another quote here that I’ll read out.

‘Meditation is about turning inwards and being able to observe all of your thoughts and bodily sensations without judgement.’

M: I think that’s a perfect place to end.

P: It is.

M: All right. Thanks for joining us today. If you want to hear more please remember to subscribe and like this podcast.

P: And go out and buy a singing bowl and have a little gong for me.

M: [Laugh] until next time. Bye

P: Bye

[Gong and singing bowl]

[Happy exit music]

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Marie Skelton is an Australian writer, speaker, and change and resiliency expert. She started her career in journalism before working in public affairs and then specialising in organisational and culture change for some of the world’s largest tech and financial services companies, both in Australia and the U.S. She also played volleyball for Australia and on scholarship at a D1 university in the U.S. and she captained the NSW Women’s Volleyball team in the Australian Volleyball League.

Following a motorbike accident that nearly took her life, and leg, she began researching change and resiliency to find out how people cope with major life changes and why some people are really good at dealing with whatever life throws at them, while others struggle. She is passionate about mental health and writes about how to cope with today’s Change Storm and maintain mental wellness.  

Peter Furness is just plain awesome. He loves unicorns and champagne. Pete is the owner of Max Remedial, and a qualified remedial therapist and has worked all over the world with professional athletes, dancers, sporting organisations and medical professionals. Peter’s practice is influenced by his interest in Eastern philosophy and he works closely with Chinese and Ayurvedic practitioners, approaching the body from the principles of ancient medicine.

Peter has practiced Asstanga Yoga for 20 years and combines these principles with his approach to health.

Peter was also an award-winning contemporary dancer in Australia and in the UK.