Why You Need to Meditate

What if there was a pill you could take which had these effects:

• Potent anti-anxiety and anti-depressant
• Reduces stress and the risk for numerous diseases including diabetes and obesity
• Reduces pain
• Boosts the immune system
• Increases mental focus
• Increases mental resilience
• Increases athletic performance
• Improves emotional regulation (you can control your emotions more easily)
• Increases confidence
• Improves mood, promotes calmness
• Improves mental discipline
• Fixes deep emotional problems

Now, what if I told you that the pill’s potency compounds exponentially, meaning it’s strength multiplies every time you take it.

How much would you pay for a medication like this?

Well it’s real and you already have access to it 24 hours a day. Here’s the catch:

• It costs about 5 minutes of your time for every dose
• It takes a few weeks to start working and may take up to 4 weeks before you notice significant improvements
• The side effects are: you will feel bored to start with, but this will pass after a few weeks

Meditation is not a pill, but if it was it would likely be an incredibly successful drug, if only you could buy it with money instead of time.

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“It’s incredibly important to un-think at least once a day” - Alan Watts

Meditation is one of the simplest things you can do, yet it’s surprisingly paradoxical and often explained in an overly complicated way.

It’s hard to find a straight answer to the most essential questions regarding meditation:

• How do I know I’m doing it right?
• What is meditation?
• How often should I meditate, and for how long?

But the most important question is: why should I meditate? What’s the point?

This is key to everything, because if you’re not certain why you’re doing it, you won’t be able to motivate yourself to do it; you’ll always have a doubt that you’re wasting your time. This is why so many meditation programs fail; this most fundamental question must be answered or we just won’t feel like doing it.

Because, if you’re not sure why you meditate, how can you know you’re getting what you want out of it?

I can personally say meditation has changed my life in very positive ways, and from my research I have some good ideas as to how and why this works.

Anxiety Reduction

Meditation is thought to reduce and prevent anxiety in a similar way to anti-anxiety medication. Except medication gets less effective over time and comes with side-effects, but meditation gets more effective over time and has no side-effects.

This works on 3 levels:

1. Short term: meditation calms the mind and resets your anxiety or stress in the moment, preventing you from spiralling
2. Medium term: meditation trains your mind to be able to “snap out” of stressful or negative thought patterns
3. Long term: meditation, when done consistently for a longer period of time, allows you to direct and observe your thoughts and even challenge and dispel negative beliefs and reinforce positive thought patterns

Meditation gets exponentially more effective the more you practice it. This is probably why the Buddha said “If I skip a day of meditation, I lose a week”.

Mental Resilience

There are some studies suggesting people who meditate regularly feel less pain than those who don’t. Meditation strengthens your mind, allowing you to direct focus better and deal with discomfort more easily.

“Don’t wish for an easier life. Wish for the strength to live a hard one.” - Bruce Lee

Wellbeing

If you meditate every day for at least a few weeks, you should start to notice you feel better. You’ll have a better mood, less tension in the shoulders and simple things in life will bring you joy. You will start to get a sense that anything is possible. This is because meditation trains awareness. When you are more aware, you’re more present, and if you’re more present you’ll feel more peaceful and in tune with the world.

Self-Therapy

When you’re regularly able to just sit in peace for even 5 minutes a day, you’ll start to notice that all the things that bother you day-to-day aren’t as important as they seemed. Even if you already know this logically, meditating can help you feel it.

For many of us, it’s hard to connect with our emotions. No matter how much you understand that worrying doesn’t solve problems, and anger doesn’t make anything better, it doesn’t stop you from feeling worried or angry despite yourself. Meditation provides a space for emotions to be released and processed, even if they don’t make sense. In this way, we can synchronise emotions with logic, allowing you to not just know, but believe you are safe.

Longer, deeper meditation sessions are particularly good for emotional balancing. Some people report that, on meditation retreats lasting several days with 5 hours of meditation a day, they are able to resolve deep, unresolved issues from their past. For most people however, 15 minutes a day is enough. If you feel you have some unprocessed emotions, a longer session - 45 minutes, can be very good at releasing them. For emotional processing I personally recommend to meditate for as long as you feel is necessary, without a timer.

It’s worth noting that therapy is absolutely beneficial in this area; therapists can help direct you to emotions that would be otherwise very difficult to notice, since the mind is very good at hiding unpleasant memories. It can also help to have the professional and emotional support of someone experienced and trained in the field of psychotherapy when exploring difficult thoughts and emotions.

Improved Focus

Focus meditation trains the mind to become less distracted. It’s completely normal for the mind to suddenly tangent into random topics, and for you to lose focus. Being able to direct the thoughts so they are less chaotic can be incredibly useful. You’ll be able to listen better and gain more momentum with tasks that require mental effort.

Improved Discipline

By improving your emotional regulation and strengthening the neural pathways that give you control of impulsive actions, you will be able to resist urges and temptations more easily, allowing you to forgo immediate pleasure for better long term gains. Temptation isn’t something we necessarily have control over, and sometimes it can be impossible to control our actions in the face of struggles like addiction.

“Self discipline is self-love” - Will Smith

“We must all suffer from one of two pains: The pain of discipline or the pain of regret.” - Jim Rohn

Meditations

You don’t need to sit in any special position. Although sitting upright can be good for improving your posture (which has it’s own added benefits), comfort is more important. It can also be helpful to sit in an upright position without a backrest to prevent you from falling asleep, but it’s not strictly necessary.

Try to sit with only the minimum required tension to enable you to breath openly and comfortably, and to maintain a relaxed - but not sluggish - posture.

Focus meditation: this technique is characterised by redirecting focus back to an object, such as a cup, a tree outside or a repeated word (mantra). The idea is to notice when you’re getting distracted with a thought and train the mind to maintain focus on the original object, no matter how bored you get.

Every time you do this, it reinforces the neural pathway which gives you control of your thoughts and focus.

This means with repeated practice it could make you more disciplined, less stressed and better at regulating your emotions. Over time you can become more resilient to stress and negativity, resulting in a stronger immune system and reducing your risk for health conditions such as diabetes and obesity.

It can therefore improve your physical performance, i.e. help to improve your running speed or strength in the gym. This is not yet strictly proven but there is reasonable science to make this worth considering, especially for those who are prone to stress/negative thought patterns, stuck in a stress spiral or those who want to improve performance and resilience.

Contemplation meditation: explore concepts and discover yourself and your relationship with reality. These are usually what Zen Koans (Zen stories, or riddles) are used for. You will find suggestions for these throughout the book. Remember, these are not puzzles to be solved; the whole point is what you learn while exploring. Here’s one: “What, in this moment is lacking?”