The 3rd Key to Meditation
Welcome back for the final lesson in your 3 keys to Meditation Mini Course!
How did you find the breathing relaxation exercise from the 2nd Key?
Did you get a chance to try the abdominal breathing exercise from your bonus lesson?
You’ll get such great benefits from both exercises, and they don’t take long.
Hit reply on the email you just got from me and let me know how you found the practices.
The Third Key
So this lesson is easy to describe, but difficult to do.
It applies to almost any skill that’s worth learning… And we all have trouble with it.
To really ‘get’ meditation, to get the benefits from a meditation practice that I’ve talked about, you need to do one thing.
Meditate regularly.
The real benefits of meditation are only revealed through consistent practice.
And for virtually everyone reading this, the only way you’re going to regularly meditate is if you form a meditation habit.
If you’re expecting to rely on willpower alone to stick to your meditation practice I’ve got some bad news for you.
It’s not going to work.
Your willpower is a finite resource, something that most of us quickly exhaust throughout our regular day.
Your willpower is constantly tested, all the time.
Your willpower is challenged when you feel tired after you wake up 10 minutes early to meditate, and it’s just so much easier to hit snooze.
Your willpower is challenged when you have the choice between meditating and falling onto your sofa and switching off in front of your TV.
And just before you go to bed, your willpower is challenged when you look at your meditation cushion but all you can think about is how much you want to go to sleep.
So, without a plan, your willpower isn’t going to be enough to make sure you meditate regularly.
Having some command you tell yourself, like – “I have to meditate everyday” – won’t help either.
It’ll just make your meditation feel like a chore, not the sacred, nourishing practice that can change your life.
If meditation is something you have to do, it’ll always be an effort. It’ll always be a drain on your already drained willpower.
And eventually it’ll be something that you stop doing altogether.
However, if your meditation is a habit, something you just ‘do’ everyday, you will do it.
You won’t exhaust your willpower.
You will see huge benefits from your meditation practice.
So the problem is, getting from a place where meditation isn’t a habit, like now, to where meditation is a habit.
The Meditation Challenge
A huge frustration with forming any positive habit is that you don’t get to see the positive effects of your ‘new’ habit right away.
You only get the rewards after you’ve put in the time, and not a moment before.
Say you join a gym because you want to get stronger.
When you walk in for the first time, you don’t expect to to lift a lot of weight.
When you first start, you experience pain and frustration, without much gain.
But if you can just hang in there, you’ll see results.
You’ll get stronger.
Guaranteed.
That’s the thing about something like strength training, you get tangible results in not much time at all.
Once you experience these results, it makes it so much easier to stick to your training, and, eventually make it a habit.
Unfortunately with meditation, the results don’t seem to arrive as quickly.
When you start out, the results seem intangible.
You might ask yourself, ‘I think I feel different, but do I?’
You may meditate every day for a week and not feel that different, not feel that your mind is any quieter during your practice, or in your normal life.
You may even find that your mind becomes more restless during your meditations, with your inner chatter growing into a roar as you try to sit quietly.
So many people claim – “I tried to meditate but I couldn’t do it!”
But the reality is, if they really did sit down and focus their attention, they actually ‘did’ meditate.
They just didn’t manage to calm their mind very much.
And the reason their mind hasn’t calmed down is they haven’t consistently practiced meditation!
Meditation Science – Your Genes
Out of all the fascinating things scientists are finding out about the effects of meditation, these studies are the ones that amaze me the most.
Did you know that your meditation practice can have a positive effect on your genes?
Researchers have found that mindfulness based meditation can cause quick changes in the expression of genes associated with inflammation.
They found that meditating turns down the expression of so called pro-inflammatory genes that modern pharmaceutical drugs target in an effort to reduce inflammation.
This is pretty amazing in itself, but meditation’s effects on our genes goes further.
Current research suggests that meditation seems to combat cellular aging!
First, a quick biology lesson.
DNA (deoxyribose nucleic acid) is the large molecule that carries the biological instructions for every living thing on Earth.
DNA is made up of lots of shorter sections called genes.
Inside the nucleus of each of our cells, we have chromosomes. Chromosomes are long, tightly packed DNA molecules.
At the end of each of our chromosomes, there’s a kind of biological ‘cap’ called a telomere.
Telomeres protect the ends of our chromosomes from wear and tear, helping prevent them from becoming frayed and damaged at their ends.
This protects the vital information contained within our DNA.
Telomeres have been of great interests to geneticists for some time as it seems that telomere length has a direct relationship with how we age. Basically, they’ve found a direct correlation between having shorter telomeres and having a shorter lifespan.
Amazingly, scientists have found that practicing meditation seems to cause telomeres to lengthen!
This research is still in it’s early stages, but it suggests that practicing meditation can help lengthen your lifespan by directly affecting the health of your DNA.
A pretty amazing reason why we all should be meditating regularly!
- Bhasin, M., Dusek, J., Chang, B., Joseph, M., Denninger, J., Fricchione, G., Benson, H. and Libermann, T. (2013). Relaxation Response Induces Temporal Transcriptome Changes in Energy Metabolism, Insulin Secretion and Inflammatory Pathways. PLoS ONE, 8(5), p.e62817.
- Epel, E., Daubenmier, J., Moskowitz, J., Folkman, S. and Blackburn, E. (2009). Can Meditation Slow Rate of Cellular Aging? Cognitive Stress, Mindfulness, and Telomeres. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1172(1), pp.34-53.
- Jacobs, T., Epel, E., Lin, J., Blackburn, E., Wolkowitz, O., Bridwell, D., Zanesco, A., Aichele, S., Sahdra, B., MacLean, K., King, B., Shaver, P., Rosenberg, E., Ferrer, E., Wallace, B. and Saron, C. (2011). Intensive meditation training, immune cell telomerase activity, and psychological mediators. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 36(5), pp.664-681.
- Lavretsky, H., Epel, E., Siddarth, P., Nazarian, N., Cyr, N., Khalsa, D., Lin, J., Blackburn, E. and Irwin, M. (2012). A pilot study of yogic meditation for family dementia caregivers with depressive symptoms: effects on mental health, cognition, and telomerase activity. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 28(1), pp.57-65.
Your Meditation Habit
I can tell you about all the positive effects of meditation.
I can list the scientific studies, I can give you my personal positive experiences, but at the end of the day, it’s in your hands and yours alone if you actually go through with your practice.
The only way you’ll get all these marvelous benefits is by having a daily meditation schedule, your own daily meditation habit.
But please, don’t be discouraged!
There are things you can do to make it easier to create this habit, and I am excited to share some with you here.
I am a big believer in using the minimum effort for maximum results.
As humans we’re actually hard wired to function like this. So when we make things unnecessarily hard for ourselves, it’s no wonder we struggle to make significant, meaningful changes in our lives.
To make meditation into a habit, to make it a part of your regular life, there are many things that you can do to help yourself.
But the best advice I can give you is to get out of your own way. Make it as easy as possible for you to meditate and you’ll be much more likely to do it.
More specifically, here’s a few examples of what you can do:
– Set a regular meditation time – scheduling meditation to a specific time of the day will help you come back on a daily basis.
– Create a meditation space – having a regular meditation place will help you form your meditation habit.
– Choosing a time and a place to meditate where you’re not likely to be disturbed will also reinforce your meditation habit. Your meditation sessions will be more successful without distractions, so you’ll be more likely to keep meditating.
Like I said, get out of your own way, make it as easy as possible for you to meditate, and you will succeed.
Lesson Summary
- You need to meditate regularly to receive the amazing benefits of meditation.
- Forcing yourself to meditate through your will alone makes it unlikely you’ll be able to keep up a meditation practice.
- To give you the best chance of actually meditating regularly, you need to make meditation a habit, a regular part of your daily life.
Today’s Exercise
Today we’re going to apply all we’ve learned in this course and do a 5 minute meditation.
To start, I want you to put aside some time today for yourself when you’re not going to be disturbed.
Find a nice quiet place to do your meditation.
Then, remember the 1st Key – You don’t have to try and stop your thoughts!
Remember to remain detached from any thoughts that come up while you meditate.
When you realize you’ve become distracted by your thoughts, gently bring your attention back to the focus of your meditation.
Before you start your meditation, practice the breathing exercise from the 2nd Key’s lesson to help you calm down and relax.
Now, time to start the meditation itself.
The focus of your meditation will be your breath.
So, when you’re ready, gently shift your attention to focus on your breath.
You can focus on the physical sensations you experience as you breathe, or you can focus on the gentle rhythm of your breathing.
Just remember to keep your focus on your breath for the entire meditation session.
As we’re just starting out on creating a long term meditation practice, keep your meditation sessions to a period of 5 minutes for now.
5 minutes may not seem very long, but if you’re dealing with a really distracted mind it can feel like forever!
It’s best to start slowly, focusing on building a solid foundation so you’re more likely to continue into the future.
To make it easier for you, I’ve put together a guided 5 minute breath meditation for you to use. You can stream the meditation directly below or click the download link and save it onto whatever device you like.
To get the most benefit, try and get in at least 1 meditation session per day, every day.
Time to start meditating. Take a deep breath and dive in!
[waveplayer ids=”1274″]
5 minute Guided Breathing Meditation Download
Congratulations! You’ve reached the end of my ‘3 Keys to Meditation’ mini course!
I hope you’ve found the course helpful and you’re feeling like you can start your meditation practice with confidence.
You deserve all the benefits you can experience from meditating and I hope that I’ve helped you on the path to get there.
I’ll be in touch in a few days with some suggestions on the next steps you can take on your meditation journey.
But, until then, it’s been a real pleasure to have had your attention throughout this course.
Good luck with your practice and I’ll speak with you soon.
Your inner world waits patiently to be explored, and your breath holds the key…
– Simon Boylan