‘Meditation Completely Changed My Life’

Learning New Things is Stressful

By its very nature, education is stressful because education involves developing new thinking processes which ‘startle’ our unconscious minds, leading to a fight or flight physical response, which in turn prepares us more for running away than deep and meaningful thinking.

Long-term learning requires the building of new physical connections in the brain and this does not happen well when we are feeling stressed.

Here at High Performance Learning, we have found that meditation has helped many of our students (even quite young ones) learn how to manage their stress levels, and so learn more effectively.

Meditation is Not Just a Stress Management Tool

Just treating meditation as a stress management tool misses the point of the practice. Mediation is a tool for developing a form of self-awareness called mindfulness. Mindfulness is the ability to watch what is going on in your mind and your body in a detached way rather than just being caught up in your thoughts and actions. This mindfulness enables you to develop skills that make you more emotionally and intellectually intelligent. Mindfulness makes you a more effective learner.

You may have heard me say these things before so I thought you would find it informative to hear the experiences Rob Green has had since he started mediating – so I asked Rob to write about his experiences. Rob is one of our clients who, as an adult, has overcome the learning problems that had been holding him back throughout his childhood and early adulthood. When he first started working with us he was in a very stressed state and was drinking heavily. He has now finished his university degree and stopped drinking completely – just a few of the benefits he has had from meditating for about an hour a day.

Two years after beginning meditation you wouldn’t recognise Rob from before – the transformation has been dramatic. I was very pleased when he agreed to my request to share his thoughts with you. Here is what he had to say:

Rob Green’s Experience of Meditation

I started meditating in January 2011 for 30 minutes twice per day after Chris Brooks recommended that I do so as part of my personal development.

I have stuck to that routine almost without fail (on odd occasions in the early months I missed one session per day but ALWAYS did at least one) and now I often meditate for more than 30 minutes per session because the benefits of doing so make it a no-brainer.

Meditation has changed my life for the better, in fact after only a few days of meditating and experiencing this ‘new way’, I realised that life without meditation felt more chaotic, overwhelming and stressful.

The important thing to note from my experience is that, while I knew I was stressed and overwhelmed before, it took meditation to uncover the extent of it.

Meditation increased my self awareness, but most importantly, gave me a better life by helping me manage my thoughts and emotions.

The Benefits of Meditation

Below are some of the benefits that I have derived from meditating as part of my daily routine:

• Increased calmness
• Perspective
• A heightening of the senses and awareness of how the body is feeling
• Increased ability to concentrate
• A greater sense of well-being which for me manifests in eating better food and not drinking alcohol. I now understand what feeling healthy is and because of the meditation the bad feelings associated with junk food and alcohol are magnified. Tip: If I have had a hard day I meditate for 5 minutes instead of having a beer and it gives me more euphoria, more calmness and no negative side effects
• A better quality of sleep
• Increased self awareness
• Increased patience
• The ability to concern myself with the present
• Being aware of the fact that it is up to me how I view what happens to me in my life
• The ability to differentiate between neuroses and issues that are real and in need of attention
• Improved performance in sport (tennis in my case) to the point where I think without meditation I would have lost some matches. I won a match in my opinion due to meditation within 2 weeks of starting to meditate.
• Some may argue with me on this but I feel as though I am a more pleasant person to have a conversation with.

My Experience Of Meditation

• During meditation it is important not to worry about ‘not doing it properly’ or whether or not you are deriving any benefit from it, or perhaps you feel like you are thinking too many thoughts or need to be doing something else.
• The human brain is a thought machine and does not operate in a linear way like a computer so try not to worry about the fact that thoughts are constantly appearing and try to live in the current moment which is one of the key skills that you will acquire from regular meditation.
• I view my meditation as the act of sitting back and watching myself and my mind
• While on one hand I try to control my thoughts to a certain extent (by counting breaths or following the advice of guided meditation audio that I utilised to get myself into the routine early in my meditation career), during the process I do not get frustrated or agitated when other thoughts take over.
• I have found that as I have become more experienced and ‘better’ at meditating, that towards the end of a session when my mind is calm and still, it is like watching myself in a mirror but with my eyes closed and all of a sudden I have an acute awareness of every part of my body.
• As my meditation practice has developed I find that keep finding out things about myself that I didn’t realise before, and things I didn’t want to know or had been hiding from myself . . . meditation is that powerful!

I Haven’t Got the Time Not to Meditate

In closing I would like to address one of the most common objections that I hear from people – when I suggest to them that meditation would be of great benefit to their lives: ‘I haven’t got time to meditate.’

Well, having meditated daily for over 2 and a half years I am of the opposite view: I haven’t got time not to meditate because without meditation I am far less effective in my daily and nightly activities.

Rob Green 16/9/2013

Thanks Rob.

Rob learned to meditate using some of my Guided Meditations. Using Guided Meditations is an easy way to get started with meditation.

I have also written a number of other articles about the benefits meditation – especially in terms of how it will improve your learning.

Chris Brooks
Principal
High Performance Learning

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