From Chaos to Clarity –
The Transformative Power of Meditation
Dee Diaz:
Are you ready to embark on a journey toward inner peace and vitality? Would you like to discover serenity amidst life's chaos? Have you been thinking about kickstarting your meditation journey, but you're unsure where to begin? Join me in today's episode, where we'll explore the art of meditation, its incredible benefits, and you'll learn practical tips on how to get started from a seasoned expert.
Welcome to the Sparkling Life Coach Podcast.
Hello, Sparkling One. I'm Dee Diaz, your Certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach, and guide on this journey toward inner serenity and well-being. I'm passionate about helping you enhance your well-being through holistic practices to help you live a vibrant life. So today we're delving into how to start a meditation practice because it's a crucial step toward a sparkling life.
In this episode, you'll learn all about embracing the ancient art of meditation. It's a practice that's been cherished for centuries across diverse cultures. We'll unravel the mystique around meditation and share insights on how it can profoundly impact your life.
You know, meditation is a tool for everyone from CEOs to students and even busy parents.
In this exploration, we'll dive into the scientifically backed benefits of meditation and how it can positively influence your emotional, physical, and the well-being of your spirit. And I have the honor of introducing you to Adam Brady. Adam is a certified meditation coach with over 25 years of experience.
So, I'm excited that you get to learn meditation basics from him today. At Sparkling Life Nutrition and Health Coaching, we embrace the concept of primary food. We recognize that aspects beyond our plates nourish our lives. And meditation could be a cornerstone of wellness for our spirit and can beautifully complement and enhance other areas of primary food, like relationships, career, and self-care.
If you'd like to learn more about the concept of primary food, check out episode three, where we discuss Nutrition 101. Imagine weaving meditation into your daily routine, enhancing both your spirit and overall vitality and happiness.
It's not about eliminating stress entirely because that's impossible, right? But rather, it's about building resilience and finding moments of peace amid life's hustle and bustle.
Now let's talk about the incredible benefits of meditation. Studies show that embracing a regular practice can significantly improve emotional health, reducing stress, anxiety, and enhancing mental focus. Some of the many benefits of meditation include emotional health improvement, reduced stress, worry, and anxiety, it increases patience, relaxation, and mental focus, and it improves your energy levels and productivity.
Imagine a practice that requires only a few minutes a day, yet yields surplus of positive effects, boosting productivity and overall energy levels. So it's understandable that meditation continues to grow in popularity due to the lasting effects that positively impact one's health.
Now, you may already be aware of these perks, but getting started on developing a meditation practice might seem daunting. It can feel difficult to slow down, to focus your mind, and come to a state of peace while living in a world that's constantly go, go, go. But with so many benefits and endless resources and tools out there, there's no reason to not give it a try.
So, with the help of Adam Brady, we'll uncover practical steps to help you kickstart your journey as he teaches us meditation basics. As I mentioned, Adam is a certified meditation, yoga, mind, body, and wellbeing coach with over 25 years of experience. He and his wife have led wellness programs and yoga sessions at various corporations and a fortune 100 company.
He's also taught hundreds of private and corporate students the practical art and science of meditation as a powerful tool to enrich our lives on every level. He's the author of two books. One of them I think will be of particular interest to you is his book, The Path to Stillness, A Meditator's Guide.
Check out the show notes for the link to the book in case you're interested in reading it. Adam's methodology is a combination of science, philosophy, healing, and physical strength for a holistic approach to your physical and spiritual well-being. Among his many qualifications, he holds certifications as a CHOPRA Total Well-being Coach.
He's a Primordial Sound Meditation Teacher and a Certified CHOPRA Health Instructor with CHOPRA Global. And his intention is to give you transformational tools to live a healthy, more fulfilling life. So, I'm honored to share this session with you. Let's listen in as Adam explains the basics of meditation.
Adam Brady:
Hello everyone, my name is Adam Brady, and I am a certified yoga meditation instructor, well-being coach, and author, and I'd like to welcome you to Meditation Basics. Now this is a very brief video to help you understand what I consider to be the most essential information about a meditation practice.
It really boils down to answering three questions. The first question is, What is Meditation? We want to understand our terms and really have a good working understanding of what meditation means. The second question is, What are the benefits? Why should you practice meditation? What is your return on investment?
And the third question is, how do I do it? So basically, what I'm going to do over the course of this short, short video is just to lead you through an explanation of these first two questions and then teach you a very effortless and easy meditation technique that we can all do together. So, I've been practicing meditation for 25 years.
It's something I do every day, and it has really transformed my life in, in every way. And I can't recommend meditation enough to anybody that is trying to improve their overall well-being in any aspect of their lives. So, what we'll do here is basically start with that first question, and make our way through, and help you understand, and then give you this opportunity to experience what meditation is, so you can really take it out for a test drive and feel it.
and, and know if it's something that you want to pursue further. Okay, so let's get to our first question, shall we? The first question is, what is meditation? You know, there are some funny, interesting ideas about what meditation is and what it isn't, but basically, in a nutshell, in its simplest essence, meditation boils down to allowing your mind to settle down and calm down into stillness.
Now we have between 80, 60 to 80,000 thoughts every day. That's a lot of thoughts. I know that, but that's a human condition, and there's nothing wrong with that. The problem arises whenever our thoughts become negative, or we tear ourselves down, or they're repetitive, or they lead us to anxiety and worry.
So, what we want to do is find a way just to allow the mind to settle down into stillness. I often think about it as if we went out to, say, like the Mississippi River. And we had a big bell jar and we scooped up some of that water. We put the lid on, and we shook it really hard. Now, of course, it's all going to be muddy and murky and have all kinds of debris and gunk in it, right?
But if you set it down and you leave it alone on a desk or a table for an hour or for a day or for a week, what happens, all of that stuff settles down to the bottom and it becomes quiet and still, and the water's clear enough for you to see through. Your mind works the same way. Turns out we're shaking our own jar day in and day out.
We're pressing our own buttons, we're getting ourselves all amped up, and that creates so much turbulence that it's impossible to see clearly and to really be aware of what's going on in our lives with all this mental turbulence. So, meditation is just a way to allow that, that activity to settle down a little bit.
Meditation is also a way to go beyond with transcending, is really a term for going beyond all the turbulence of our mind. So, whenever we are caught up in all that swirl, it can be hard to understand, hard to see clearly, hard for our mind and body to settle into some healing or, or, or state of calm, peace of mind.
And, and I like to think about this, like you're driving down the highway and you have your GPS on, and as you're, as you're coming up over a hill, you see all these brake lights and you're like, oh my, there's an accident or whatever. But at the last moment, your GPS says, take this exit, and you take the exit, and you get this beautiful country road that bypasses all that noise, all that static, and that activity.
So that's the same thing that happens when we practice meditation. We bypass all this, all this activity that our mind is generating day in and day out, and we get to find some peace and some stillness. Very, very powerful and healing thing to do. Third point I want you to understand is it's also about going to a non-conditioned or unconditioned mental state.
And what I mean by that is when we come into the world, our parents tell us that we are a blank slate. We can, we can be whatever we choose, right? We've got all these possibilities. But then what happens, we go out into the world, we have these different experiences, and those experiences sometime give us feedback.
And it's like, oh, maybe I can't do thatz. Maybe I'm not so good at this. And we create stories and limiting beliefs about what we can and can't do. When we meditate. We go back to that place of infinite possibilities. We open up the door to anything is possible and it's like peeling the layers of a long onion, so we can go back to that that kernel, that pure Essence of who we are.
And from there we can write our own story. We can, we can get rid of that baggage and those unproductive or limiting beliefs and have a much more expansive experience of our lives. The last point I wanna make before we get to our essential definition really is understanding the difference between mindfulness.
and meditation. They're slightly different. A lot of times these terms get used synonymously, but there is a distinction I want to make. The first thing is to understand that mindfulness is a state of mind. Literally, it's like a quality of our awareness, where we are paying attention to the fullness of this present moment in everything that it's offering.
We're not judging it. We're not evaluating it. We're not worrying about the past or the future. We are just able to be right here and right now. And we can do that in lots of different settings. You know, we can have a mindful meal, or you can walk mindfully, and just be totally present in whatever it is you're doing.
Number two, meditation is a practice. It's an activity. It's like an exercise. So, if you go to the gym and you, and you lift weights, that builds up, you know, muscular strength. That muscular strength can be equated to mindfulness, but the actual exercise itself is meditation practice. It's just a mental exercise that we're doing.
There's nothing, nothing weird or woo-woo about it. It's just giving our mind something to do to allow that stillness to creep in and things to calm down. So that's the difference between those two terms. You can use them however you like. But I just want you to understand there is a slight distinction between the two.
So let's get to the essential definition that I want you to take away here. Meditation is a simple and effortless technique that allows us to settle the mind, relax the body, and awaken the spirit. It's just very, very simple. There's not much to it. It's just allowing the mind to settle down, and when that happens, magic.
It is just, it's, it's so good for our bodies. It's so good for our minds and our emotional state, and every layer of our being is benefited by the practice of meditation and allowing our minds to come into that more quiet and still space. Okay, so there's our definition. That's the first thing I want to do for you, share this definition of meditation.
The second thing now, you know, why should we do it? What, what are you, what are you going to get out of meditation practice there? First, we have the physical layer. When we practice meditation, it is really an antidote to stress, and that's probably the number one reason that most people practice meditation in our world today.
We are stressed out beyond belief. All of us are dealing with stress on a regular basis, whether that's chronic stress or acute stress, and that really has a negative effect on us. Effect on how we feel and how we perform. Everything is made worse when we're under stress. I think we can all agree about that.
So, the physical benefits of meditation are the reversal of the stress response, the fight or flight response that you might've learned about like in eighth-grade biology class. So, when you're stressed out, what happens? Your heart rate goes up, your blood pressure goes up, your respiration goes up, your muscles are tense.
You might be perspiring, your blood circulation is kind of wonky, your digestion's off, all those things, plus a whole lot of other bad things that are happening. You're like, your immune response goes down, nothing good happening there. And let me just say that the fight or flight response to the stress response is an important survival mechanism.
It's okay to have it, but we fire it off eight to 15 times a day, not because we are threatened physically, but because We have too many emails, or because somebody said something we don't like on social media, or we have a conflict with a co-worker, or, or whatever that happens to be. So, when we practice meditation, it reverses the effect of the stress or the fight or flight response.
So, our heart rate comes down, our blood pressure comes down, our breathing slows down. our muscles release, our immune system and immune response goes up. So, all kinds of wonderful stuff there. We call it sowing the seeds for wellness whenever we are practicing meditation because it just allows our body to return to growth and healing.
That's, that's its ground state whenever we let some of that stress go. Briefly talking about mental and emotional benefits. They kind of go together. They, they can be broken down into separate buckets there, but for the most part, when you practice meditation, your mind settles. There's a lot more mental clarity.
You can see things with more focus. You can pay more attention to one thing at a time as opposed to the opposite thing that we do, which is called multitasking. Doesn't even really work. Your mind’s not designed to work that way. But you can see things clearly. You can process things better. You have better emotional self-regulation, which means that you can recognize what emotions you're feeling.
You can take the steps to adjust those. You can understand the emotions of others. This is often referred to as emotional intelligence. Super beneficial aspects of a meditation practice is just helping you have deeper and better relationships with others. It helps you manage your own well-being and your mental and emotional state.
So super powerful stuff there. Performance benefits. What do I mean by that? Well, it could be in the workplace. It could be maybe if you're an athlete or if you're a performer of some kind. Any, anybody that is having to kind of be on at any given time, and you probably heard the term being in the zone.
Well, that's, that's often kind of being in that present moment space and really just allowing The flow of the moment to, to go with you or to be or to carry you along and for you to perform well, when your mind is clear, everything is better, you're able to focus, you're able to be at your best to a higher degree than you normally are.
So, there's, there's great value there, whether that's in the workplace, whether that's in, um, you know, your relationships or all these other areas of your life. Lastly, spiritual benefits. Now, regardless of what faith you happen to practice, what we found with regular meditation practice, it allows us to take our spiritual practice deeper.
Regardless of what it is, people from all faiths practice some form of meditation, and it allows them to have that deeper experience. Whatever you happen to believe, you can dive into it deeper. And we often say that that, like, uh, prayer is talking to God, and meditation is listening. When your mind settles down, you can be much more open to that intuitive guidance, to your higher self, to the voice of God, whatever you happen to perceive that to be in your life, you know, honor that and recognize that by practicing meditation, by allowing your mind to settle, you can only expand that experience of higher awareness, spiritual, spirituality, whatever that means for you as an individual.
So, all of these things, and just know that what we talked on here for maybe three or four minutes, this is really just the, the snowflake on the tip of the iceberg. There are so many benefits. There's so much research over the past 50 years or so that has shown Meditation has incredible benefits to every layer of our being.
So, just, hopefully, there's enough of a hook here for you to say, Man, I want more of that. And whether it's sleeping better at night, or potentially lowering your blood pressure, or better relationships, or thinking more clearly, or helping to manage your mind, any of these things, you know, just one of them, when you open the door, you'll find that they all come in.
It's like a package deal. So, it's really, really powerful that when you tap into meditation, all these things start to come in. Okay, so that's the second question. Third question. Let's ask how do we do it? How do we meditate? So, there are lots of different meditation techniques out there in the world. I'm going to share with you what I think is the most basic, effortless, and simple way to practice meditation.
And it basically boils down to simply repeating a word or a phrase in our mind. That's the anchor. And in different meditation traditions, that anchor could be a sound, it could be an image, it could be a centering thought, it could be any number of things. The flickering of a candle flame that you're, you're focusing on.
Basically, the idea is that we put our attention on something and then we continue to bring our attention back to it whenever it gets pulled away. Because it is going to get pulled away, trust me. If you've never meditated before, you're going to find out how very, slippery your mind is and how it wants to take off and, and focus on the past or the future or all kinds of other things.
The moment you say, let's sit down and just pay attention to one thing for a few minutes. So, what we're going to do in this technique, we're going to, first, let me just kind of set the stage for us. We wanna sit comfortably. in whatever position that happens to be for your body. You don't have to sit in any yoga position or cross your legs or sit on the floor.
It is really something that you can sit, do sitting comfortably in a chair, wherever you can sit down and close your eyes. That's fine. We want to sit relatively upright. You don't have to be ramrod straight with your spine, but at the same time, if you round it too much, or if you relax too much back in your chair, chances are very good that you're going to fall asleep.
So, we want to have that alertness in our body and mind, but comfort is so super important. So, make sure that it's comfortable for your body because if it doesn't feel comfortable for you, your body's going to protest. It's going to want to wiggle or move or struggle, or it's going to distract you. So sit comfortably.
We will close our eyes because that kind of shuts off a whole layer of distraction from the outside world. We'll start by taking a couple deep breaths. And as we do that, that's kind of priming the pump, you could say, to help in relaxing the nervous system before we go deeper. And then we're simply going to begin repeating a very simple.
Effortless phrase, which is I am. That's it because meditation helps us to be. We're human beings, right? So, I AM is just the experience of being, as opposed to I am doing something, or whatever that other stuff happens to be, we're just going to allow ourselves to be. So, this centering thought, of I AM, is what we will come back to again and again and again.
As I mentioned, as soon as you start doing this, you're going to notice that your attention is drifting away. It'll run off to thoughts, future, past, grocery list, chores, what work's going to be like the next day, and as soon as you do that, all you have to do, the one thing you have to do is just bring your attention back to I AM.
And you just silently repeat this to yourself in your mind. Just repeat it. I AM. I AM. It's a soft gentle effortless repetition, and we'll do that for about 30 seconds. minutes, really, it will be very brief. There won't be any music playing in the background because that's another way our mind gets engaged.
It's like, ooh, what am I listening to? So, we're just going to sit in silence comfortably. And hopefully you can be somewhere where you won't be disturbed for just a few moments. And if that means you need to close the door, go ahead, and do that.
Dee Diaz:
Wasn't that interesting? Thank you, Adam. I wanted to share this with you because it's a practice that some people feel uncomfortable with because there's so many different types of meditation practices. This type of meditation is a technique that promotes a state of relaxed awareness and helps with stress relief.
It's great for relaxing our monkey mind when it's jumping all over the place and we're having a hard time concentrating.
As you can tell from this explanation, this type of meditation is not about emptying the mind, but really about stilling and quieting the mind, and how beneficial that can be for us, especially if we're experiencing anxious thoughts and stress. I love how he expressed it. We're human beings, not human doings, right?
So, it's good for us to learn stillness. For those of you who would like to experience the short meditation practice with Adam, check out the show notes for the link that you'll find in the mini eBook, along with information on how to work with Adam and contact him for consultation. Remember, Sparkling One, meditation needn't be a solitary pursuit.
Joining a class or workshop can add an element of joy and motivation to your practice. And so, I hope that you'll reach out to Adam. Don't let stress hold you back from living your best life. Start your meditation practice today with the sample meditation example in the eBook linked in the show notes.
Your journey to clarity begins now. As we conclude our journey into the world of meditation, remember that developing a meditation practice is a journey, not a destination. Embrace the process, find what resonates with you, and let this practice infuse your life with vibrancy and peace.
Thank you for joining us on this transformative journey toward inner serenity. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast for more insights on wellness, nutrition, and ways to infuse your life with a sparkling essence.
And I hope you'll let me know either on the YouTube channel, the Facebook group, or via email, how your meditation practice is coming along. I can't wait to hear from you. Remember, your path to a vibrant life begins with small, mindful steps. Because your life should sparkle. It should be exhilarating, energized, and filled with that effervescent sizzle that propels you through a brilliant, vivacious life.
And we can increase the sparkle in your life with integrative nutrition, health and wellness coaching, and essential oils. Sparkle On, and Don't Forget to Sprinkle a Little Sparkle Everywhere You Go. Ciao!
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