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Back to Basics: Why Meditate?

Description

You've tried meditation. Maybe you dip in and out of it. You feel a little better for a few days, then life gets loud and you forget. Then you snap at someone, or you fire off the email you regret, and you think "I know better than this." This episode is for you, and honestly, it's for me too.

In this back to basics episode, I bust the biggest myths about meditation. I talk about why we don't meditate to clear the mind, why five minutes really is enough, why a wandering mind is not a failed mind, and why the real test of meditation is not how peaceful you feel on the cushion, but how you handle the family barbecue, the doctor's waiting room, and the colleague who winds you up.

If you've ever felt like you're doing meditation wrong, this is your invitation to start again. Simply, honestly, and from wherever you are.

Key topics

• Why meditation matters in real life, not just on the cushion
• The seven biggest myths about meditation, busted
• The gap between thought and reaction, and why it's the whole game
• Why little and often beats long and rare
• How to know if your meditation practice is actually working

Companion meditation

Inner Peace Meditations #99: Peace Right Where You Are. A simple five minute guided meditation to go with this episode. No visualisation, no setup, no special place. Just breath, thoughts, and the peace that's already here.

With thanks to

Sin, Margaret, Annie, Melike, Helen, Laura, Adam, Dominique, and a special welcome to Linda who has just joined as a new monthly supporter. You are the reason this podcast stays advert free.

If this episode meant something to you, please share it with someone who might need it, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or treat me to a coffee at stevenwebb.uk.

So on this podcast, I want to do some myth busting and I want to get back to the basics of meditation and why it matters in real life, not just on the cushion. And I'm not talking about the kind of meditation that is sat down with some candles in the bath for some peace and quiet.

If you're meditating for just a little bit of chilled out peace, that's not why I'm talking about this kind of meditation. And before I go any further, I will say I've never enjoyed meditating. My mind's never enjoyed it. The human side of me has never enjoyed it.

If I'm sitting there thinking, I'm normally thinking about my stomach or Facebook or something I said a few days ago or something I need to do or an itch or something, there's always something I'm thinking about apart from the moments when I'm not thinking. And that's just a pause between the thinking before my subconscious mind gives me something else to do think about.

But what is the benefits of meditation? Why should you meditate? And how long do you meditate for? And the real signs whether meditation is working or not?

That's what we will cover on today's Back to the Basics. Why meditate? So hello, I'm Steven Webb and welcome to Stillness in the Storm, the podcast that helps you find some firm ground in difficult times.

No fluff, no quick fixes, just honest down to earth wisdom from someone who lives it every single day. So like the Buddha said, to be alive is to suffer. So we're all suffering.

Anyway, right before I begin today's episode, let's have a huge thank you to the people who keep this podcast completely advert free. And this week that is sin. Margaret, Annie, Malike, Helen, Laura, Adam, Dominique, and we have a new monthly subscriber, Linda.

Thank you, every one of you. You are awesome. You help to keep the podcast free, the inner peace meditations advert free. And you can.

Well, because of you we can get on with the show if you'd like to join them or you want to contact me. Ideas for any meditations or ideas for any podcast or just ask me a question.

Just head over to stevenwebb.uk, it's in the show notes and I will answer within 24 hours. So I'm talking to anybody that finds meditation hard, that somebody that dips in and out of it.

You do it for a few days and you feel a little bit better because you know you're doing something about you're suffering or you think it's something you ought to be doing. And then you end up giving up on it.

And then you end up snapping at somebody or you end up cutting someone up, or someone cuts you up on the road and you shout. Or you get anxious and stressed and you're like, I know better, I can do better. Why am I doing this?

And you end up blaming in the shame loop and you get anxious and overwhelmed and stressed. That's who I'm talking to. And I may as well be talking to myself because that's me.

If I don't meditate for about four or five days, I end up snapping at someone. I end up with less compassion, less wisdom, less understanding and just more overwhelmed. And I end up dropping stuff. And that's the reality. So.

So first of all, let's answer the question, why meditate?

Now then, if you're meditating, to have a little bit of peace and quiet in that moment, I suggest run a bath on some incense sticks, get a good book or watch a lovely romance, I don't know, read a Mills and Boone book. Because if you're meditating for a bit of inner peace in that moment, it doesn't have long term benefits.

Do it by all means, but don't expect it to have any kind of real profound change on your life. Genuine meditation, if you want it to reduce your suffering in life.

It's about like a weightlifter going to the gym, lifting weights that are going to build up their muscles.

If you're just doing it for inner peace, that's like going to the gym and chatting to the person behind the tail for an hour about what you're going to do and then you leave without doing the workout. That's what meditation with an incense stick. And you're just sitting there enjoying it. That's not what I talk about.

We're not talking about contacting aliens. We're not talking about having some 3 or 5D vision of the world. We're not talking about healing your body in a magic way or anything like that.

You have many benefits of healing and many benefits of inner peace and all that. But we're talking about good old fashioned weightlifting for the mind.

So you end up more compassionate, more caring, you end up wiser and you end up creating less pain for yourself and others. Does that sound good?

So before I actually talk about the practice and way that, the way meditation can actually help, these are the scenarios that meditation, the result of meditation can help with.

You know when you're at that family barbecue or the Christmas dinner and you got someone at the table that's winding you up, a relative or a family member, and you just.

Your blood's boiling and you're getting anxious and you just want to just scream at them or you want to walk out, or you just can't stand the sight of them or anything like that. It's to be able to be in that presence, but. But not wound up and not stressed and having a wiser, different view on it.

Or when that email comes and winds you up and before you practice, you just react and you fire one off.

And I fired off a WhatsApp message this morning in annoyance when I read something on Facebook and went straight into the Lib Dem group and fired one off and it's like I deleted it. These things happen. We're human.

Meditation doesn't get rid of the human, doesn't get rid of the passion and the emotion when things go wrong or when things go right. Meditation helps when we have desires that are a little too overwhelming, and the same as when we're feeling a little too happy.

You know, sometimes when things are going just amazing and we just like to grab hold of it and we want to. Like, we don't understand it and we get really stressed about the situation, but really we're really happy.

You know, all these things that make us wonderfully human.

And it can help us in the doctor's room when we're waiting, you've got two minutes, but you've got no cushion, you got no app and it's noisy, or it might be really quiet and you don't know what the results are going to be. Meditation can help with the thoughts that come and go in that moment, or thoughts that come and we end up going with the thoughts in that moment.

And you're stressed with a colleague at work, or you're just stressed generally with the kids, anything like that. There's that tiny little gap between the thought that arises and your reaction. That's the whole game. That's what meditation trains.

You have feelings and emotions and you have thoughts that arise. Meditation increases the gap between what's happening in any given moment and what you do with it. And, you know, you've always.

We've always regretted something five hours later and gone. I wish I hadn't said that. I wish I hadn't done that. I wish I hadn't picked up the phone and shouted, whatever we do when we make a mistake.

And then five hours later, why did I do that? I wasn't thinking straight at the time. It felt like it wasn't me. Well, that's because there wasn't that gap of wisdom in the middle.

Then if we just had that little bit of space, if we were that wise person at the end of the bar in those movies, when the whole room in the bar is fighting and you got that guy or the female at the end of the bar, just really calm and they just drink their drink and they walk out with the end because they haven't got involved because they're really chilled or drunk maybe, who knows? But that's the game. That's what it's about, is creating that gap. So I want to do some myth busting before I actually get on to the practice.

So is meditation about clearing all your thoughts? No. That's probably the number one and biggest myth. If you understand this straight away, you're probably ahead of many people already.

You have a thought. The human mind has evolved to think. That's its job. It's designed to think. That's all it can do.

It's like asking your mind not to think is like looking at a colored piece of art and asking your mind not to see the color or been in a noisy room and saying to your mind, don't hear it. It's impossible. That's why we have to have noise canceling headphones, because if we could do it ourselves, that'd be easy.

But expecting the mind not to shut out the noise or shut out a color or not to see something or not to hear something, when or like, oh, I don't. So I don't like the taste of that food, but I'm going to eat it anyway, and I'm going to switch off the taste. It's impossible. You cannot do it.

So expecting the mind not to think is like asking the heart not to beat or the liver not to filter your blood. It's not going to end well. So your mind has evolved to think. Awesome. Brilliant. It's what makes you human. That's what is brilliant about the mind.

Here's the thing.

When you have a thought arising, you're sat there and you're at a doctor's, and you might think about the test results, say, or you might think about the appointment because you're going in to see them, about a pain in the shoulder or something, or a lump or something like that, and your mind then goes to it and it starts to go on a story. Suddenly that pain in the shoulder is arthritis. And you're not going to be able to move in six months.

And then six months later, you're going to be stuck in a bed or in a wheelchair. And then you're going to be in so much pain, you're going to be like your uncle that had arthritis and you're going to end up dying early.

And before you know it, within about four seconds, you've gone from a painful shoulder to you're almost dead or in a wheelchair or the same with a lump and things like that. Then the problem is when you go into these stories, you don't know if they're true or not.

And very often you get into the doctors and the doctor will say, yeah, you've pulled a muscle, should heal in a few days, or we'll get that scanned and it might be a benign lump. Who knows? The point is, you don't know it's necessarily bad and you don't know it's necessarily good.

So what meditation does is you recognize a thought and then there's a little gap and you go, okay, thanks for the thought. I don't know if it's true. So I'm not going to go with it. The same as my analogy of trains coming into a station.

Thoughts like trains coming into a station, choose which ones to get on. You can even choose when you get really good in it. You can choose to be the driver and where that train goes. Now, I want this story.

I like this thought. I'm going to go with this one. And we do that in like vision meditation and like imagery meditation.

So I've got a meditation about being a peregrine falcon, my favorite bird when I was a child. So imagine sat there on a bench and you see a peregrine falcon flying above you.

Well, imagine being that peregrine falcon and what the peregrine falcon can see, it's a way of taking another perspective, seeing the world from a different angle. That's going with the story. That's fine, that's thoughts. But you're choosing to. Just the same as when you're aware of your breath, that's a thought.

You're giving your mind something to do. So you have thoughts, but you are not your thoughts. And because you're not your thoughts, you can choose what to do with your thoughts.

So not about clearing the mind. If you want to clear the mind, go sleep or have drugs and toxins and all the other things. That's about clearing the mind, that's about avoidance.

I'm not suggesting any of those things. I think we should meditate and take more control of how. What we do with the thoughts when they arise. So is meditation religious? No.

Essentially, there's meditation or contemplation in nearly all the religions of some kind. There's prayer, there's, well, contemplation. They're all different forms of focus or concentration.

Really all we're doing is noticing, simply a form of awareness, noticing your breath, noticing your thoughts. There's nothing you have to believe, you know, you don't even have to believe your thoughts.

Now then there's religious practices like Buddhism where I have several techniques and try to guide you into it. But this is a form of sar Zen, just sitting, meditating and being aware. But you don't have to relate it to Buddhism because it isn't really is.

Just sit and be aware.

Have you sat in a doctor's surgery or you're sat in your car just before you go into an appointment or going to that busy cafe to meet a friend you haven't seen for a while. Just sit and become aware of how warm the car is.

Become aware of how dirty the bonnet is, that you got to clean it soon and just smarter that thought. Become aware of your breath or the clouds going over. It really doesn't matter what you become aware of.

Is that religion or is that just being in the present moment, just being here? You can draw on Buddhism and stoicism, it's all sorts, but it isn't a practice of religion. That's the thing.

Then if you're praying, you kind of ask him for something. Meditation is not about asking for anything. It's about just being aware of what is. So how long do I have to sit for it to work? Five minutes?

Honestly, even two. The doctor's waiting room is maybe two minutes or maybe 10 minutes. Don't know how long you have to wait there.

Just sitting there, being aware of whatever's doing helps. It gives an instant karma of without going into all the deep thoughts and stories, you're instantly having more peace.

You're instantly not in planning autopilot mode.

The thing is, but just like the gym, I mentioned earlier about weightlifting, if you go to the gym once a year and you work like hell five hours, or maybe you do 12 hours of weightlifting, how long is that going to last? That's not going to build your muscles up, it's just going to injure you.

If you go to the gym, 30 seconds and just lift weights for 30 seconds three times a day for 12 months, that's going to do way more than 12 hours. So little and often is better than loads and not very often. If you sit down on a Saturday morning and meditate for 40 minutes great.

It'll really help you on that Saturday, but it ain't going to do much for you on Monday.

But if you've done five minutes every morning, couple of minutes at lunchtime, couple of minutes at tea time, and every time you think about it, whether you're at red traffic lights or going through a door or and just become aware, ah, what's going on right now? How am I feeling? What's the temperature of this room, what's my foot doing, what's going on around me? Just do that as often as you can.

That will have an effect because it's not about when you're meditating, it's when you're not meditating and you're not aware and someone says something that triggers you. If you've practiced the muscle enough, you'll instantly jump into awareness and go, ah, they said something. That's them projecting.

They don't really mean what they say, or they're ignorant, or they just don't know, or they haven't mind read me. It's amazing how much we think people can mind read us and how much we can mind read them.

The amount of times that someone says to me, well, you knew I was going to do that. I'm like, how did I know you were going to do that? You knew you were going to do it. I didn't know you were going to do it.

So the amount of times that we think we're mind readers or we think others should be mind readers or because we know things going slightly off topic now, but in all those situations, the more you meditate, the more you take your little bit of time out, the less you'll react and the more you'll have that wisdom and compassion about you. You have that in abundance. You have all the wisdom and compassion that have evolved for hundreds of thousands of years.

Every book you've read, every experience you've had, you've learned your subconscious mind has learned. You have the answers to nearly everything within you.

But you need to have enough time to look it up, think about it and be in control of the situation. I'll give you an example.

When you're entering a place when your mind is full of thinking, your body is anxious and it's racing, consider how much you're in control of that situation. When someone comes up and says hi, now enter that room where your mind is a little clearer, you're not really thinking about anything.

You're very aware of the people in the room, you're aware of the person walking over to you. You're aware of how you're feeling, whether you're feeling a little anxious, that's fine. It's not about not feeling anxious.

It's about knowing you're feeling anxious and knowing why. That awareness. And when that person walks over to you and says hi, you're like, hi. It does. It's totally different.

Which one are you more in control of? The second one or the first one? The second one, of course. And we all do it. We're all capable of that deep, compassionate wisdom.

How many times in your life have you done that and gone, do you know what? That was amazing of me? And how many times have you not done that and went, oh, my God, that wasn't me. So you don't have to. It's not about.

If you do have a practice of 20 minutes every morning, that's going to have a profound effect on you. Within months, you will literally be able to handle nearly every single situation.

And if you develop a practice like that, then please become my teacher, because I'm not managing that. You know, sometimes the odd time, I can do it.

I can have some background music and I can do it to help silence my mind to a very repetitive music that has the same eight chords. I can sometimes do it, or I can sometimes do it with stifu and just repeat that constantly. And my teacher said to me, stephen, just say stifu. Stifu.

S T F u stefu. I said to him, what is that? What is the few? He says, shut the fuck up. And I'm like, why? What? He said, no, that's what it is. S T F U Shut the fuck up.

Just sit down and shut up. I'm like, okay, yeah, but my mind thinks he said, yeah, then shut up. Yeah, but my mind goes into the story, then go, yeah, then shut up.

Always bring it back. And that's the point, is always bringing it back. So do you need to sit in a lotus position?

No, sometimes it helps to keep the back up straight, and it keeps you awake. It stops you falling asleep. But if you can only sit in a chair, like me, I'm paralyzed. Sit in a chair. If you have to lie in a bed, lie in a bed.

You know, if you're standing at the kettle or doing the dishes, just do them. You can meditate while doing dishes. Just do the dishes. Just do the one thing. The position is not really that relevant.

If you're sat in a really strict position, you have an itch. Itch it. But do it mindfully. Do it. I have an itch I'm now going to scratch that itch. How does the itch feel? It's now gone. Okay. What was I focusing on?

Just do it mindfully. That's the practice. That's the game. So what if I'm bad at meditation because my mind wanders? Your mind will wander if your mind doesn't wander.

Your mind's not doing what the mind does. The only thing is thoughts will come up. You don't have to go with them. The wandering mind is you going with the thoughts.

Now then very often, sometimes when you're tired, or sometimes you'll catch the thoughts after a good few minutes into a story. Oh, I'm in story. Back to breath. Sometimes you'll catch it within seconds. Doesn't matter as long as you eventually catch it.

Reward yourself in the back and go, well done. That was like you lifting a weight. Well done. You lifted it. Does it matter if lifting the weight takes 10 seconds or half a second? No, it matters.

You lifted the weight, so it matters that you did bring the mind back. That's where all the reward is. Is it just the way to relax? No. So the body knows how to relax, and the same as the body knows how to breathe.

And I know a lot of meditation teachers and there's a lot of information and a lot of pros on having certain types of breath, counting breath, different things. It's a way of keeping your mind busy, doing something in some way. It's a way of getting you into it.

Taking three deep breaths connects the mind and body helps to relax. Personally, I think the body knows how to breathe better than I do. It's been doing it way longer than I have. And just the same, relaxing.

If I try to relax, I can't relax. But if I allow the body to relax, it's really good at it. If I allow the body to breathe, it knows exactly how to breathe.

So it's not just a form of relaxing. It's not something you have to physically do. It's something you allow it to do. And how soon will I see results? This is.

Well, instantly you'll see the results because you'll feel calmer. The results within days and weeks. Like everything, if you start to learn to play the piano or guitar, you'll see really good results really early on.

And then those results will start plattering out. The better you become. Because there's that learning curve, I think 20 hours and you get really good at something.

But the next 20 hours, you only improve another 10%. Meditation's very much the same, but how do you know it's working? This is the key.

It's working if you're more compassionate, you're listening to people more, you're understanding more the situation, you are regretting what you say and do more often you're in situations with family or work colleagues and you're not being triggered. Okay, I'll rephrase that. It's not that you're not being triggered, because you'll always be triggered, but you don't react to those triggers.

So someone will give you the trigger. Someone will do something, maybe even subconsciously, maybe you don't even know what triggers you have. And they'll come up.

It's whether or not you end up firing the gun, so to speak. It's whether you end up snapping.

It's whether you end up going into the other room and complaining to your work colleagues because someone said something. And you'll know when it's not working if you meditate.

Give me an honest three weeks of meditating twice a day, five, ten minutes, and then you give it up for a week. I challenge you that on your third week of not of doing it, you are a lot more calmer than the week you gave it up.

You'll notice when you're not meditating, and it's like very much like pills. It's very some tablets that bring conditions under control.

On the tablets, you think you don't no longer have the condition because you're not affected by it.

So you end up forgetting to take them, or you think you don't need them anymore, you stop taking them, and then you realize you do need them, you have to go back on them. It's very much similar like that. When meditation's working, you don't realize it's working.

But when it stops working because you're not doing it, you realize it worked, if that makes any sense whatsoever. But you will see results instantly and over time.

And the people around you will see results because you'll become wiser and more compassionate, or you'll use the wisdom within you and you'll be more compassionate. So the core message before we hand off, because this has ended up quite a long episode, that peace isn't something you create.

It's already here underneath all the noise. Meditation just helps you notice it. It takes you out of all the noise. It gives you control over your thoughts, whether to go with them or not.

You don't have to do it perfectly. There's no perfect meditation. You will not enjoy meditation. You will not sit there and go, oh, loving this. The mind will always think.

The mind will always come up with ideas. The mind will always try to wander. That's what it does. Just sit down and shut up again and again and bring it back. Do that weightlifting then.

I've recorded a quick five minute guided meditation to go with this episode. It's Inner Peace meditations. It's number 99 and it's called Finding Peace right here.

No visualizations, just breath thoughts is exactly what I'm doing. Do this twice a day for the next month. The 21 days is a myth. Do something in 21 days.

Someone wrote that in a book about 40 years ago and it's repeated forever. A habit becomes a habit when it's a habit and for different people and different things, it'll be more of a habit than you know.

Sometimes people build habits in three times. Other people build a habit over 20 years and it takes 20 years to become a habit. Don't worry about 21 days.

Just do the meditation a couple times a day or just once a day. It's five minutes and I think you'll see a difference. So that's why I wanted to get back to basics now.

I'm Steven Webb and thank you to everybody that helped. Please leave a review if you can. That'd be awesome. Especially if you're on Apple or Spotify.

Favorite and follow it and leave a review on those two platforms because that will really does help. Let's get more people just meditating a couple of minutes a day and let's get more compassion and caring in the world.

Let's bring out that wisdom that we have. We know we have. Thank you very much and take care. Be kind to yourself and I love you.