Meditation 101: Exploring What Happens During Meditation 🧘🏾♂️
Meditation 101: Exploring What Happens During Meditation 🧘🏾♂️
Issue #76: A Crash Course on Meditation. Podcast Interview with a Breathwork Expert. Redefine Success.
💡 Here are 3-tips to help you learn, grow, and be inspired this week!
🎓 Learn
Have you read the “Tools of Titan” book by Tim Ferris?
In this book, Tim Ferris talks to more than 100 super-successful people like billionaires and famous performers. He asks them about their habits and daily routines.
Here's what's interesting: Over 80% of them do some kind of meditation every day.
In this issue, I’ll give you a crash course on meditation.
First, let me tell you why you can trust me on this. I've been doing meditation for over 300 hours in the last three years. I'm also a certified yoga and meditation teacher. I've read more than a dozen books on meditation and its effects. Plus, I've taught meditation to my employees for two years.
Let’s jump into it!
Why Meditation is Challenging?
Meditation might seem easy, but it's not. When you meditate, your mind is usually very busy. Some common problems people face include:
Feeling like you're falling asleep during meditation.
Not seeing clear benefits right away.
Forgetting what you're supposed to do.
Feeling uncomfortable sitting for a long time.
What We Do In Meditation?
In meditation, we usually focus on three things: our body, our breath, and our thoughts.
Body: In meditation, like body scans, we pay attention to each part of our body.
Breath: In some meditation, we control our breathing to calm our minds.
Thoughts: We observe our thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
Why People Do Meditation?
In other words, what’s the purpose/goal of meditation?
People meditate for different reasons. Some want to reach a spiritual state called "enlightenment." Others do it for health and performance benefits like better sleep, increased energy, and focus. It helps me be more productive.
If you want to dive deeper, there's a book called "Altered Traits" that talks about over 100 studies on how meditation improves our health and performance.
How We Feel After Meditation?
Have you heard about the “Prescription meditations”?
If you have used Calm, Headspace, or any meditation app, you will find several meditations for anxiety, fear, anger, confidence, and other life situations.
In simple terms, there are three main feelings of meditation (and the reason a lot of us) practice meditation.
Relaxation: Practicing body scan or slow breath meditation helps you feel calm and happy.
Energization: Some breathwork techniques (fire breath, Whim Hof Method) boost your energy.
Healing: Other types of meditation can make you feel better emotionally.
What Happens During Meditation?
Meditation is like swimming in the ocean of your thoughts. At first, it can feel tough, but with practice, it gets easier.
Here's what happens:
Surface Level → Busy. Physical. Logical.
This is the top level. We all start here.
Physical (hunger, pain) and Mental (to-do, worries) activities keep our minds busy (like big waves on the top of the ocean).
Our awareness is high on this level, and that’s why we get distracted easily.
Subtle Level → Dreamy. Mystical. Abstract.
Water is calm and more subtle as we go down and deeper.
Once our mind is calm, we descend to a subtle level that feels like dreamy.
You have some awareness of your thoughts and body.
You also start losing the sense of time.
Settled Level → Peaceful. Blissful. Desireless.
This is the bottom of the ocean. Very settled and peaceful.
Once you reach this state in meditation, you are fully content; there is no desire, no thoughts, no awareness (you don’t remember anything),
You lose the sense of time. Twenty minutes of meditation feels like 5 minutes in this state.
During the meditation, we are constantly moving between these three levels.
The beginner spends 80% of the time on the Surface, 15% on the Subtle, and 5% on the Settled level.
The intermediate meditator may spend 50% on the surface, 30% on subtle, and 20% on the settled.
Long-time mediators may spend 20% on the surface, 30% on subtle, and 50% on the settled state.
Even if you spend 2% of your time on the Settled level, I would call it a success.
What are the Short-Term Benefits/Effects of Meditation?
Picture this: every morning, you start with 6 energy points.
An argument at breakfast costs you 1 point, leaving you with 5.
A stressful meeting at 10 am takes away 1 more point, leaving you with 4.
Something happens at lunch, and you lose another point, leaving you with 3.
After meditation, you gain 2 points, bringing you back up to 5 credits.
In the short term, each meditation practice helps you earn a few energy credits, which helps you to deal with stressful situations in day-to-day life.
What are the Long-Term Benefits/Effects of Meditation?
In the long term, meditation works like Colorfastness.
Colorfastness in textiles is the process of ensuring the colors of fabrics remain stable and do not degrade quickly when subjected to various environmental factors such as washing, sunlight, friction, and chemical agents.
The old process of colorfasting was simple.
Dye the fabric → Sun exposure → Re-dye → More sun exposure → Repeat 3-5x.
After the 4th time, it will keep the color perfectly.
The effect of meditation is very similar to this process:
You are the shirt.
Sun is the daily stress.
Meditation is the bucket.
Color is the impact of the meditation.
Therefore, once you practice meditation consistently for a few months, then you will be able to retain more of the benefits of meditation.
Key Takeaway:
Here are 10 simple meditation tips to remember.
🚀 Growth Tip
I interviewed JJ Ruescas, who is an expert in breathwork and peak performance, on my podcast, Peaceful Growth. We talked about meditation, tips, and hacks to improve our physical, emotional, and mental performance.
🤩 Inspiration
By defining our success based on these extrinsic goals, we are setting ourselves up for unhappiness.
PS: Enjoy the Learn + Grow? Please forward this to a friend. It only takes 18 seconds. Writing this one took 3 hours. And if you want to continue learning and growing, I would suggest subscribing and listening to my podcast, Peaceful Growth. It’s free, just like this newsletter.
May the Peaceful Growth be with you! 🪴