EP 23: Three Things to Make Meditation a Slam Dunk

02/16/20 • 19 min

Alexa Z Meditates - Your Life, But Better

In today's episode, I am going to discuss three things to make your meditation a slam dunk. By slam dunk I mean a practice that is simple, effective and best of all YOU WILL STICK TO IT! There are many methods, brands and apps, and apps for your apps, but today let's get back to the basics. Let's get back to the why and the how and get your practice on the tracks headed to the destination of your choice. You can study until you are old and gray, but the practice does not work unless you practice! Meditation is a training, and after years of teaching and watching students stop and start, get excited and sometimes frustrated, I think I have found the secret sauce to success.

Whether you are just starting out, you keep starting and stopping or have started but don't feel like the results are robust enough to keep you coming back, well hold on. I will layout a simple plan that will help you to that magical destination. One where you can find peace clarity, compassion, courage, and your inner badass.

Now get ready, hit subscribe, smile, get a beverage, and I will right back. You don't want to miss this.

Hey There, Alexa Z here with my favorite three things that can make your meditation practice a slam dunk.

First, my suggestion is for you to listen to this podcast until the end; no note-taking necessary. Please hear me out, listen and, more importantly, feel what I am trying to get at. In the end, I will give you a link where you can print out a few fun things to use to make these three elements of my secret sauce all your own.

When I first began to teach meditation formally, I always remembered my teacher Sarah McLean saying all you need to meditate are three things: a desire, a focus, and a nonjudgmental attitude. This made sense to me and I have repeated it at least 10,000 times over the years. However, of late, I have found a way to expand on all three of these. Right from the get-go, to help make your practice very personal because you are unique and your needs are individual. One size does not fit all.

In my first one on one session with a client, we go through the following exercise, and it tends to shed light on why the person wanted to learn to meditate, to begin with. I also help map out how on earth this practice is going to fit into their life efficiently and effectively. And most importantly, add an extra dose of accountability.

Let's Dive In

NUMBER ONE: Why Are You Meditating?

Desire: Before you take on something new most likely you have a desire, even if that desire was nudged on from someone like perhaps your doctor telling you have to lower your blood pressure. Or maybe the urge came from a place deep within like the desire to have less stress and more peace in your life. Or possibly to improve something like memory, your sleep, focus, or creativity. Or maybe to change a habit like quitting smoking or alcohol or improving your diet. This is where I get people to dive deeper.

The best way I can do this is through my own example:

Panic attacks - I had them and I needed them to stop!

If I really had someone walk me through this, which later came through a lot of soul searching and a lot of counseling, I would have discovered

Low self-esteem
Poor body image
Fears (financial, abandonment)

What are all of the reasons you want to meditate? If it is just one, I ask you to dig a little deeper. In my freebie at the end, you will be given a one-page worksheet to get you to develop the full story. I want you to tuck that completed page away and pull it out every time you think you don't want to practice or when you are wondering if anything is starting to shift. It is all connected!

NUMBER TWO: Start Simple and Stick to It!

Focus – As I said when I opened the show, you can learn many methods of meditation, mainly a type of focused concentration (think zooming in) or open awareness (wide-angle lens). The second type should come after the first type, a bit more advanced and there is no prize if you go to open awareness first. You don't go to hot, challenging yoga vinyasa flow level three if you have learned the basics first. Well you can but you will become frustrated and most likely will hurt yourself.

With that being said, I am going to make a recommendation. Start with body and breath awareness and do it every day for a bit. It is incredibly useful and how relaxing does it sound to know that you can sit down without having to make a decision on what to try today. It was like when I decided to wear jeans and white button-downs every day. It was as though life gave me a giant gift, mainly of time. And thankfully, I own 9 white button-downs. Back to Meditation. Body and breath awareness. I have people still doing this simple but profound practice year after year.

To help you start or get back on track, I will give you a 10-minute bo...

Now get ready, hit subscribe, smile, get a beverage, and I will right back. You don't want to miss this.

Hey There, Alexa Z here with my favorite three things that can make your meditation practice a slam dunk.

Let's Dive In

NUMBER ONE: Why Are You Meditating?

The best way I can do this is through my own example:

Panic attacks - I had them and I needed them to stop!

If I really had someone walk me through this, which later came through a lot of soul searching and a lot of counseling, I would have discovered

Low self-esteem
Poor body image
Fears (financial, abandonment)

NUMBER TWO: Start Simple and Stick to It!

To help you start or get back on track, I will give you a 10-minute bo...

Previous Episode

EP22: Emotional Intelligence – Let Meditation Enhance and Expand this Valuable Asset

Intro

In today's episode, I am going to shed a little light on emotional intelligence. You might think you don't need to listen to this episode because you know all about it, you might have even read Daniel Goleman's book, Emotional Intelligence. Hold tight! I am here to talk about how meditation can improve your emotional intelligence, why we should always enhance emotional intelligence, and how it can make you a better person and a better leader. Increasing your emotional intelligence is just one more magical gift that meditation can offer.

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Hey there, Alexa Z here! Before we jump into the topic of mindfulness, meditation, and emotional intelligence, I would like you to take a moment and check-in with yourself. Ask yourself, what are my emotions and feelings right now. When I work with children, I ask, "What's the weather today?" For example, sometimes, I feel stormy and sunny at the same time, as though my weather is a bit oxymoronic. Hold on to your thoughts on what your emotions are right now, and I will talk about them again a little bit later. If you have read Daniel Goleman's book on emotional intelligence, you may have some knowledge about this topic.

I personally like to keep it simple. There are excellent reasons why we need emotional intelligence. Usually, you hear about emotional intelligence with leadership. Everyone should be a good leader, whether you are a leader in a company or your family, or merely making your way through life. Imagine if you could not perceive that an employee or a family member, or your friend, is frustrated or upset. Imagine if you could not tune in to what others are feeling, and you are unable to connect with them. Research calls tuning in to another's emotions as emotional intelligence. Research also indicates that emotional intelligence is what differentiates great leaders from average leaders.

In Daniel Goleman's book, he includes a study that involved approximately 200 executives. The study found that their emotional intelligence, also known as EQ or emotional quotient, was twice as relevant to performance compared to their IQ. and their technical abilities.

Approximately 70% of the time, people with high emotional intelligence can outperform and attain superior leadership positions at a faster pace than those who have a high IQ and technical abilities.

I have always been fascinated by emotional intelligence. I am relatively smart, but I do not have a stellar IQ. There are some aspects I can't change about myself. But, I can improve my emotional intelligence. Not only can I develop my emotional intelligence, but I must continuously work on it. Your IQ stays the same, the way you learned in the past is the same way you learn today; it does not change. Your personality doesn't really change. I always say that I am an introvert hiding in an extroverts body. That won't change.

Emotional intelligence continually comes up when I teach meditation. One of the first things I ask is, what are your desires to meditate, and what was one thing that brought you here to learn how to meditate? Very often, the response I hear is to stop being so emotional and to stop being reactive. I also understand their to desire to balance their emotions, logic, and reasoning.

At the beginning of this episode, I asked how you were feeling. You likely had to pause for a minute and think about it. It's not easy to tune into your own emotions. Those who can tune in to their feelings are excellent leaders because they also can easily tune into the feelings of those around them. For example, if I am in tune with my emotions and feelings, I can easily tune in to the emotions and feelings of perhaps an employee I am meeting. I can use what I have learned about my employee's feelings and emotions to determine my actions; I want my actions to have the most significant outcome and success for myself and my employees. The act of properly using your emotional brain isn't only applicable to your employees; it applies to your family, your friends, and everyone you come in contact with. Tuning in to your feelings and those around isn't as easy as it sounds. Our emotions are coming at us so fast that it seems that they do not travel through our brain in a logical order. We can fix this!

What are emotions? Emotions are a neurological response to very strong stimuli. Your rational brain needs to catch up to your feelings. As your emotions are coming through your brainstem and entering your brain, we need to differentiate and discriminate amongst those feelings before they get to our executive prefrontal cortex, before we react.

In meditation, we are helping our brain to become more aware of our feelings and emotions; and also our bodies. The more we meditate, the better we are at discriminating and tuning in to our own and others' emotions resulting in more rational thinking and deci...

Next Episode

EP24: Demystifying Meditation with Sarah McLean

Summary

In today’s episode, with the help of Sarah McLean, the owner of the McLean Meditation Institute, my personal teacher, and a woman with an unusual and exciting background, we will demystify meditation. There are so many brands and types of meditation out there; it can be downright confusing. The important thing is to understand a bit, not make it too hard, and, most importantly, do not delay your practice! Without practice, you are missing all the amazing benefits of meditation.

Sarah’s joining us from Santa Barbara, California, and will tell you her journey to demystify meditation. She will tell you tales of her time in the Army, in an ashram in India, and travels on a nine-month mountain bike trek through faraway lands. She will touch on many experiences from Transcendental Meditation, working with Deepak Chopra to ah-ha moments on a rooftop in Georgetown, DC. She did all the work, and we all benefit from her discoveries.

On last week’s show, we talked about three things to make your meditation a slam dunk: desire, focus, and a nonjudgmental attitude (which I learned long ago from Sarah herself.) This episode is perfect timing because Sarah will take those three things and go deeper as she unravels the mysteries of meditation.

My suggestion is to listen intently but listen gently, like the awareness of breath in meditation. You know you are breathing but get lost in the beauty of its simplicity. Do not control or change; just follow and enjoy.

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Podcast

Hey there, Alexa Z here! I am so excited and a little nervous because I have Sarah McLean, my meditation teacher, on the line. She is kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule to help me, help you demystify meditation, specifically the different types/brands of meditation.

I found Sarah after many years of meditating. I started meditating when I was 17 years old because I had terrible panic attacks. Meditation was a pill for me. I wish I could go back and start again; I would because now I know all the opportunities meditation has provided me, and I would have had a more consistent practice from the start.

Alexa: I want to welcome Sarah! Again, I am a little nervous and excited. This will be a fun back and forth conversation. I am also a bit jealous because I know you are in Santa Barbara, California, and the weather is a lot nicer than the rain, drizzle, and cold here in Annapolis, Maryland.

Sarah: Well, it is a bit like heaven on earth, sorry to make you jealous. Maybe we can practice Mudita, which is sympathetic joy, I hope you can feel happy for me, that I get to live in Santa Barbara after trying to convince my husband to move here for 17 years. It's great to be here, and Maryland is not too shabby.

Alexa: No, it isn't, and knowing that I can visit and take more classes at your new meditation center with you in Santa Barbara, makes me super happy. So let's, get right into it. Let's demystify meditation. The reason why this came to mind is that my students, clients, and even strangers come to me and say they have been studying meditation but have not started their practice. Typically, they say they are waiting for a particular time in there life to begin meditating or that they need to continue to learn about meditation before starting a practice. Sarah, what do you think about all of this. Why is it so confusing?

Sarah: There are so many different types, categories of meditation

Uses
Formal and informal
Religious, historical origin
Different names in other languages
Brand new/Brand names

I'll share a little bit about my story and how I got into meditation. More importantly, how I realized I did not know anything about meditation.

Alexa: Oh, that's perfect!

Sarah: When I was younger, I was in the military. I wanted to be a spy, but that didn't work out. I wanted to understand the mysteries of life. I did not become a spy; instead, I became a behavioral specialist; that's when I started to learn the mysteries of the mind. I worked with Soldiers who suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD). Back then, we used medication versus meditation. Luckily for me, I was introduced to a body awareness practice. I was sitting outside of a psychiatric hospital, where, unfortunately, that's where many Soldiers who were really suffering would end up. Our whole platoon was sitting out on the lawn when one of the male nurses introduced me to a body scan. He had us all laydown, and he guided us from our head to our toes, allowing us to relax. It was only about 10 minutes. In the end, I realized that I worked with very stressed Soldiers, and I didn't even realize the amount of stress I was carrying. That moment planted a seed in me. After I got out of the Army, I looked into contemplative practices. I spent a lot of time exploring world traditions, look...