Meditation is not only for Monks, Hippies and Self-Help Gurus. Meditation is for anyone interested in preserving and improving their brain’s health and it’s ability to function optimally on demand. You can also add improved general mood and immune function to the benefits of meditation. Strongly backed by the science and physiology of hormone, lymphocyte and neurotransmitter changes meditation affects nearly every bodily system. There is unanimous agreement in the healthcare world for the many benefits of meditation. What is it? Why and how does it work? And most importantly: How can I meditate easily and effectively? Those are the three questions we will answer in Dr. Brad’s simple guide to meditation.
Meditation is as simple as sitting still and listening to your breathing, actually, that’s all it is. No weeklong silent retreat needed. No guru the Beatles went to needed. All you need is a lung or two and just a second or more to listen to your breath, and do nothing else. Just breathing and listening to it and feeling it. And only doing that. No thinking about anything; not your job, not your family, not financial stuff, NOTHING! Only breathing. JUST BREATHE. No rumination about yesterday‘s happenings, no worry about future anxieties. Be nowhere else but sitting where you are, zero distractions feeling the glorious oxygen rich air fill your lungs. JUST BREATHE.
Breathing wizard Wim Hof, also known as the Dutch iceman, has amassed many world records, over 20 in fact. His records are for unthinkable superhuman feats like ultra marathons through the Arctic WEARING ONLY SHORTS, and surviving hours incased in ice. Wim gives all the credit for these accomplishments to breathing... well, and love. To say he’s “a hugger” is an understatement. The Iceman man is a passionate lover of life. After losing his wife, and raising their young children alone, Wim rediscovered love in the power of cold breathing... and meditation.
Multiple infamous mountain peaks have been climbed by the Dutch Wizard, often in world record time and always with newly trained students. The super athletes summit these frozen peaks wearing nothing more then shorts. Let me repeat that because it is nearly incomprehensible. Wim Hof, and many of his students, have crested the peaks of mountains the likes of Everest and Kilimanjaro wearing no survival suits, no oxygen tanks, no climbing equipment... just shorts. This superhuman feat is accomplished by a specific tempo and depth of breathing which is able to hyper oxygenate the blood and protect the body. I know this seems like non-sense Facebook Clickbait, but these are truly astonishing feats and facts, not fake news. This superman exists and his superpower is breathing, and his tagline is “JUST BREATH!!!“ or to be more specific the NSFW version that he loves most:
“BREATHE MOTHERF*CKER!!!”
Hour long documentary (free on YouTube). Motivational for the whole family:
The superhuman story of how The Iceman came to be.
What is Wim’s purpose? Perhaps it is to demonstrate the simplicity of using only our own breathe to be superhuman like him... and to spread his infectious smile and laugh. His message is simple and concise. We don’t even breathe to our potential, and everyone can breathe. We could delve into the many systemic conditions he has coached into remission, simply with breath training but is not our purpose. Our purpose isn’t to climb Mount Everest by learning some extreme new rapid breathing technique, or even to change the way we breathe at all. Our purpose, in meditation, is to simply sit still and to listen and feel your breath and your breathing. Just breathe.
How long do I have to sit and “Just breathe”? Start with a single minute, build up to 10 or 15 minutes. That’s it, perform often, every day ,couple times a day, whenever needed... It’s a reset. Our brain and mental well-being require resets as we change the many hats we all wear in life. The less time you have for it, the more you need it. We all feel stress, let’s talk about the concept of stress and how the body must interpret all stress.
Stress dictates both weakness and strength in every major system in the body. We need stress to grow up to be big and strong, but excessive stress, without regular, and repetitive, rest and recovery every system will eventually break down to failure. Our brain and mental well-being is no exception. Our brains require regular resets, rest & recovery. Meditation offers us this, with countless short and long term benefits in today’s sensory based screen society. Meditation is the rest required from excess stress to allow for our stressors to become growth rather than damage and decline. In a world where even the most advanced neuroscience has left us with few tools for neural healing and health meditation is both a powerful and effective one. JUST BREATHE!!!
- Dr. Brad Murray
Here are a few of my favourite YouTube guided meditations from Andy Puddicomb, monk, and founder/creator of the HeadSpace App for meditation. It’s great, as is the Calm App for mediation:
Alt+ctrl+delete… Reset your computer. Everything works better after a reset. (10minute meditation)
Bookmark this one and play every morning with eyes closed. (10minute meditation)