Is Meditation Dead?

It struck us as funny that day that one of our colleagues came in with an experience she had at a restaurant meal with friends recently. When she was talking about wellness with her friends and mentioning meditation practices, the woman declared that “meditation is dead,” meaning passe or not in style anymore. And though we laughed about the ridiculousness of it, it stuck with us. Meditation dead? Is this how some people view meditation or any other nourishing wellness practice–as something that comes in as a trend and then goes away? Of course, there are trends that come and go, usually because they are of the ilk of quick fixes. Meditation, however, is here to stay. The practice of it is older than history itself. Research indicates that it has served as a spiritual endeavor for humans since the dawn of our existence. In 2007, psychologist Matt J. Rossano suggested that rituals and meditation practices around campfires between 200,000 and 150,000 years ago played a crucial role in the evolution of human working memory. He posited that the act of "fire-gazing" not only rewired our brains but also enabled the emergence of symbolism and language, fundamentally shaping our humanity. So, in a way, meditation is in our DNA from ancestors past. In our latest podcast, we talk about our own practices of meditation and how it doesn’t really need to look or be a particular way. It takes many forms and that’s what makes it completely doable for everyone. We also mention The Wellness Hub and their weekly Wednesday meditation group open to everyone at our space in Red Bank. *Note: In the podcast Debbie makes an error in attributing a song lyric to Nirvana when it is the song "Machinehead" by Bush If you are interested in Meditating, Wendy is a teacher on the app Insight Timer. Find her Grounded with Wendy meditations here. Here’s the transcript: Wendy 00:33 It's spring, and it's glorious out right now. And everything is popping. The flowers are just kind of making me high a little bit. Debbie 00:40 Yeah, for sure. For spring does that it's so motivating. It's so, it's so cheerful, and it gets you wanting to do a whole bunch of stuff. Wendy 00:50 Just the whole idea of renewal and birth is just really beautiful. If we pay attention, or it can feel like complete chaos. Debbie 01:00 Yes, I mean, every transition of season feels a little chaotic. But I think that the spring one is especially chaotic, because I think we all feel like we need to be productive and get a bunch of things done. Wendy 01:11 Oh my gosh, yeah. And in the winter, we're a little bit more quiet. And just the darkness leads to a little bit more quiet. But the lighter nights, it's really like I'm still supposed to be doing something, right. So true. It's harder to wind down when it's laid out. Debbie 01:31 It is That's very true. And the thing about spring, too, is I think, including me, it's a time where you want to take on new things and take on new habits and say, Okay, this is a good time to start this. Wendy 01:44 And it is it is. Debbie 01:45 That's a great time to start. Yeah. Wendy 01:48 And we have one number one thing we wanted to talk about today as a habit to start, right. And it stems from a conversation we recently had with someone who claimed that meditation is dead. It's so passe, it's gone. It's over the trend is a trend gone. The trend of meditation is gone. Yeah. And we disagree completely. Debbie 02:12 Completely! It's funny, because, yeah, there are so many health trends; there's so many things that come, don't necessarily go, but they become popular for a little while. And then everybody tries it. And then it, you know, it doesn't get it, it kind of goes away from the scope of a lot of people. But there's a core of people that continue it. Yeah. And perhaps that's what's happened with meditation is that it got really popular again. And then that popularity is kind of, you know, it's not being marketed as much by the wellness people. The fix it people aren't really marketing it anymore. Wendy 02:57 Yeah, that's so interesting. But it's such a core practice. It's so ancient, just the idea of stillness and quiet is the best medicine for, you know, practicing the quiet is the best, it's the best medicine of all in a chaotic time. Debbie 03:18 Absolutely. And I think the best part about it is you don't have to be an expert, you don't have to find a quiet room and sit and stillness for an hour. It's not like that. It can be like that. It can be. But I would love to get to that point. But I'm certainly not here right now, Wendy 03:38 I certainly cannot sit in lotus position for an hour. My body just doesn't do that anymore. Debbie 03:46 For me, I'm kind of like a meditation snacker. Like, I find moments throughout the day that actually call me to meditate. And so I will take a minute or two or three, to find my breath to scan my body to just find stillness. And that's my, that's how I'm meditating these days. I really have not found a practice for more than a few minutes at this point. I will. But I'm practicing right now. Wendy 04:14 Yeah, so you're doing these little mini ones. Yeah. Building up the practice. I think that's beautiful. Because some people have such high expectations because they think it's supposed to be a certain way. Yeah. And we've had clients, multiple clients, say, I'm not good at meditation where it's not for me. Right? Debbie 04:32 I've heard so many people say that. Yeah. Wendy 04:36 And first of all, there's not good or bad meditation, right? It's just a practice. Yes, it can come and go or it can be a practice that you really foster. Debbie 04:49 It's a wonderful habit to begin if you haven't started it yet. It's an absolutely wonderful thing to start maybe with 30 seconds, maybe with a minute. You could do it on your own, which is what I do. And sometimes I use an app, if I really want to kind of tune in and hear another person's voice or another person's bells or whatever it is that they use on the app to get me meditating. But there are several apps that are out there. Two of our favorite, I think you use Insight Timer, Wendy 05:25 I use Insight Timer. And I've been well, I'm not going to say how long I've been doing it--a long time, so much so that it's the first thing I do. When I wake up. After I go to the bathroom, I sit and I crawl back in bed, and I sit up in bed and I get cozy with my cats. And I meditate, and it might be five minutes, or it might be 25 minutes. It's just what I'm called to do right at the time. Yeah. And I think for me, allowing myself to do what my body's calling for--my mind, or my time or my space is calling for each morning without being rigid about it works for me, right now in my life. Debbie 06:07 Yeah. Right. And, and for me, I would love to do that that would be ideal for me. The other app that I use is called Headspace. I don't have that lifestyle where I can get out of bed and go to the bathroom and come back into bed because I have a puppy who would really disrupt my meditation if I got back into bed. So that's not a time that I meditate, I have to finish feeding the cats get getting the dog walked before I can settle back down into meditate for my few minutes for my morning meditation. And it really is just a few minutes before some kind of interruption happens in my house. So yeah, and that's who the people who say “it's not for me, I can't sit still and keep my focus.” Yeah, you know, neither can I. But what I do is I sit there and I get thoughts. I say, oh, there's that thought. Hi thought! I let go of it for a moment. I'll get back to you later. And I do that, I can't tell you how many times that happens in just the three minutes. Exactly. That's it's so normal. And I don't beat myself up about it. Because I've learned that that's just the way my mind works. And it's happening less, the more I meditate, that happens less. So, the more consistent I am with meditation, the less my mind wanders, and that's really one of my motivations to keep doing it. Because I noticed that difference. And if I let it go again, I noticed the thoughts come back more often, so for me my motivation to meditate is so that it can get better for me because then I feel better. Wendy 07:43 Yeah, we feel better when we meditate because the practice gives us a little bit more agency when things come at us in the world. And so when we've got these inputs, or when I'm cut off on the parkway on my way to work (my example that I use often). I have become less reactionary, and I know it's my discipline of meditation and just being with the breath and sitting and sometimes my meditations are walking meditations too. So some people can be silent and go for a walk in the woods or go for a walk by the water or in your community and no iPod or earphones or anything like that. Just silence. Sometimes people take the meditation app with them on a walk-- that can work too. I think making your own in any kind of discipline practice is really what we're trying to encourage people to just start someplace. Do something that creates some sort of, shall we call it, peace within or calmness or reflection or stillness. Maybe some people could send us a note and say, What does meditation mean for you? Or what's the gift that it gives you? Debbie 09:05 Yeah, I've noticed I've said this before, I noticed a big difference in Wendy when she was doing her practice for a while. And it kind of just dawned on me one day when she came into work. And she had said that she sat through traffic. And I noticed a couple of months ago or last year when she would say that she had this tightness and this anger and this time it was more just like “yeah, I sat through traffic.” I noticed the big difference with you. And so it's sometimes it's easier to notice a difference