The INSANE BENEFITS Of Meditating Everyday For LONGEVITY (Try This Today) | Dr. Mark Hyman

What's the point of it anyway? What's the point of meditation? It's not to get better at meditation, it's to get better at life. If there was something you could do every day to boost your focus, your productivity, to feel energized, to reduce stress, to sleep better, to maintain a positive outlook, to support your whole body health, wouldn't you do it? Well, it's for all those reasons and more that I consider meditation a foundational pillar of good health. I used to think I didn't have time for meditation. Now I know I don't have time not to do it because it's become that important in helping me manage all of my other responsibilities and passions. So why is it so hard to focus, pay attention? Well, Starbucks built a $13 billion business because we need help paying attention. Psychiatrists often diagnose adult attention deficit disorder. I think one in 10 kids is on some type of attention medicine like Ritalin. And they are now prescribing Ritalin for grown-ups who can't focus or pay attention. I mean, I'm not sure coffee or prescription speed, which is essentially what Ritalin is, is the answer to our modern problems and distraction. We're distracted by email, by iPhones, by the ping of a new text message, by bad news on television, by social media, by the stresses of work and relationships, family. It's easy to be overwhelmed and to be stressed and to miss this incredible gift of being alive. The problem is our bodies break down over this chronic onslaught of stress. We get insomnia, anxiety, depression, and by the way, all chronic diseases, heart disease, cancer, dementia, diabetes, all obesity, all are worsened by stress or maybe caused even by stress. So what matters most in life is the quality of our life, the quality of our experience, our ability to be awake, to pay attention, to be present to what's real and true in our lives for both the good times and the bad times, the happy times and the sad times, to be awake to everybody we touch, to our own experience, to the moment we're in, because that's all there is. To the simple, sweet, and simple gifts of just a smile or a touch or a kind deed or breeze on our skin or a firefly flickering in the early summer night. All these things are the magic of being alive and we kind of miss them. when we go through life at 100 miles an hour and are constantly stressed. But doing that, appreciating life, being grateful, which by the way is a very powerful medicine, and you should try it. Gratitude practices are very powerful. There's actually a lot of science behind it. But doing that is kind of harder than it sounds. Our monkey mind gets in the way. Our crazy thoughts and just distractions are always interfering with our ability to be present. So in order to pay attention, we need to be quiet. We need to be able to practice this. We need to know the habits of our mind. We need to be skilled at working with them to not be controlled or dominated by our thoughts and our mind. We need to learn the practice of witnessing our thoughts and feelings without having them overwhelm us, dominate us, or control our lives or being driven by them. I mean, think about it. If you want to go and do 100 push-ups, you just can't go and do 100 push-ups. You got to work up to it. you need to exercise the muscles that allow you to do that. The same thing with the mind. We talk about exercise to train the body, but what do we do to train the mind? We don't do anything. We just kind of bops around in the world and has no guidance or practices that allows you to actually do what we call inner size, to exercise your mind to become a master of your mind. And when you master your mind, you master your life. It's that simple. and not be controlled or at the effect of everything that's going on all the time around you and being caught off balance. So actually how I got into this all into medicine, by the way, was maybe you may or may not know is I was at Cornell and I studied Buddhism. I was my major. I was very interested in the mind and the nature of our consciousness and the ways our thoughts and perceptions control our lives, how to work with them in a juicy way that's brings more love and kindness and compassion and insight into every moment rather than just darkness and suffering and struggle and pain, which most of us go through life with. So it's a very amazing practice for understanding how to master our minds. And that is a key to a good, healthy life. If you are in control of your mind, you're in control of your life. Now, pain is inevitable. Loss is inevitable. Death, illness, war, disaster always have been going on for thousands of years, and they'll always be part of the human condition. but within it, I wondered, as a young man, I thought, is there a way to understand suffering in a different way, in a different light, to break the cycle of suffering? And that's when I really got into studying Buddhism, which is basically a method. It's not really a religion. It's a method of practice and thinking that allows you to actually break the cycle of constant suffering. And I realized back then that there was a way to be more awake, to see things as they truly are, unfiltered by my conditioning, my beliefs, to notice it and to savor it and to love it and to wake up with gratitude and lightness and celebration, the magic of life. It's always there. We just miss it. We just miss it. And so we don't notice it. And that's why often our lives feel so hard. But in order to notice it, you have to be present. And to be present, you need to have a little bit of a quiet mind. and it's not so easy to do that for most of us. Being awake takes a lot of practice. Each of us has to find our own path to awakening, but many of these ancient traditions provide a pathway. You don't have to believe in a particular religion or philosophy or anything. Being present isn't necessarily a religious practice. Meditation is not a religious practice. We've done that throughout the millennia as human beings. We've danced, we've prayed, we've sung, we've chanted, we've meditated, then all sorts of practices to help us to focus our mind. So it's really important to just have a simple desire to be able to show up and be present in your life and pay attention to what's going on without any judgment, without any criticism, without any self-hate, and just to notice the ebb and flow of our breath and our thoughts. That's what meditation is. You're sitting there and you're laying down, sitting up, and you just watch your thoughts almost like you know, clouds going across the sky. They're not good or bad. They're not things that you can control or hold on to or like, you know, ripples in the ocean. You just kind of let them come like a thought is a ripple and it comes and you watch it and you let it go. You don't grab on to it. And that really is a powerful practice. And that's like doing push ups for your brain, right? So like how do you do bicep curls for your brain? You need to do some kind of practice and meditation. is one of those powerful practices. And it doesn't mean you have no thoughts. It's like, people say, I can't meditate. I can't shut my brain off. Well, you're not going to be able to. I don't think even maybe an enlightened master, maybe they can do that for a few minutes here and there, but it's really tough. So the key is really to sit with your mind and to not grasp onto the thoughts and not actually have them control you or guide you. You know, Victor Frankl, who was a psychiatrist, who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning about his experience. And he realized he had a choice when he was there. He was in the most awful conditions a human being could ever experience. He was constantly at the effect of his Nazi guards' behavior and at their mercy. They could do anything to him, and they did. And he had the idea, the notion, that It's really up to us how we respond to our situation. People say, oh, I have this horrible situation. I can't do this or that. But he said, Between your thought and your action, there's a pause. And in that pause lies a choice. And that choice lies your freedom. and it's a very Buddhist idea, right? You basically don't have to believe the thoughts you have, and you also don't have to hang on to the beliefs that are common in your society or that you're conditioned with as a child. You can actually learn to slow down the process of some input, right? Somebody says something, somebody tries to hurt you, whatever. or stressed by an event, whatever that is, and then there's your reaction to it. And in that space, there's this pause. It's just for most of us, it's collapsed into one second or a millisecond. But the key to meditation is it helps you practice the muscle of just paying attention. It's kind of hard, you know, it's not easy, but we have to learn how to be patient with ourselves, to love ourselves, and just kind of not pay attention and get stuck on those thoughts that may not be so great. So it basically helps us create calm in the chaos. And Ron Nash talked about loving non-judgmental self-awareness. Most of us have no clue how to do this, but it's actually really possible. When I was 20 years old, I decided to do a 10-day meditation retreat, a silent meditation retreat. Basically, it was just meditating 12 hours a day, eating in silence, and sleeping. And that was it. and it was really wild. I mean, it was the most extraordinary experience to do as a young man. And it took me a little bit to settle in, but as I began to settle in each day, I felt more and more awake, more alive, happier than I'd ever been. And it wasn't connected to something outside of me. It was an inner happiness, something I'd really never had before. It wasn't because somebody did something or I got something good in my life. It was just this pure joy. of being alive and being able to notice what was around me, the magic of the forest and the birds and nature, how sparkly and beautiful people were. Everything was just like everything was looking like I was sort of looking through brand new glasses where I could see everything clearly. And that was a profound experience for me. And I've done those Retreats over the course of my life, and I find they're profound. A friend of mine just did what we call a dark Retreat, which is going in Cave Pitch Black for a week, which I think is a little scary. But he said he found in that week, he got the most profound sense of safety and happiness and joy just being with himself. And most of us don't quiet down enough to actually be with ourselves or know ourselves, but it's pretty important. Now, sometimes I've gone far away from it, crazy raising kids and building a career, but whenever I go back there, I just feel it's home. And there's a thousand ways to meditate, right? you can do mindfulness meditation, breath meditation, mantra meditation, you can do dancing meditation, walking meditation, breathing meditation, prayer, yoga, all these things are powerful, powerful techniques that allow you to reach that state. So what's the point of it anyway? What's the point of meditation? It's not to get better at meditation, it's to get better at life, right? So it's not just an end in itself, It's essentially a way to calm your mind, to see how things really are, to reduce the impact of suffering in your life and your beliefs and your thoughts and increase your own sense of love and kindness, compassion, your fearlessness, your wisdom, sympathy, empathy, all these things start to come up when you start to calm this crazy inner, I call it the inner, it's just constantly yattering, nattering in your head. And when you're still like that, your life becomes richer, your actions are more clear, your words are more powerful and direct. your ability to see things as improved, your capacity to be engaged in life is enhanced. It's not a retreat from life. It's a way to go fully into life and to cultivate your own power and happiness. So what are the benefits though from a medical perspective? Because those are all life benefits, right? There's a lot of scientific benefits. It reduces chronic pain, it lowers blood pressure, reduces headaches, anxiety, depression, helps you lose weight, balances your cholesterol, improves your sports performance. You know, Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan and Phil what's his name, Phil, whatever it was, Phil Jackson, who was the coach. He was really, he was like an old hippie from the 60s and really into meditation. And he taught the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan how to meditate. And that meditation was a key to their success. Seattle football team also did meditation as part of their practices to improve their sports performance. Meditation also improves your immune function. It helps you sleep better. It boosts serotonin, the happy mood chemical, increase your creativity, helps you fix your brain waves, calms them down, helps you learn, focus. pay attention, increase your productivity, enhances your memory, and so much more. I actually, I find it's a super power. If I'm, like, having a little lull or something and my brain is going to shut down, I do a 20 minute meditation. I feel like I had a three hour nap. It's super powerful. So I don't meditate for both reasons. I mean, it's. Those are nice. And there's side effects and. And yoga. After me, I was always a yoga teacher before I was a doctor, and I. practically a form of yoga that we called meditation in motion, which was very mindful meditation based yoga using the breath and awareness to actually guide your body through different postures. But it's really, the reason I do it is to be more awake to life, to myself, to cultivate my own sense of peace and loving kindness and compassion for me and others. The good news is you don't need that much time. You can do 10 minutes, five minutes. 15 minutes, 20 minutes, a place to sit. You don't even need something quiet. I meditate on planes, on trains, on buses, and you just kind of go in. I go in and I'm like, I have my little noise headphones. I use sometimes, but you really don't have to be anywhere in particular. I mean, it's obviously better if it's super quiet and it's helpful, but you don't have to be. So just going through meditation, what is it? How do you do it? It's pretty easy. You can sit in a comfortable position. You could, you know, sit without back support or not a back support. You should relax your shoulders, you should just put your neck and your head straight, your chin down a little bit, face relaxed, and then just start breathing through your nose and just feeling your belly rise and fall, your ribs expand, and your collarbones and shoulders move as you breathe. And just notice your breath. One of the forms of meditation is simply noticing the breath, exiting the nose and entering the nose, exiting the nose, entering those. When you lose track and you start thinking and drifting off or thinking about what you got to do tomorrow, just come back to the breath. It's really simple. So just watch that simple breath and that's a very powerful way. Also, when your mind kind of jitters off, you just keep coming back every time. There's not your failing in meditation. There's no judgment here. It's really just practice. And maybe when you first start doing it, it'll be like three seconds before your mind takes off somewhere else. You can only do one pushup. But after practicing a while, you'll be able to do like 10 push-ups or 100 push-ups, which may be like really safe focus for a long time. So, just start with five minutes, start with 10 minutes until you can sit for 20 or 30 minutes. I actually recommend a form that people are not used to it, that they can try. It's called Ziva Meditation. You can go to zivameditation.com, it's an online course, easy to do, super simple, super portable. I do it everywhere I go, planes, trains, automobiles everywhere. And I find it's such a life hack, I don't know how I'd live it out. I used to think I didn't have time to meditate. Now I don't have time not to meditate. So I encourage you to check it out and learn more about how to bring this into your life as a key life skill for many, many aspects of your health and your life and your well-being if you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here. Not good. Even when you're an expert in something, you can't function when you're tired. So next to sort of nutrition exercise, and maybe even before it, some would argue, sleep may be the fundamental foundation of health and disease prevention and even weight control.