Meditation 101: How to Meditate without Moving to the Himalayas (Intro)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living 101 Masterclass Series. Today I'm thrilled to be chatting about Meditation 101, how to meditate without moving to the Himalayas. As the title of this class suggests, we're going to ground meditation into day to day life. We don't need to be a monk wearing robes, levitating in the Himalayas to get extraordinary benefits from meditation and helping you experience that is what this class is all about. So as always, we're going to look at my top 10 favorite big ideas on how to go about doing that. So before we jump in, I want to share my absolute favorite quote on meditation. This is from Jonathan Haidt, one of the world's leading positive psychologists. In his great book, the Happiness Hypothesis. Here's how Jonathan puts Suppose you read about a pill that you could take once a day to reduce anxiety and increase your contentment. Would you take it? Suppose further that the pill has a great variety of side effects, all of them good. Increased self esteem, empathy and trust. It even improves memory. Suppose finally that the pill is all natural and costs nothing. Now would you take it? The pill exists. It's called meditation. Now that's from a conservative scientist. I love science. I love grounding this wisdom in evidence based research and I love that thought. So with that, let's take a quick look at our top 10 big ideas. Then we'll jump into each in more depth. Our first big idea. We need to start with why. Any habit that we want to instill needs to have a strong why if we want it to stick. I'm going to provide five what I believe to be strong. Why's starting with training your mind, literally strength training for your mind is what scientists call meditation. We're going to optimize our immune system. We, we're going to dial in our willpower. We know how important willpower is. We're literally going to change our genetic codes, expression, epigenetics, fascinating stuff. And we're going to connect to something higher than ourselves that divine within. Ultimately we're going to become a better human being. But you need to have a clear sense of what your why is if you want to sustain a powerful meditation practice. That's our first big idea. The second big idea is we need to make 100% commitment. 90%, 93%, 95%, 97%, 99.9 even is different than 100% commitment. Now we can't make a 100% commitment to every single habit we want to build. But if this matters to you, 100% is where it's at. We talk about this in habits 101 in other places. We're going to come back to it in the context of meditation. The third big idea is that you need to be a hero every day. Remember the Sanskrit word arambasura, which means to be a hero in the beginning? Eknath Eswaran, one of the world's leading meditation teachers, taught us that too many people start things like a meditation practice and they're a hero in the beginning. And then the moment it gets hard, they tiptoe out the back door. We're going to talk about some key thoughts to make it stick. Don't run up Everest in a sprint. That's not how you approach anything that you want to create as an enduring practice in your life. So we want to be a hero and every day rather than a hero in the beginning. That's our third big idea. Now with that high level framework, we're going to get into some nitty gritty nuts and bolts. The fourth big idea is an answer to the question, well, how do I sit? How do you sit when you meditate? Jon Kabat Zinn answered this wonderfully. He says, sit with dignity. Dignity is the word we want to focus on. We're going to talk about the power of our posture. So just like we have power poses that elicit a different physiological response, our posture reflects our mind and vice versa. So we want to sit with dignity. Do that right now. Imagine how you living and breathing and sitting with dignity, feel and show up. That's a powerful phrase and a powerful word. We're going to talk about that. Our fifth big idea is to pick an anchor. We want to sit with dignity. And then what? Then we want to pick an anchor. All meditation practices, whether it's vipassana or Transcendental Meditation or whatever, are focusing on bringing your mind's attention to a certain point. It could be your breath, it could be a mantra, it could be prayer, it could be the visualization of something. But the key aspect here is that they each have an anchor, something to ground your mind. In Sailors we when they want to make sure they don't drift away, what do they do? They throw an anchor overboard. If you want to make it so that your mind is not drifting, what do you need to do? Throw an anchor over. We're going to talk about that powerful stuff. Pick an anchor. The sixth big idea. Well, how do we start our meditation? I love to breathe and drop in is what I think about taking five simple breaths. If you want to change your physiology and your mental speed, dropping out of beta and getting into alpha. The quickest, most reliable way to do that is to breathe. We want to get out of the fight or flight into the relaxation response. We're going to talk about my core breathing strategy and use that as our entry, our kind of ramp into our meditation practice. Our seventh big idea is to say, oh well, when our mind inevitably wanders, you sit with dignity, you pick your anchor, you, you breathe deeply, right? You're focusing your mind and then it slips. Then what do you do? You bring it back. It slips again, you bring it back. You don't get upset with yourself. Warm, neutral, you observe that and you bring it back. Oh, well, is what Herbert Benson describes it as in his great book, the Relaxation Response. Oh well, my mind drifted again. Let me bring it back. That's just another repetition and strengthening your mind. That's how we want to approach it. And then of course, number eight, brush your brain. No big deal. Just brush your brain. Don't judge your meditation. Don't judge your tooth brushing. Don't judge your brain brushing. Not a big deal. And those worst meditations in quotes that you think are the worst meditations might in fact be the best. When you needed it the most. Felt like it was just, you know, your mind going everywhere and it might go everywhere, but you taking that time made a marginal gain in your day that you may not be aware of. So don't judge your meditation. Simply show up day in and day out. And remember, it's the consistency that matters. Our ninth big idea, Reduce the variability of your behavior. This is another key habit building exercise. And Again, check out Habits 101 for how to install new habits in your life. Right? Use willpower wisely. Install habits so they run on autopilot. Well, one of the key ideas we want to bring to light in meditation is really reduce the variability of your behavior. In other words, meditate at the same time of day if you can. We're gonna talk about cue routine reward, right? Habit building 101. You need a cue, then you do something, and then you get the reward. Well, almost all meditation teachers tell us the best time to meditate is first thing in the morning. And then they caveat it with and or whenever's best for you, whenever you can make it happen. But ideally we, we remember the AM PM bookends from Masterpiece Days 101, and we choose to insert it first thing in the morning. It's what I do. The cue. Getting up in the morning is a very consistent cue. And if your routine is, then I meditate for 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes, whatever. I get the reward of feeling grounded. That's a really powerful way to install the habit. We'll talk about that in more depth. That's our ninth big idea. And finally, the tenth big idea is, is to remember that all life is meditation. We're not meditating to become good meditators. We're meditating to become better human beings. That's a really powerful insight. And when we get that, we use every single moment as another opportunity to meditate, to become just a little wiser, just a little more integrated, just a little bit more compassionate and grounded and enthusiastic about life. So those are our top 10 big ideas. So if you enjoyed that quick overview, I think you'll love the full class. Become a member and get instant access to this class. Plus a bunch of other optimal living 101 masterclasses and over 300 philosopher's notes and a bunch of other goodness. It's only 10 bucks per month. I think you'll love it. Join thousands of other cool peeps at BrianJohnson Me Membership. 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