Fit Meditation Into Your Day (No Matter How Busy You Are) | Tom Cronin

Wow. We had an amazing response to that last video. So many people from all around the world joining us together, finding out more about how to get stillness into their life. I'm so grateful, so humbled, and thank you for joining me here today. We had so many questions and comments, and I'm going to be answering a lot of those questions a bit later on in this video. I'm going to be sharing with you my special method that I discovered on how to get those gaps back into your life. And when you hear this, which you wouldn't have heard of anywhere else before, you'll discover how easy it is to embrace meditation into your life. And that's what took my life from dark to light. Now, in our last video, what we explored was how meditation was the complete opposite to what you possibly ever heard it was before. Meditation will have thoughts in it. And we discovered that there's a reason why you can have thoughts in meditation and that actually having thoughts in meditation is indicative that you're meditating very well. And that's because we've got this thing, this big body of ours that we have to carry around with us, and it stores stress. And we discovered that when our body goes into a deep state of rest, like it does when we meditate, it will start to naturally unlock stress and reorganize itself at a higher level. It's the natural tendency for the body in a specific state of rest to reorganize and operate at a higher level. This will always happen in our meditation. And it's this very process that's going to stimulate our body back out of that metabolic state of rest that we achieve in meditation and hence stimulate the mind. And there's a direct relationship between mind and body, and those two both play a very integral role in your meditation experience. You've probably been led to believe that meditation is some spiritual experience or a mental practice, that the natural fact it's as much about your body as it is about spirit or mind. If anything, I would suggest it's possibly even more so. We also discovered that for meditation to be something that you can embrace into your life, for me personally, it had to have four specific characteristics. It needed to be fast, which does sound very strange, having a fast meditation. What I'm talking about is it needs to be something that you can fit in in your day. And I didn't have one hours or two hours to sit in meditation. And so I wanted something that I was going to be able to fit in within 15 or 20 minutes. And secondly, I wanted a Meditation that was going to take me deep. I don't want to fluff around on the surface doing lots of imagination. I wanted to actually go deep into a very deep state of rest. So that was one of the qualifications that I was looking for in my meditation experience. Thirdly, what I was looking for was it had to be blissful. I was looking for something that was going to be in some way charming, because if it was full of friction and uncomfortable, then there was very little chance that I was going to be able to maintain that on a daily basis. Fourthly, and I think this is probably the most important thing of all, was that I got ongoing support. And that support was really important for me as a meditation student to enable me to get meditation consistently in my life. Because at times we do get a little bit distracted. We do get off track, and we feel that without that support, you can easily drop your meditation practice. So those are the four things that I was looking for in my meditation practice. And this is something that really changed my life. My life was such a dark place. As you heard in video one, I had chronic anxiety, these deep, dark panic attacks that just were so debilitating, and I didn't really even know what they were, but they were just horrible waves of fear and dread that were crippling for me. And then that metamorphosed into depression, and I was really feeling incredibly depressed, very, very dark. And to be honest with you, my life got to such a point, I didn't really want to go on. I didn't think that there was any light at the end of the tunnel. And I just didn't know if I could keep going on with life. It was that challenging for me at that point in my time. And I managed to find my way to a doctor, and they told me that I needed to take antidepressants and see psychiatrists. And, you know, it wasn't something that I resonated with, and it was something that I knew I had to work out myself, and I had to get into my mind and resolve the problems that were going on in there. And so I was drawn to looking into meditation. And that's when I discovered this technique that really did change my life. It took me to a whole new level. Got rid of all the anxiety, the panic attacks, all the depression. And now I just travel the world as a keynote speaker, as a meditation teacher, as a retreat host. And I live the most incredible life simply because I put aside just morning sessions and afternoon sessions in stillness, bringing back those gaps. And these gaps are Crucial. And that's what I want to talk about. Now. How are we going to get that those gaps back into your life? And it's very simple. It's by using a method that I came up with called the 7220 method. And that sounds very complicated and very un meditation like I know, but bear with me because I'm going to explain this. In your day, you have 7220 minute segments in your full 24 hour period. So that's 72 gaps of 20 minutes that make up your day. Now if you put aside just two out of those 72 and allocate two of those gaps of 20 minutes to sitting in meditation, the other 70 will just be amazing, an incredible experience and there's a specific reason for it. So by taking two out and you're probably thinking, I don't have two to. Well, let me explain how you'll find to despair. For example, I used to lie in bed at night as an insomniac for eight hours every night. Those were the nights that I wasn't going out. But those nights I was home. I'd lie in bed for eight hours every night, but I was only sleeping for about four or five hours. It would take me one to two hours to fall asleep and then I'd wake up around two or three in the morning and I'd be awake for another one or two hours, finally dropping off to sleep and just before the alarm went, off to go to work. So my sleep that I was allocating to that time was very inefficient and very ineffective. I was waking up very tired, very cranky, getting sick a lot of the time and just becoming overwhelmed with life. And then in the day, those demands that were being placed upon me was so overwhelming that again, I was getting very limited capacity out of my day. It wasn't until I started putting just two gaps aside out of those 72, but everything changed. I started sleeping for eight hours. So now I was doing the same thing, lying in bed for eight hours, but I was getting eight hours worth of sleep. And that enabled me to wake up fresh and full of vitality and being very creative and effective in my day. Not only that, in my day I stopped having these stress responses to demands in life. If we look at life, life isn't stressful. We have stress responses to particular demands determined by the state of our physiology, the state of our nervous system, the state of our mind. So if we're tired, frazzled, we've been drinking, partying and doing crazy things, and our nervous system is overwhelmed, then we're going to have a lot of stress responses to particular demands in the day. This is what was happening to me. In the end. It got to the point where the idea of walking out of the house was way too stressful a proposition for my nervous system. But once I started meditating and my nervous system repaired itself, I could take on any demand. And now I can travel the world, speak on stage in front of huge audiences, delivering keynote talks on stillness and meditation, and having no problem with that. And it's all due to one thing alone. Out of the 72, I put two aside for stillness. And that enabled the other 70 to become an amazing experience of creativity, adaptability, joy and love. And that's how when we think about our day, just think, where are you allocating your 7220 minute segments? And I assure you, if you put two aside to sit in stillness, to immerse yourself in the beautiful, rich restorative state, deep, quiet silence, the other 70 will just explode in joy and a dynamic vitality. So that's my simple 7220 minute method. Once you discover that, you'll find it very easy to put aside that time for your gaps. In my next video, I'm going to be responding to more of your questions. But firstly, I want to get through some of the questions that we had in our last video. And these were great questions. I chose these specifically because I really resonated with them. The first one was, is meditation going to get in the way of my religion? The reason I like this question is because it's the very question that my mother asked me when she went to learn meditation. See, my mother is a devout Catholic and she loves Jesus, she loves Mary, and she loves going to mass on Sunday. But she wanted to learn meditation because she wanted to relax. She, she wanted to be calm. I said, mom, it won't get in the way of your religion. If anything, it's going to deepen your, it's going to deepen your faith, take you closer in your relationship to that religion of yours. And so she learned meditation. And you know what? It did deepen her connection and it did deepen her faith. And she still to this day goes to church on the weekends. Meditation is not about religions. It's about your physiology, your mind and your nervous system. And it enhances whatever it is you're putting your attention into. The second question, this is a really prickly question. It's a very uncomfortable subject for a lot of people bringing money and spirituality, money and meditation together. It's A very challenging thing for us to talk about for some people. And this question is very valid, and that's why I brought it forward. The question is, why should I have to pay for meditation? Isn't it a spiritual practice? This is something that I feel really needs to be addressed, and it's really about understanding what meditation is. You go to a chiropractor and you pay them money in an exchange for something of value. You go to a doctor and you'll pay them some money in exchange for something of value. The way we value things in our world is through that financial exchange. And really what's happening there is. It's an energetic exchange, one thing for another thing. If you value what you're getting, then we put a currency on that. We put that on houses, on cars, we put it on TVs, on holidays, on clothes, on music. And it's important that everything that we're seeking there is fulfillment through the acquisition of those things. And we're happy to exchange some money for that. And. And I couldn't think of anything more fulfilling than meditation in my life. In fact, this is a true story. I had one colleague, a friend of mine, and he said to me, you know, Tom, if someone offered me a million dollars to stop meditating, I wouldn't take it. And I think that says it all. Our third and final question. Can you please explain the different meditation techniques available? Great question and worthy of a very detailed response. I'll be going into that in greater detail in the next video where you'll hear all the different types of meditation and what response you'll have as a result of those different styles. Also, please leave some comments, questions I really look forward to hearing from you. Even if something that I said today didn't resonate with you, I'd love to hear about that as well. I'm looking forward to responding to your questions in the next video. In the meantime, have a great day and thanks for watching.