Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #182 BITESIZE | The Benefits of Meditation for Body and Mind | Light Watkins

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

There are many health benefits associated with a consistent practice of meditation, and the benefits of a regular practice can extend beyond the meditation itself into daily life, increasing our awareness and reducing stress responses.  Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today’s clip is from episode 23 of the podcast with meditation teacher, international speaker and author, Light Watkins. In this clip, he describes the many incredible ways meditation can improve our lives and explains how we can all make meditation an enjoyable daily habit. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/23 Thanks to our sponsor http://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. 

Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to

10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More, bite-size your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 23 of the podcast with meditation teacher, international speaker, and author Light Watkins. In this clip, he describes the many amazing benefits of meditation and explains how we can all make meditation an enjoyable part of our daily lives. Meditation, it is a key habit for all the other things that we want to do. If you want to exercise every day, great.

Meditation every day is going to make you actually want to exercise. If you want to eat better every day, fantastic. Meditation is not only going to make you crave higher quality foods, it's going to allow your body to metabolize and digest those nutrients and minerals a lot more efficiently, right? So all the things that we naturally just want to do lifestyle-wise in order to feel healthier, meditation, when you have less stress in the body, you have more rest, you have more happiness, you have a greater sense of inner fulfillment, it's going to make you want to do those things, as opposed to craving foods that are bad for you or relationships that are not sustainable, which ultimately leads to the poor health and lifestyle illnesses and diseases that

we suffer from as a society. It's the stress that's causing all those things. So when you reduce the stress, naturally things tend to get better. If you're very, very stressed and you're not sleeping well and you're always wired, you know, you're always gonna probably be fighting that temptation to make poor food choices. Whereas if you have, you know, your stress levels are wiped down,

you've got that outlet for stress every day because you've got this enjoyable, fun, transformative meditation practice that just allows you a lot more leeway in other areas. Right. Yeah. I think that's really key. Yeah. And that's why I'm saying meditation is a key habit. If you have that down, everything else is going to be a lot easier. What would you say to those people who say that meditation is not for them, that they can get the similar benefits from going for a walk in the forest or going for a run, that being their meditation? And the second thing is then how do we start to enjoy meditation? So when people say meditation is not for me, to me that sounds like someone saying sleep is not for me, that's, to me, that sounds like someone saying sleep is not for me.

And the whole other thing about, you know, this is my meditation, that's my meditation. What they really mean is that these activities are meditative, right? In other words, when I'm doing these activities, I'm not really thinking a whole lot about the past. I'm not really thinking a whole lot about the future. I'm able to kind of be in the zone or in the moment. And I like that. And that's the thing. We like that. We all naturally like that present moment awareness. It's not something that we have to convince ourselves that this is a good thing. We know it's a good thing. And that's what leads us to want to do those activities on a regular basis is because it's the one thing that allows us to be in the present

moment. Now, the difference in those activities and an actual seated eyes closed meditation practice is that the meditation practice uniquely has a carryover effect. In other words, that present moment awareness can stabilize beyond the seated eyes closed experience. So the more you do it, the more your body gets used to it. And what's been shown scientifically is that there is a day coming when you've been practicing it consistently enough, you'll come out of meditation one day and your body will still behave as though you're meditating. In other words, you'll maintain that deeper state of rest, that heightened level of awareness in your mind with your eyes open. But it won't last that long because you'll go to work or you get into an argument with your spouse or, you know, something will happen and it'll just

fade away. But then you keep going and keep going and keep going. And then eventually it can stabilize through heavier demands and eventually through the bigger pressures and then eventually it's just there all the time and that's really where you start to get the gold from the experience right it's not it's never about what's going on in the meditation it's about what's happening once you open your eyes and how you're experiencing those other 23 hours and 20 minutes of the day you know something you just said there reminded me of, it was when my son was, I don't know, he was maybe a couple of years old, wasn't sleeping that well. And I'd get up early every morning and I'd go downstairs. And even if I was exhausted, I would sit there for five minutes, sometimes, sometimes 10, but often it was just five minutes actually. And I tried to, you know, in inverted commas, meditate. Sometimes I felt as though all I was

doing was going through my to-do list. Other days I felt that, yeah, I kind of felt pretty calm while I was doing that. But irrespective of that, I found that when I committed to make this a daily practice, within days to weeks, I had more energy in the day. I also noticed I was less reactive. So if someone had cut me up on the road, in the car, I just wasn't reacting as much. I wouldn't let things bother me as much just from that practice in the morning.

Now, look, I'm not at all trying to say that that was a proper meditation practice or what you would, you would consider meditation, but I really resonate with what you said, which is even a small thing when it's done regularly, your body starts to really starts to reap those benefits. What I ultimately want for people is I want people to feel like meditation is this really amazing thing. If you learn how to succeed in meditation without trying, then you're going to end up getting your version of bliss, whatever that looks like. And it may not necessarily come in the meditation as quickly as you want it to, but you may have more enjoyable experiences outside of a meditation as a result of your daily commitment. And that could be more powerful for you. If you're a father and you're able to show

up more presently for your family or for your job, you're able to do your job more efficiently so you can have more time with your family. Or if you're able to drive better or communicate more effectively you know those are the things that people really look at as markers for how well you are living your life not really how well you're mad nobody cares about how well you meditate that's what happens outside the meditation right it's all about what happens outside of meditation i guess you're making the case as i try and do with my patients that by meditating you actually are you're creating more time relatively. Exactly, you're investing in the experiences you're having outside of meditation.

That's what you're doing when you sit down and close your eyes. And I have made deals with my patients before to do two minutes a day. But I said, you've got to do it every day. And we make a deal in the consultation room that they're going to say, okay, I commit. I say, how long do you spend brushing your teeth? Two minutes. teeth two minutes okay fine look so you've got two minutes a day right and

why do you do that because i've always done it since i've been a kid i said yeah that's your habit right what if we said you've also got to do two minutes of meditation a day and i found with some people with many people who do that two minutes suddenly becomes five minutes those five minutes suddenly becomes 10 minutes and as they start to feel some of those benefits and they're doing it daily, that 10 becomes 15. It's not a daily habit because you have discipline. It becomes a daily habit because you so thoroughly enjoy the experience either during or immediately after the experience. Where you think to yourself, wow, this is amazing. And, and my life is getting so much better as a result of it. Now, that's not to say you become a millionaire or, you know, things

change all that dramatically, but your perception of these things will start to evolve and change and expand pretty significantly. And you may find that you're able to feel more abundant. You're able to feel happier. You're able to feel more abundant, you're able to feel happier, you're able to feel more grateful just because something inside of you is shifting. But in the practice itself, one of the things that I've been teaching thousands of people, and it's always very counterintuitive, is that your mind is not the enemy of the meditation. Almost everybody, without exception, treats their mind like the enemy of meditation. I need to somehow get beyond this burdensome mind so that I can enjoy the inner peace or stillness or whatever that I've read about or that I've heard is in there somewhere.

And instead of looking at the mind as the enemy, we want to start to see the mind as our ally. And it's not about, you know, noticing this and focusing on that and being aware of this. It's not about that. That's not what I'm asking people to do because that requires mental activity, which keeps the mind pinned to the surface awareness. What I'm asking people to do is to treat every single thought that they have as legitimate. And when you can have to have dental surgery whatever the thought is rehearsing conversations i'm falling asleep all of these quote-unquote normal thoughts are a part of the experience oh this this is incredible light because so many people think

that they are doing it wrong when they have what they consider to be a monkey mind right and what i'm saying is that you need the monkey mind in order to do it correctly. You need to go through the monkey mind phase. That is very, very different from what I think a lot of people are familiar with. But I also think that's what makes your approach so fantastically unique and successful is that in some ways it's taking the pressure off people. It's lowering the bar to entry. It's saying, hey, you know what?

Those thoughts that are coming in and out, your to-do list, what you got to do at work, you're saying that that is part of a good quality meditation. Absolutely. The mind just wants to be happy and it's looking for different thoughts in order to find that happiness. I guess in some ways when we are living these busy modern lives and we're go go go and we're constantly connected

and we wake up and we look at our phones and we've just got incoming noise continuously from the minute we wake up for many of us to often to them until the minute just before we drop off to sleep in our bed as well, we're still looking at emails and Facebook posts and Instagram and all this kind of stuff. I guess if you look at it from a different perspective, it's completely unrealistic to go from that, which may have been going on for years and years, to suddenly sitting there for 10 minutes and suddenly your mind's going to go into this beautiful still state where nothing's there.

In so many ways, when you think about life, that is completely unrealistic. If you're thinking a lot and you're sitting in meditation, you're doing it perfectly. You're not doing anything wrong. And if you can shift your attitude around that,

then you're gonna find that that exponentially enhances your experiences. You'll be able to get to a still place a lot easier. Don't look for it to happen. Just allow that to happen as a side effect of you celebrating your mind. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Please do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the full conversation with my guest. And if you enjoyed

this episode, I think you will really enjoy my new bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five. And each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles or books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small yet powerful dose of feel good to get you ready for the weekend. You can sign up for it at drchastity.com forward slash Friday five. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science

next Friday.