Stress Less, Accomplish More

That’s from a chapter called “Stress Makes You Stupid.”

The first part of the book is all about convincing us WHY we should meditate. Emily draws on the VAST research that proves its power to help us Optimize our sleep, health, longevity and overall mojo.

Did you know that there are now over 6,000 (!) peer-reviewed scientific studies on meditation? Yep.

Over a decade before this book (and that study above), leading positive psychologist Jonathan Haidt was already describing meditation as a magic pill. Here’s how he puts it in The Happiness Hypothesis: “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… Back to that passage above. Let’s follow Emily’s advice and take a minute to think about the fact that, after only TWO months of meditation, changes in our brain are significant enough to show up in MRIs.

That’s amazing. Unless, of course, you like having a big ol’ amygdala, I suppose.

And… Get this. It’s not just your *brain* that changes that quickly.

As we discuss in our Notes on The Relaxation Revolution by Harvard researcher Herbert Benson, we see similar “anti-stress gene-expression changes” after only 2 months of meditation. In fact, in their research, over 1,500 (!) genes were Optimized with only 12-15 minutes of daily “mind-body” practices.

So…

Want to shrink your fear centers and expand your happiness (and creativity and loving) centers of your brain? Get your meditation on.

TODAY.

After thoroughly (and effectively) selling us on the WHY of meditation in the first 119 pages of the book, Emily walks us through the 3 M’s of her Z Technique.

This is what makes her approach unique.

I’m currently experimenting with it and enjoying it so far. Two 15-minute sessions every day. Featuring three parts: Mindfulness + Meditation + Manifesting. Here’s the super-quick take.

First, it’s important to note that Emily makes a distinction between Mindfulness and Meditation.

As per that passage above, Mindfulness, from her perspective, “helps us deal with stress in the present moment.” Basically, rather than getting all wrapped up in a knot and multiplying our pain by our resistance to increase our suffering, we notice what is, alchemize it and move on.

She tells us that most of the “meditation” apps out there are really mindfulness apps.

Meditation, as she sees it, is a simple, mantra-based, deeply restorative practice that helps us “get rid of stress from the past.”

Each of our two, 15-minute daily sessions begins with a 1-2 minute “Mindfulness” practice in which we bring our focus to our sensory experience. Then, for 13-14 minutes, we use a simple mantra she gives us to allow our bodies to relax and do its healing thing during our Meditation.

After that, we get our Manifesting on. We start THAT 2-minute process by briefly reflecting on what we’re grateful for then imagining ONE goal we’d like to achieve as if we’ve ALREADY achieved it.

Those are the 3 M’s of the Z Technique: Mindfulness + Meditation + Manifesting.

I always love it when an author prefaces some wisdom with “The single most important thing you need to know about X is…” As we’ve discussed, IF that happens, THEN I sit up a little straighter (gently pulling that thread through the head, of course) and pay even closer attention.

So… Sit up a little straighter and pull that thread if you feel so inspired as we note: “The single most important piece of meditation advice you can hold with you as you dive in is this: Thoughts are not the enemy.”

Have YOU “tried” to meditate but felt like a failure because you couldn’t stop thinking?

Well… Uh… Know this: You’re not SUPPOSED to be able to stop your brain from thinking. PERIOD.

Emily tells us that she’s NEVER (!) had a session in which she didn’t have a single thought bubble up. It’s not going to happen. EVER.

Why? Because, and I just love this line: “The mind thinks involuntarily just like the heart beats involuntarily.” ← Isn’t that a beautiful, empowering way to think about it?

The mind THINKS involuntarily just like the heart BEATS involuntarily.

Yes, you can slow your heart rate quite a bit by learning how to breathe deeply, training wisely and all that jazz. BUT… You can’t just flip the switch OFF.

SAME WITH YOUR BRAIN.

We can learn how to slow our thoughts down (interestingly, via the same mechanisms we use to slow our heart rates down: deep breathing, good sleep, exercise, etc.) BUT… We can’t just flip the switch OFF. ← Isn’t that empowering?

Knowing that, when our minds inevitably move away from our anchors, we can just say “Oh, well” like Herbert Benson recommends and get back to our practice—in this case, to allowing our mantra to gently bubble up in our consciousness as we deeply relax our minds and bodies.

Benson’s thoughts are worth reflecting on. Here’s how he puts it: “Here is a typical, simple response that I give to such performance-focused anxieties: “Don’t worry about how well you’re doing! Don’t worry about whether the relaxation response is really working or whether your mental picture is maximizing your health benefits. Just do it!” I also frequently use the analogy of brushing teeth. Most of us are concerned to one extent or another with dental hygiene, but we don’t dwell on the tooth-cleaning process. We just work away with that brush every day. Almost no one evaluates the brushing, to say, “That was a good brush!” or, “Too bad—that was a bad brush.” We simply do it! Similarly, if you’re taking a pill your doctor has prescribed for your cholesterol or blood pressure, you probably don’t wonder, “Am I putting this pill in the proper side of my mouth? Am I swallowing it correctly? Is it really going to work?” Again, you just do it—and that should be your approach to mind body treatments.”

One more time: Our thoughts are not our enemies.

In fact, a meditation in which we have a LOT of thoughts bubble up is actually, potentially, one of our BEST meditations because the process of sitting and calmly bringing ourselves back to our anchor allows us to “digest”/“release” those thoughts that would otherwise have remained locked up in our minds and bodies.

As Emily says: “Thinking during meditation is actually an indicator that some stress is leaving the body. This is where the healing happens. Better out than in, right? When you feel those thoughts coming up and out, know that it is stress exiting your nervous system.”

And: “If you remember one thing from this whole book, let it be this: A deep meditation is no better for you than a shallow meditation. I’m going to say that again for dramatic effect. A deep meditation is no better for you than a shallow meditation. I am defining a deep meditation as one in which time passes quickly, you have few thoughts, and you generally enjoy the sitting. In a shallow meditation, the time may pass more slowly, you may feel like you are just sitting there having thoughts the whole time, and you may not enjoy the sitting itself. Both are beneficial for you. A deep meditation means the body is getting deep rest; a shallow meditation means the body is releasing stresses in the form of thoughts. One is not better for you than the other. Write it on your mirror, make a T-shirt, tattoo it on your forehead. I know it sounds crazy and counter to everything you have likely heard about meditation so far, but it’s true.”

Here’s to just showing up and brushing our brains.

P.S. Here’s another one of my favorite distinctions from the book. It’s probably the #1 phrase Emily comes back to again and again throughout the book. She tells us we want to “de-excite our nervous system.”

De-excite the nervous system. ← Isn’t that awesome?

Every time I read that I thought of our commitment to cultivating “energized tranquility” vs. “enervated anxiety.” How do we do de-excite our nervous systems? Meditation is, of course, a key practice.

As we’ve discussed, we start the Z Technique with Mindfulness. Then Meditation. Then we move into Manifesting.

But… Before we go from Meditation to Manifesting something in our lives, we take a moment to be GRATEFUL for what we already have.

Let’s do it now.

What are YOU grateful for?

Crazy to imagine that, if you actually took a moment to do that, you just changed the chemistry in your brain. Kinda makes you want to live in a state of gratitude all day every day, eh?

Science says that would be very wise. In fact, here’s how the leading researcher on the science of gratitude puts it in his book called Thanks!: “The basic observation that positive emotions are somehow incompatible with negative emotions is not a new idea and has been demonstrated over several decades. Back in the 1950s, this basic principle of emotional incompatibility provided the basis of behavioral therapies designed to treat phobias and other anxiety disorders. One simply cannot be relaxed and stressed at the same time. Try it. You can’t. Relaxation drives out anxiety and vice versa. The Buddha said that “Hatred cannot coexist with loving-kindness, and dissipates if supplanted with thoughts based on loving-kindness.” You cannot be grateful and resentful at the same time, or forgiving and vengeful. When we are savoring the moment we cannot be regretting the past.”

P.S. Here’s the second part of the Manifesting: “You begin with a moment of gratitude, then I invite you to think of one dream, one goal, or one desire and imagine it as if it were your current reality. This is really the trick to manifesting: Imagine the dream as if it is happening now. Don’t picture it as something that will happen down the road; give yourself permission to see, feel, hear, taste, and smell every aspect of that desire as if it were happening to you right now in your current, immediate reality.”

Good ol’ Dr. Hebb.

We spent some time with him and Dr. David Perlmutter in Power Up Your Brain where we chatted about just how extraordinarily “plastic”/malleable our brains are.

Dr. Perlmutter told us: “The good news is that, with focused attention, as stated earlier, you can change your thoughts, change your activities, and change your behaviors to make a positive improvement in your life. The other good news is that if you don’t reinforce the neural networks currently used for negative thoughts, activities and behaviors, such as for emotional suffering, your brain will stop using those networks and they will fall by the wayside of unwanted past experiences like so much harvest chaff.

Your job, then, is to stop feeding the old circuitry that reinforces your fears and anger and, instead, direct your attention toward new, positive neural connections. Fortunately, you have the capacity to do that.”

Dr. Dan Siegel echoes that wisdom: “One of the key practical lessons of modern neuroscience is that the power to direct our attention has within it the power to shape our brain’s firing patterns, as well as the power to shape the architecture of the brain itself.”

Here’s to having fun with our new rewiring jobs. Moment to moment to moment. TODAY.