Bring Your Jungle Knife To The Jungle

For the beginner, meditation in an ideal setting produces the best results. As your practice advances, you will want to condition yourself to be able to find calm in any environment. Here are a few ways to help keep you zen all of the time.

The environment we create for meditation is very controlled. If done right, it will either be silent or steeped in hand-chosen music and sound. The temperature of your meditation room will be comfortable. The lighting will be conducive to meditating. We sit still. And, above all, you will be in the room alone, without anybody else’s motivations in your way. The idea is to eliminate as many sensations as possible in order to isolate our attention.

This ideal setting allows the meditation practitioner to be less distracted and, as a result, receive a bigger and better dose of meditation’s benefits. If conditions are not right, the practitioner may never be able to truly detach from the material to flow with the present moment. When it comes to meditation, the setting is like a piece of required equipment, an apparatus to use for the activity. Just as you wouldn’t train for a marathon wearing sandals, you wouldn’t meditate in an inappropriate setting.

Thousands of years of eastern culture, modern science, and my own personal experience state that meditation has life-changing benefits. Buddhism has offered meditation as a path to enlightenment. Harvard University has told us that meditation reduces stress, aids in pain management and lowering of blood pressure, improves sleep problems, reduces symptoms of depression, and can prevent heart disease. I, myself, can tell you that meditation makes you happier. For these reasons and many more, it is wise to practice your meditations at a time and in a setting that will yield the greatest benefits.

But the next level is to challenge yourself so that you can maintain and regulate those states independent of the conditions in your environment.

The Black Belt Class

If you are only able to detach and be at peace in your ideal setting then, at any moment, an outside event can throw you off-kilter, delaying some of meditation’s benefits and setting back others. The next level of this discipline is to slowly train yourself to maintain the calm and contentment of the meditative state out in the real world. If one is able to do this, their mood and focus will become untethered from the actions of others. That means that, once trained, you would be able to maintain a relaxed body and a clear mind no matter what happens, no matter what anybody says, no matter what shows up in your inbox. When you are impervious to your environment you are also free from your environment. You would truly have nothing to worry about.

How can I do this?

There are a few ways to work on bringing your meditative state into your everyday life.

1) Keep It Going

It’s always wise to try to maintain the feeling from your meditation for as long as possible after the meditation. Make a game of it. See how long after the bell chimes you can still feel peaceful. At first, you may not make it five minutes before you leave your zen den and see that your puppy has also detached, from his tiny bladder, onto your carpet. For the beginner this kind of mess is likely to signal upset, canceling out some of the benefits of the session. Sure, you have to notice the soiled carpet. But, a mindfulness practitioner is developing the ability to attend to a matter without becoming emotionally embroiled in the matter. And, after a period of conditioning, you might see that you have made it through your whole morning before you feel the tap of your monkey mind’s worry meter. Making it until morning in a zen state is one step closer to making it through the whole day in that zen state.

2) Find it again

Another, more difficult, method is to try to find that meditative feeling again later in the day. To do this, one must become very familiar with their centered state. When that state can be recognized, shortcuts can be created for it. It may not always take a formal meditation to find the calm focus that comes with meditation. Sometimes, you can stop and feel that feeling at any time during the day.

The strategy for this method is to pause at the first sign of stress. Then to take a deep breath and find the centered feeling that has been experienced during meditation. Once you feel centered and back to a calm state, continue on with the day. By doing this, you are overcoming your habits and triggers as well as anything else the world can throw at you. Nobody expects you to be perfectly zen every second of the day. You are human. Things will rattle you a bit at times. The key is to not let it rattle you too long. Don’t “run with it.” Don’t let a feeling or a thought or a few words throw you off of your game for too long. The more you are able to readjust when familiar (bad) thought habits pop up, the more you are training yourself for a new way of thinking and living. Just as worrying and raging might have been your habit before, with practice, feeling centered and content can be your new habit for the future. Mindfulness is a “practice” for a reason. It takes time.

3) Baby Steps

A third strategy is one that I learned from Dr. Joe Dispenza. This method involves achieving a true meditative state and becoming completely familiar with that state. Then, at select times during the meditation, open your eyes for a few seconds while still maintaining the feeling of your meditative state. You would then close your eyes again for several more minutes of traditional meditation before opening your eyes for another stretch of time. This is practice. This helps you train yourself to be able to feel like you’re meditating, even when you’re not. This advanced strategy is probably most effective when done with a guided meditation track to help you time your periods with your eyes closed and open.

Although meditation feels excellent as you are doing it, the true benefits of the practice are enjoyed when we’re not meditating. Slowly conditioning yourself to enjoy the calm contentment of meditation whenever you choose is one of the highest goals of all mindfulness journeys. I hope that I was able to highlight a few ways for you to start to bring your mindfulness practice off of the cushion.

Burak Uzun is an award-winning writer and instructor. He has received thousands of hours of training and hands-on experience in guiding individuals with social and emotional challenges. He also co-wrote a feature film called Team Marco, which was featured in over fifty film festivals around the globe and was distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Films.

Please feel free to reach out to Burak here.

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