Chapter 1:
Meditation - Why Bother?

Everything is changing; let go a little at a time
and breathe new life into your old ways of thinking and feeling.
Let not fear be a complete barrier to the unknown.
- Anonymous

MOST PEOPLE COME TO MEDITATION thinking, or even fearing, that it is difficult. No matter how much some people rave about the benefits of meditation, many think it would be easier to relax by merely playing a sport, reading a book, grabbing a drink, watching TV, or doing any number of things that don't require much effort.

Meditation does require some effort, or personal discipline, and it takes up the most precious commodity in our lives - time. Yet, to derive all of the benefits takes practice. So why go to all the trouble of learning to meditate? Isn't it all too hard? The short answer is that learning to meditate will invariably help your well-being. One of the best answers is that you will feel the benefits almost immediately, which is definitely one of the greatest aspects of meditation. I like to think of meditation as an insurance policy to protect your most precious asset - your mind.

The Benefits of Meditation

The core benefit of meditation is that it's a proven way to truly rest and clear your mind. We know how important it is to rest our body. We could not keep going for days on end without resting. We do not work most machines continuously without giving them a rest, for fear they might heat up and explode. But somehow, when it comes to resting our minds, we imagine the same laws don't apply.

Most people consider sleep to be the best way to rest and rejuvenate their minds. But a growing problem in today's world is that sleep does not equal rest for many people. And the lack of mental rest is not merely caused by lack of sleep, because when we sleep, we keep processing information from the day or other issues that needed but did not get our attention. In essence, we still use our minds during sleep. It is not easy to give the mind the real rest it craves.

We also have the notion that we can rest our minds when we go on vacation or just take time away from our normal life. How many times have you been on vacation, sitting on a lovely beach or walking in the green hills somewhere, when suddenly - pop! - up comes some worry or concern? How often has the stress of day-to-day life reemerged in your head the minute your relaxing vacation was over?

What is happening is that - despite attempts to relax, distract, and slow down - the mind still processes problems in your conscious and unconscious spheres. To truly stop the clutter and "traffic," we need to control our flow of thoughts and our brain waves. Meditation is a way to do just that. Through meditation we develop the skills and power to relax and clear our minds, and through this comes rest and a great many more benefits.

What would you say if I told you that by practicing meditation you could have the following benefits?

• Improved career performance and prospects
• Better health in body and mind
• Enhanced love life!

I imagine that some of you might smile and thank me, while thinking, "Yeah, sure; how gullible do you think I am?" Well, it is true. For centuries warriors and monks alike have recognized the benefits of meditation. Today, contemporary health and medical professionals are confirming their assertions.

How Meditation Can Help Your Career

Many of us are paid to use our minds to add value to the organizations and communities we work in. To do this, we must have the clarity to make better decisions and the ability to focus our minds to the task at hand, so that we use more of our mental capacities. By actively training in these two areas, we can enhance our careers and offer more value.

Better Decision-Making Skills
It is in moments of decision making when we add or destroy value to ourselves and the people around us. The decisions may be large or small, but theoretically, for each of them, we gather as much information as we can, analyze that information, weigh our options, and make a decision. Some decisions may involve spending vast sums of money that carry huge consequences for the lives and livelihoods of many people. Other decisions might concern how to better serve a client's needs.

If you work in the medical profession or in law enforcement, your decisions sometimes involve life and death. And, astonishingly, these decisions often need to be made rapidly, sometimes in a matter of minutes or seconds.

The most important factor in effective and sound decision making is clarity of mind. If your mind is full of mental noise or distracting thoughts, then it will have to work harder, and take longer, to process information and make decisions. Additionally, if you have unconstructive emotions bubbling up inside you, your mind will likely feel fatigued, and your decisions won't necessarily be congruent with your internal values. Instead, your decisions will be based on the mental clutter whirring around in your mind.

In the "Before" phase of the illustration above, the thinker's mind is full of mental chatter. As a result, he can't clearly perceive the object at hand. By contrast, with Mental Resilience Training he is able to settle his mind and focus effectively on the object to make an insightful and effective decision.

Once you establish a sustained meditation practice, you become aware of the mental chatter and more adept at clearing it. You have the tools to develop some space to perceive a situation with greater clarity before you make any crucial decisions. The time you need to create this mental space is not hours or days; it is, literally, a few moments.

Enhanced Ability to Focus
Through the discipline of learning to focus on a single point, you will gain the skills to do your best work. Many athletes speak of entering a zone of peak performance where they are deeply attuned to whatever they need to do: hit or catch the ball, vault over a pole, or run a track. Meditation can help you harness mental energy so that you reach such a zone where you become focused. And you can do it with relative ease.

Similarly, if you have confidence in your ability to enter that zone of peak performance by bringing all of your mental energy to one precise point (for a customer, presentation, or report), you can be certain that you are using your maximum mental capacity. You will have hit that sweet spot of your own intellect.

A very important benefit of learning to focus is that, when you go home, even after a grueling workday, you will be able to compartmentalize and ensure that your mind is fully present and clear for your loved ones rather than remaining preoccupied with solving work issues. Other aspects of meditation's benefits will be covered in later chapters. Here, it is sufficient to say that meditation will enable you to gain the following skills:

• Act rather than react.
• Manage change through greater awareness of your own state of flux.

The Health Benefits of Meditation

Our minds are the biggest contributors to our physiological well-being. If we are mentally resilient we can manage our stress and truly give our bodies what they require, not through willpower, which can wax and wane, but through clarity, which gets stronger and stronger over time.

Stress Reduction
Stress is detrimental to our health. The New England Journal of Medicine states that "managing the long-term effects of the physiological responses to stress" is critical to survival. Stress attacks nearly every major system in our bodies, creating myriad health problems including diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, allergies, asthma, and colitis, to name a few; and is, reportedly, implicated in 85 percent of all medical problems. An indication of this simmering health crisis is the increase in the number of lawsuits brought against companies by employees affected by stress-related illnesses. Employers are now even more aware than in the past of their duty to provide stress-management techniques to employees who deal with stressful situations as part of their work.

Stress is not all bad. In fact, it is an important part of everyday functioning. It stimulates the body for action and, indirectly, has helped the human race survive. Our metabolism reacts to outside stimuli with a fight-or-flight response, and in this way, stress enables us to survive.

When we feel stress, our body releases hormones like adrenaline. We may be reacting to physical or mental threats: if a boss criticizes us, for example, we may respond physiologically in exactly the same way that we did in prehistoric times when trying to escape the jaws of a particularly ravenous carnivore. Now, of course, hitting your boss on the head, which could be a strongly career-limiting move, or running like crazy, which could decrease your likelihood of getting paid, would not be appropriate reactions. But the released hormones do get our metabolism racing, and if the physical threat were real, such a response could save our lives.

So, it's important to know that not all stress is detrimental. But, like most things in life, you can overdo any good thing. And, most of the time, our response is inappropriate to the threat. If you are stressed for a long period because of work pressures, a demanding partner or children, and financial worries, your fight-or-flight responses start to attack your own body. The automatic mechanism built to defend your body now starts damaging it by blocking your arteries, knocking out your immune system, and overloading your endocrine system until, one day, you succumb to a cold if you are lucky or a serious illness if you're not.

Stress hormones act as painkillers. This analgesic effect explains stories we have heard of athletes who kept playing their games despite injury, unaware that they may have even broken bones or sustained other harm. Sometimes it isn't until hours later that they realize the extent of the damage and begin to experience the depth of the pain.

This happens in daily life as well. We work tirelessly throughout the day, ignoring our feelings. When feeling tired, we may pump ourselves up with that double shot of espresso. When we get headaches, we take painkillers. We take an antacid for an upset stomach. All the time, we ignore the signs of stress and simply treat its symptoms. But one day, the body may react violently with a serious illness such as heart attack, cancer, infection, or depression. If the immune system is out of balance, we suffer disease. So how can we avoid this?

Clinical studies have shown that meditation enables the immune system, our main defense against illness, to return to balance. The following table outlines some of the illnesses that result from an immune system that is out of balance. For example, if you have an inner stimulus such as emotional distress combined with an underactive immune system, you are particularly susceptible to getting cancer. You are more prone to suffer from autoimmune diseases (such as lupus or arthritis) if you have an overactive immune system. (I am asserting not that meditation will prevent these ailments but rather that people who are less stressed and have balanced immune systems may have a better chance of staying well and resisting the onset of these diseases.)

Through Mental Resilience Training we develop the mental muscles to deeply rest the mind. We start clearing it of all the stressful thoughts that move through it, day in and day out. The rested mind allows the body to come back into harmony and the immune system to find a healthy balance.

Clinical Research Supporting
Mental Resilience Training

There has been significant medical research on the benefits of the meditative aspects of Mental Resilience Training. While meditation practitioners have known the effects for centuries, only recently have scientific investigations given credence to these ancient claims. I have summarized some of this research here, but these findings are just the tip of the iceberg.

The Power of Attention
Indian researcher and professor B.K. Anand found that yogis could meditate themselves into trances so deep that they didn't react when hot test tubes were pressed against their arms. He also found that they could regulate their heartbeats at will. In the book, Zen Meditation and Psychotherapy, Japanese scientist Tomio Hirai studied and measured the brain activity of forty Zen monks. He showed that longtime Zen meditators were so focused on the present moment that they had never habituated themselves to the sound of a ticking clock. Most people eventually become desensitized to such noises, but the meditators remained aware of it for hours on end. Instead of zoning out in their meditations, they were able to maintain a high level of awareness and focus.

All We Need Is Love (or a Bigger Left-Prefrontal Cortex)
In his work at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Richard Davidson observed Buddhist monks' brain activity during their meditations, using the latest technologies, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalograms (EEGs). Davidson found a much greater level of activity in the left prefrontal lobes of meditating monks' brains than of nonmeditators. Further studies have shown that even after a short period of regular meditation, ordinary people can develop more activity in the left-prefrontal cortex. This area of the brain is said to be the home of peace and acceptance.

Davidson has shown that through regular meditation the brain is reoriented from a stressful fight-or-flight mode to one of acceptance, a shift that increases contentment. This change is directly correlated with a shift in prefrontal activity. People with a negative disposition tend to be right-prefrontal oriented, whereas people with a left-prefrontal orientation are more enthusiastic, have more interests, take time to relax more, and tend to feel more content, without buying a Ferrari or a penthouse.

Davidson explains that the reason these people may feel happier has to do with neurotransmitters. Chemicals that carry signals from one neuron to another, neurotransmitters are your body’s communication system. The prefrontal cortex is filled with various kinds of neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, glutamate, and serotonin. All these chemicals have been linked with positive emotional states. Certain studies with animals show that dopamine is very active in the signal transfer of positive emotions between the left-prefrontal area and the emotional center in the brain.

At Stanford University, Brian Knutson also conducted meditation research using fMRI. The result reported similar outcomes: participants who meditated had more left-prefrontal lobe activity than those who didn’t meditate. This research confirms that meditation increases activity in the left side of the frontal region. We know that when this area of the brain is more active, we have an increase in positive emotions and motivation. We are strengthened in our resolve to meet our goals.

Davidson also studied the effects of meditation on health. In this study, flu vaccines were given to two groups; one group received only the vaccine, while the other received the vaccine and were conducted in meditation. The results showed that the meditation group had a more significant increase in antibody levels than the control group. This confirms what many have said about meditation’s effects of increased health and immunity.

How Having a Thicker Head Eases Aging
One of the benefits of Mental Resilience Training is equanimity, the feeling that we have the energy to adapt and handle life’s trials. Research has shown that our brains actually become more robust after undertaking this type of training.

Neuroreport published research undertaken by Sara Lazar and her team at Harvard indicating that the areas of the brain linked with attention, interoception, and sensory processing (including the prefrontal cortex and right-anterior insular cortex) were thicker in participants who meditated than in control participants. There were distinct differences in the prefrontal cortical thickness of older participants between the two groups, directly associated with meditation, which indicates that meditation might delay the cortical thinning that occurs in the aging process. This research offered the first scientific evidence of cortical elasticity linked to meditation practice. This basically means that your brain becomes tougher or more resilient, which can help counter the effects of aging as you grow older. This is a good thing to bear in mind if you want to age gracefully.

Why Counting Your Breaths Is Better than Counting Calories
Jean L. Kristeller and C. Brendan Hallett, from the psychology department at Indiana State University, investigated the efficacy of meditation for binge eating disorder (BED). Results suggest that meditation and mental training may be effective components in decreasing both frequency and severity of binge-eating episodes in persons with BED. Reported binges decreased to a quarter of what they were for people who undertook the meditation training. When you have a sense of control over your impulses, all sorts of binges will decrease — so, yes, meditation can help you lose weight as well.

Faster Healing
Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues from the University of Massachusetts published research in many journals, including the American Journal of Psychiatry and Journal of Behavioral Medicine, indicating that patients heal four times faster if they meditate; cancer patients who practiced meditation had significantly better emotional outlooks than a control group; and not only did meditation relieve symptoms in patients with anxiety and chronic pain but the benefits also continued for up to four years after training. So it’s not merely about keeping a positive outlook but, rather, getting the brain into a state where a positive outlook is natural. Health and well-being will follow.

Significant research has been conducted on meditation and its effects in many areas of life. As a result, increasing numbers of psychologists and physicians are incorporating it into their treatment regimes with great success. But why wait until we are sick? Mental resilience, including meditation, is a proven preventive and a way of creating lasting happiness.

Self-Awareness: Knowing Your Body

Mental Resilience Training focuses directly on the body. The goal in meditation is to become keenly aware of each and every one of your sensations. This can help you in many ways.

A simple example is being attuned to the feeling of fullness when you eat, which probably prevents overeating. (Of course, not all meditators are at their optimal weight, but for some, merely reducing calorie intake can be a significant achievement.)

Sensual Awareness
A common misperception is that meditators deprive themselves of sensory stimulus because they sit in a room without music, talking, or movement and are therefore denying themselves an important part of life. In fact, the opposite is true: meditators are generally more sensual and comfortable with the full range of sensory experiences than other people.

It is good to realize that, sometimes, decreasing sensory stimuli can be what a person needs. Normally we get so much stimulation that we cannot fully appreciate what we touch, eat, see, smell, or hear. Imagine going into a shop to find a perfume you like. By the time you get to the fourth or fifth perfume, you are so overloaded with input that your nose shuts down and nothing smells distinctive. This overload happens most of the time, in different ways, to all of our senses.

Ultimately it wears us out! However, through meditation you can shut out the daily bombardment (noise, TV, advertisements, all manner of sensory overload) and find mental quietness. When you are no longer inundated, you will be able to experience heightened pleasure from whatever engages your senses. So when you eat, you can focus your awareness on taste with much more precision. When you hug a loved one, your mental clarity allows you to enjoy every tender caress. You will be able to truly focus and enjoy all that your senses experience.

How Mental Resilience Training
Enhances Your Love Life

We all know how to fall in love, but unfortunately not many of us know how to stay in love. Knowing how to listen is critical for staying connected and remaining in love. However, the mental chatter going around in our heads can make it difficult to focus on our partners. Also, heightened levels of clarity allow us to connect to our own emotions and our partners’. Practicing focus and clarity ensures that we keep love alive in our relationships.

Improved Listening Skills
Imagine that you have just joined your partner after a hard day’s work looking after the kids or dealing with your boss, and you start a conversation. Your mind will likely still be processing information, decisions, and conversations from your day. You might get a glazed look in your eye, leading your partner to ask, “Are you really listening?”

The truth is, you're probably not. You aren’t really present because you couldn't put down the thoughts wandering through your mind. Mental Resilience Training will increase your ability to listen with "unconditional presence, which is just being with what is, open and interested, without agenda." This type of listening is very powerful. Your companion starts feeling connected to you, which opens up many avenues for the relationship to develop and deepen.

Emotional Awareness
Experienced meditators can pinpoint their emotions more immediately and accurately. Whatever they feel - whether joy, sadness, depression, or grief - they can understand and face with the appropriate intensity. Acknowledging all of your emotions (as opposed to denying or trying to numb them with too much comfort food or alcohol) is a sign of healthiness.

Emotional awareness means knowing when feelings are present in others and ourselves. This is obviously critical in relationships, especially when entering a new relationship. Most people start relationships with emotional baggage from previous relationships. Often we are not aware of the emotions that we carry around with us, and this can cause misunderstandings or defensiveness.

Through meditation we learn to notice, acknowledge, label, and accept all of our emotions. As we become aware, we can stop carrying around what is no longer useful to us, and in letting such things go, we feel lighter and happier, and become easier to be around.

Mental Resilience Training has a number of benefits that can enhance your work, health, and relationships. Meditation helps you make fundamental and positive changes in your life, not through willpower, which can wax and wane, but through awareness. A meditation teacher offers the following reason for learning to meditate:

You can't make radical changes in the pattern of your life
until you begin to see yourself exactly as you are now.
As soon as you do that, changes flow naturally.
You don't have to force or struggle or obey rules
dictated to you by some authority. You just change.
It is automatic.
- Gunaratna

There are so many times in our lives when we just cannot understand the right course of action. Sometimes we flit from one activity to another, without achieving anything in particular.

We sometimes assume that if we keep doing various things, we will stumble onto the right path. Instead we often create more agitation and pain for ourselves.

The process of meditation can help us develop clarity about our decisions. Through this clarity, we develop our direction, which allows us to serve ourselves, our loved ones, and, ultimately, the world in an empowering way.

© 2008, Kamal Sarma, All Rights Reserved

Excerpted with permission from the book Mental Resilience: The Power of Clarity - How to Develop the Focus of a Warrior and the Peace of a Monk. © 2008 by Kamal Sarma. Printed with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com or 800-972-6657 ext. 52.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kamal Sarma had the unique opportunity of growing up with both Eastern and Western influences. He led the life of a typical Aussie kid until age thirteen, when he was sent away to finish school in an Indian ashram for five years. In this monastery environment, in addition to his training in meditation and yoga, he studied many world religions including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism.

After leaving the ashram Kamal returned to Australia to pursue an international business career in management consulting, biotechnology, venture capital, and funds management. He has held senior positions in several organizations, including McKinsey and Company, Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals, AMP Capital Investors, and St. George Bank.

Kamal's life was turned upside down after the death of his child. To overcome his grief and depression, he returned to his childhood training in mental resilience.

Currently Kamal is the director of Rezilium, a strategic leadership firm that works with senior executives to enhance their level of impact in the organizations they serve. He is also the cofounder of the Institute for Mental Resilience, which works to raise funds for orphanages around the world and provide solutions to counter the high rate of youth suicide.

For over ten years Kamal has guided corporate executives in maintaining clarity and peace in their lives while meeting intense work demands and balancing their health and relationships. Kamal makes the complex workings of the mind easy to understand. He offers practical advice for training our minds to face the many challenges we encounter daily. For more resources on mental resilience please visit www.mentalresilience.com.