Achievement Unlocked - Meditation Habit
Goto All Posts“Igor, I was in Seattle the other day, and I saw a meditation bench with your name on it.” And so began my 30-minute-a-day meditation practice! I’m on day 21, which means over 10 hours of meditation in the last month! For day 21, I woke up at 4:30 am (no free lunch, I go to bed at 8 pm), went to the beach and watched the sunrise as I meditated.
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I’ve been trying to build a meditation practice for years, maybe even decades. I’ve come close a few times, at my best I’ve gotten up to 15 minutes a day. In the last 21 days, getting in 30 minutes a day has been effortless. It’s even cooler as my default schedule is now wake up at 4:30, meditate for 30 minutes, then hit the gym for a 5:30 workout for 2 hours, then hit the coffee shop for 30 minutes, then at work by 8:30! Now that’s something I’m proud of!
The story of how I got here is a touch interesting …
I met a new guy at work who was super competent technically, off the chart calm, and I noticed he’d posted something about meditation. I mentioned I was pretty interested in meditation and we set up a call to chat about it. He asked me what I was looking for, and I mentioned I have a coach in every aspect of my life, except for meditation, and maybe that’s why I can’t establish a habit. He mentioned he was a meditation coach, and I thought that’s pretty interesting, but nothing came of it.
As it happens, two weeks later he was in Seattle for work, (but I was in MPK for work). When we got back from our respective trips he sent me a text, let’s do a call. On the call he said “Igor, you won’t believe it, I went to do my meditation in the office, and I saw a bench with a familiar name on it, so I looked it up, sure enough it was yours”.
He then offered to do a 10-hour private meditation course. I was both honored, and naturally skeptical. In my normal (would be better off without) say what I’m thinking style, I said.
Sure! BTW, My math on this course thingy. Worst case, I burn 10 hours forced thinking about meditation I don’t enjoy. Best case, get a practice I enjoy to do consistently. Middle ground, I get inspired, do something consistent for a few months, and have a new arrow in my quiver
But conveniently he is armed with off the chart calm, and calmly responded:
My job is to help you hit best case scenario 2 but I’ll be content with scenario 3
A month later, it’s hard to call it, but I suspect I’m on scenario 2.
A huge thank you to Shikhar Dua for teaching me the SKY method
Q&A
Do you recommend it?
Totally, nothing to lose, and so much to gain. That said, I know another engineer who took the course, and he didn’t enjoy it.
What is the method, what is different from what you did before?
The high-order difference is it’s effortless to do 30 minutes, and you feel super calm.
The method starts with various cyclic breathing exercises. I don’t know the physics, but there are a few nice properties:
- The cyclic breathing requires active attention at the start so your attention is stable, till your mind calms down and becomes naturally stable
- There are both long calming breathing cycles, and short hyperventilating cycles, I suspect this contrast helps you go deeper.
- Post meditation, you are super calm and can stay there as long as you want.
How will you merge this with your other meditation ideas?
Not sure yet, but this is a sound base, perhaps this is the warm-up regardless of what I want to do.