The Life Stylist 139. You Are Your Own Guru: Meditation For The Masses with Light Watkins
I didn’t start meditating to be cool – I started meditating to save my life. By 26 years old I loathed my very existence, and was trapped in a downward spiral of self-destruction. I’ve tried numerous methods of finding peace of mind using various practices of meditation, but Vedic meditation has been my Holy Grail.
I also know that meditation is one of the things you all are hungry to learn more about, so I sat down with Light Watkins, an author and Vedic teacher who wants to empower the everyman to meditate.
To help, Light wrote one of the best books I’ve ever read on the topic: Bliss More: How to Succeed in Meditation Without Really Trying. You can think of Bliss More as the meditation version of the The 4-Hour Workweek: lean, effective, and at home on a bio hacker’s bookshelf near you.
Some meditation practices and techniques are very specific and rigid, both physically and mentally. This is what a lot of people think of when they hear the word “meditation,” and in all honesty, those practices can be a struggle for the amateur who sincerely wants to make a daily practice out of meditation.
If you want to sit with your legs crossed on the floor for an hour, that’s fine! But that’s NOT necessary to achieve the best or most efficient results from meditation – you can’t focus your way to bliss.
Vedic meditation, on the other hand, is about reshaping the relationship with the mind to effortlessly experience fully-awake restful consciousness and its many physiological benefits.
“The mind is not the enemy. The mind is not the obstacle. The mind is actually your ally. The mind is noble.”
–Luke
Topics Discussed In This Episode:
- Urban escape room & evasion course
- How to succeed in meditation (without really trying)
- Changing the conversation around meditation
- Why Light’s book is accessible for the everyman & experienced practitioners
- Reframing writing as a practice
- Dealing with criticism (& laughing at negative reviews on Yelp)
- How Light (a young man from Alabama) first got into meditation in the 90s
- Experiencing Light’s first “meditation orgasm”
- Thom Knoles, a maharishi (or pre-eminent master-teacher) of Vedic Meditation
- Why meditation is only effective when it’s a daily practice
- Becoming a good teacher (“You don’t have to beat Michael Jordan to coach him to a championship.”)
- Training in India
- Listening to our intuitive voice
- Your energetic economy
- Having many choices VS knowing the right choice (for you)
- The early, rocky stages of a meditation practice
- Stress relief & meditation
- Fun fact: we all have the same number of thoughts
- Appreciating beauty
- Calming the fight or flight reaction
- Why Light keeps his services accessible and affordable
- How Light prays
More about this episode.
Watch it on YouTube
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