Get Some Headspace: 10 minutes can make all the difference (2 page)

I had been brought up as a Christian, but by the time I reached my teens I felt no real connection with any particular religion. I’d read a few books over the years though, and a good friend of mine often used to speak about the philosophy and psychology of Buddhism. I guess it appealed in so much as it didn’t really feel like a religion. And the stories of the meditation and the monks and nuns who had somehow mastered the mind sounded very attractive – not so much as a way of life, but in terms of the result.

When people ask me how I became a monk, the question is usually phrased something like, ‘So, you just walk up the hill, knock on the door and ask to become a monk, do you?’, and as ridiculous as that might sound, that’s exactly what you do. But before you enthusiastically pack your bags, I should add that there’s a little more to it than that, including a number of years of training as a lay-person, followed by full-time training as a novice monk and then, with your teacher’s permission, you can become a fully ordained monk or nun.

In my impatience to find the right teacher, I moved often at first, from one monastery to the next, and from one country to the next. During that time I lived in India, Nepal, Thailand, Burma, Russia, Poland, Australia and Scotland, travelling across many other countries in the process, learning new techniques, each time building on the foundations of what I’d already learnt, and doing my best to integrate them into my life. With the exception of the walled fortress from which I was about to jump, I found everywhere I lived welcoming, friendly and thoroughly conducive to the training. And yes, thankfully, I eventually found the right teacher, or group of teachers as it turned out to be.

Living as a monk can be tricky – not everyone gets the whole ‘bald-headed man in a skirt thing’, and trying to demystify meditation for a secular audience while dressed as a monk, which is how I worked, can send out a very mixed message. It’s one thing if you’re living in a monastic community or retreat, where people around you understand the simplicity of a monk’s robes, but when you’re living in a city it’s a little different. The more I spoke to people about the benefits of meditation, the more I found that many desperately wanted to find a way to relax, but were uncomfortable with the religious element that robes automatically imply. They simply wanted to find a way to cope with life, to deal with stress – in their work, their personal life, and in their own minds. They wanted to regain the sense of openness they remembered from childhood, that sense of appreciation in actually being alive. They weren’t looking for spiritual enlightenment, nor were they needing therapy. They just wanted to know how to ‘switch off’ when they got home from work, how to fall asleep at night, how to improve their relationships, how to feel less anxious, sad or angry. People wanted to know how to control their cravings, to give up their addictions, to get a bit more perspective on life. But most of all they wanted to know how to deal with that nagging feeling that all was not quite as it should be, or could be – that feeling that there must be more to life than this. The integration of meditation into everyday life was key to my decision to stop being a monk and to live instead as a lay-person.

I became quite shy as a monk. Part of that was down to the introverted way of living, but an equally important factor was seeing more clearly the conditions of my own mind, which left me feeling a little exposed, a little naked, and this was something I was pretty keen to address. I was also keen to address the fact that I’d become very inactive. Prior to any monastic training I’d been incredibly physical and yet it was as though that had been put on hold for the best part of ten years. Talking to a friend one day, she mentioned that an old classmate of hers was training at the Moscow State Circus. As she knew I was a keen juggler and had done lots of gymnastics in the past, she thought this might be something worth checking out. Before long I was having private lessons and loving every bit of it. It was during one of these lessons that my teacher asked me if I knew anything about the degree in Circus Arts that was available in London. Yes, you read that right, a university degree in Circus Arts – seriously, you couldn’t make it up! I began some tentative enquiries and, sure enough, it really did exist. The demand for places on the course is surprisingly high (let’s be honest, who’d want to study atomic physics when you can swing around like a monkey on a trapeze all day long?), so on paper my chances didn’t look good. But late one evening I received an e-mail to say that I’d been offered a conditional place – the condition being that I agreed to sign a disclaimer that, in no uncertain terms, said I was old, more likely to injure myself, and needed to take full responsibility for this fact. Old at thirty-two, who’d have thought it?

While the transition from monk to clown may not sound like the most obvious one, there are perhaps more similarities than first meet the eye. The application of moment-to-moment awareness into physical activity was to prove invaluable, in more ways than I could ever have imagined. Think of a circus act, whether it’s juggling, tightrope, acrobatics or trapeze, all of them require the perfect balance of concentration and relaxation. Try too hard and you make a mistake. Don’t try hard enough and you fall off or slip over.

One of the most challenging aspects of training at the circus was constantly being asked to step out of our comfort zones – for most of us on a daily basis. The ego takes quite a battering in that process and we were encouraged to take ourselves a little less seriously throughout. Funnily enough, this is very similar to the training in the monastery, where the ego is also being challenged. In clowning workshops (still difficult to say with a straight face) we were encouraged to make fools of ourselves, to take risks, to try things out, confident in our ability to fail. We would be sent up on to the stage, with no material whatsoever, and be instructed what to do. And in those moments there was nothing but silence, nowhere to run. If we took too long to think about it, the teacher would simply bang a drum to indicate we were finished and send us off the stage. There was no room to escape in thought or reply in clever witticisms. It required a presence, a brutal honesty to put something out there and see what happens. Sometimes it was inspired and the thrill was exhilarating, other times it was painful and the result was humiliating. But somehow it didn’t matter. What mattered was going out there and doing it, not thinking about it, not worrying what others might think, not even being attached to a particular result, just doing it.

Often in life we get so caught up in the analysis, the dissection of every possible outcome, that we miss an opportunity altogether. Of course, some things require careful consideration, but the more we live mindfully, in the moment, the more we start to get a sense of what feels right. Whether you think of it as a gut feeling, intuition, being guided, or just knowing for yourself that it’s the right thing to do, this can be an incredibly liberating discovery.

Teaching meditation was something I’d long felt passionately about, but I also felt a certain sense of duty to pass on the care and attention to detail that had been given to me by my own teachers. When I saw the way that meditation was sometimes being taught here in the UK, it amazed me that anyone could get any benefit from it at all. While the transition of meditation from East to West had been handled with great care and sensitivity by the monks and nuns of spiritual traditions, in the secular world it was done in the same way as we do everything else – in a hurry. It was as if we simply couldn’t wait a moment longer to experience a quiet mind. So the techniques were extracted in isolation and without any context. This made them almost impossible to learn. How many people do you know who’ve tried meditation but then given it up? Worse still, how many people do you know who would never even give it a try because they think they’d be no good at it? But without knowing what meditation really is, without being given the essential instructions and guidance on how best to approach the techniques, how could it ever possibly work?

As you’ll soon discover, the practise of meditation is about much more than simply sitting down for a set period of time each day. Although it may be a key component, it is just one part of a broader system of mind training that incorporates three distinct aspects. Each aspect is equally important and, in order to get the most out of your meditation, the other two aspects also need to be learned. Traditionally, meditation students were taught first how to
approach
the technique, then how to
practise
it, before finally learning how to
integrate
the techniques into their everyday lives.

With the intention of presenting meditation as part of this broader system of mind training, Headspace officially launched in 2010. The idea was simple: to demystify meditation, to make it something accessible and relevant for modern-day living. Nothing kooky, nothing wacky, just straightforward tools that people could use to get some headspace. The idea was also to get as many people as possible to try meditation, not just to read about it, but to actually do it. There will undoubtedly come a time when sitting down to get some headspace for ten minutes a day is no more unusual than going out for a walk. Ten or fifteen years ago, it was hard to say the word Yoga without people sniggering, and yet going to the gym to take a yoga class is now no more strange than going there to do aerobics (in fact, arguably less so).

Although it took years of research, planning and development to make the project a reality, it is but a blink of the eye in terms of the history of the techniques. These are meditation exercises that have been passed down from teacher to student over thousands of years. That’s more than enough time to refine and develop the techniques, not to mention iron out any creases. In a world of novelty, fads and fashions, there is something very reassuring about that authenticity. It was that authenticity which allowed me to start working alongside doctors, assisting in the adaptation of the techniques for medical use. It was the same authenticity that allowed me to start up in private practice as a Clinical Mindfulness Consultant, where over the years I’ve seen clients suffering from insomnia, impotence, and everything in-between.

So, there I was, perched on top of that wall. I took one final look behind me and jumped. I was sorry to leave the monastery in this way, but, looking back, I have no regrets about being there in the first place. Every monastery, retreat and meditation centre I have ever lived in or visited has taught me something. In fact, over the years I’ve had the privilege and good fortune to study with some incredible teachers, meditation masters in the truest sense of the word. If there’s any wisdom to be found in these pages, then it’s entirely down to them. The way I see it, my strongest qualification for writing this book is that along the way I’ve made just about every mistake possible in my meditation training, and so hopefully I can help you avoid making similar ones. This means giving you advice on how to best approach meditation, how best to practise meditation, and how best to integrate meditation into the rest of your life. Carrying a map is one thing, having someone to show you the way is quite another.

Meditation is a wonderful skill with life-changing potential, but how you choose to use that skill is up to you. With increasing coverage of meditation and mindfulness in the media, many people seem to be in a hurry to define its purpose. But the truth is,
you
define the purpose by deciding how you choose to use it. When you learnt to ride a bike, I’m sure you were simply shown how to ride the bike, not how you should use that ability. Some use a bike to commute, for others it’s to hang out with friends, and for a very few cycling may even become a career. But the skill of being able to remain in the saddle is the same for each. So while somebody else might have taught you how to ride, you define what cycling means to you, how you use it, and how it best suits your lifestyle. And so it is with the skill of meditation. It can be applied to any aspect of life and the value of it is equal only to the value you place upon it.

In order to get the best from this book, and consequently the many benefits of meditation, you don’t need to choose just one area of your life that you’d like to focus on. At least not at first anyway. Meditation is much broader than that and the qualities that arise from it tend to inevitably impact those areas of life where it’s needed most. However, it’s useful to know how other people use meditation, to appreciate its full potential. For many it’s the all-round stress buster, an aspirin for the mind. In short, a way of getting some headspace each day. For some, it’s the foundation of a broader approach to mindfulness, an opportunity to touch base with what it means to be present and in the moment throughout the day. For others, it might be part of a personal development plan towards greater emotional stability, or integrated into a spiritual path of some kind. And then there are those who turn to meditation as a way of improving their relationships with partners, parents, children, friends, colleagues and associates.

Meditation is also used in much more specific ways. Ever since the UK National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) approved the use of meditation (or mindfulness as it’s known in the medical world), it’s been used to treat a wide range of stress-related health symptoms. These include, but are no means limited to, chronic anxiety, depression, anger, addiction, compulsive behaviour, insomnia, muscle tension, sexual dysfunction and PMS.

Away from the medical world, but still with the intention of targeting one specific aspect of life, many people use meditation to give them an extra edge in a particular discipline, job, hobby or sport (the US Olympic team being a good example). And finally, stretching the boundaries of your imagination, meditation has even been adopted by the US marines to make them more focused and efficient on the front line.