Speaker 1: Stay Calm as a production of I Heart Radio. Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Bob Roth, and I've been teaching people to meditate
Speaker 1: for fifty years, helping them to stay calm under pressure,
Speaker 1: reboot and re energize their lives, and basically be a happier,
Speaker 1: healthier version of themselves. And now I want to help
Speaker 1: you do the same. Welcome to Stay Calm, your daily
Speaker 1: dose of calmness. Every weekday morning, I'll share a meditation story,
Speaker 1: offer a simple practical tip about how you or a
Speaker 1: loved one can stay a bit calmer in your life,
Speaker 1: and then we'll end each episode together with a moment
Speaker 1: of gratitude. My hope is that I can share what
Speaker 1: I know to anyone who needs it. Ready, sit comfortably,
Speaker 1: take a few deep breaths, and let's begin today's journey.
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you the time I taught Oprah
Speaker 1: Winfrey to meditate. Yeah, that's some serious name dropping. Oprah
Speaker 1: Winfrey and her television crew wanted to do a story
Speaker 1: on the David Lynch Foundation, and part of that, Oprah
Speaker 1: decided she wanted to learn transcendental meditation. She told me
Speaker 1: that she practiced all sorts of different types of meditation
Speaker 1: and had failed at each one of them and was
Speaker 1: very skeptical that she'd be able to learn t M.
Speaker 1: I said, let's give it a try. And after the
Speaker 1: first meditation, she opened her eyes and she had almost
Speaker 1: tears in her eyes, and she said, that's the most
Speaker 1: human friendly meditation I've ever practiced in my life. I
Speaker 1: like to achieve, I like to be successful, and I
Speaker 1: always failed at other forms of meditation. I would sit
Speaker 1: there for a minute or two and then I just
Speaker 1: get up because I couldn't clear my mind of thoughts.
Speaker 1: And she was so satisfied with TM that she ended
Speaker 1: up personally paying for all four hundred employees of her
Speaker 1: Opra Winfrey network to learn to meditate as well. What
Speaker 1: is it about different types of meditation? That's what I
Speaker 1: want to talk about. Now we hear meditation all the time.
Speaker 1: There's never been a more important time to meditate. And
Speaker 1: now so much pressure and stress and tension in the world,
Speaker 1: there's never been more opportunities to do some form of meditation.
Speaker 1: And there's never been more of a misunderstanding about what
Speaker 1: meditation actually is what it does. So in the next
Speaker 1: few minutes, I'm going to give you a little mini
Speaker 1: master class I want to let you know when someone
Speaker 1: says meditation, that they're not all the same. And the
Speaker 1: analogy I like to use is the analogy of an ocean.
Speaker 1: You're on a little boat and you're in the middle
Speaker 1: of the ocean, and all of a sudden you get
Speaker 1: these giant, dirty, forty ft high waves, and you could think,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, the whole ocean is an upheaval. Whole
Speaker 1: ocean is a bit of an exaggeration, because if you
Speaker 1: did a cross section, you'd realize that you may have
Speaker 1: thirty or forty fifty high waves. But the ocean is
Speaker 1: many miles deep. And while the ocean can be turbulent
Speaker 1: on the surface, the ocean, by its nature is pretty
Speaker 1: darned silent at its depth. And that's wonderful. Analogy for
Speaker 1: the mind, surface of our mind is the active thinking
Speaker 1: God to God, to God of mind, I gotta do this,
Speaker 1: and I gotta do that, and I gotta call him,
Speaker 1: and I gotta call her, and I gotta make a
Speaker 1: list all the goddess. So it's a natural human desire
Speaker 1: to say, I'd like some inner calm, your clarity, your peace,
Speaker 1: and the operative where there is inner. The question is
Speaker 1: is there such a thing as an inner and if so,
Speaker 1: how do we get there? And that's been the realm
Speaker 1: of meditation throughout time to provide equanimity, power, creativity, happiness,
Speaker 1: focus to the mind. There are three basic types of meditation.
Speaker 1: The first is called focused attention, and that's a meditation
Speaker 1: that says, if you want to have a calm mind,
Speaker 1: thoughts are the disruptor of calm, so just clear your
Speaker 1: mind of thoughts. It's like saying, if you want to
Speaker 1: have a calm ocean, waves of the disruptor of calm,
Speaker 1: so stop waves. Difficult to do. Second type of meditation
Speaker 1: open monitoring. That's mindfulness techniques. That's where you observe of
Speaker 1: your thoughts, you observe your mood, you observe your feelings.
Speaker 1: You're mindful, you're in the present, you're not thinking about
Speaker 1: the past or worried about the future. These two approaches
Speaker 1: pertain to the surface of the mind that they're called
Speaker 1: cognitive approaches. The third type is transcendental meditation or self transcending,
Speaker 1: and that technique hypothesizes the deep within every one of
Speaker 1: us right now is a level where your mind is
Speaker 1: already calm and settled and peaceful. And alert. Like the
Speaker 1: ocean has a silent depth, and transcendental meditation provides effortless
Speaker 1: access to that deep quiet state of calm, gives a
Speaker 1: body a state of rest in many regards deeper than sleep.
Speaker 1: It increases serotonin, which is a happiness neurotransmitter, reduces courtisol,
Speaker 1: which is a stress hormone, and has a whole constellation
Speaker 1: of benefits. My tip for today, there are so many
Speaker 1: benefits to come from try incidental meditation, from all sorts
Speaker 1: of meditation. I encourage you to look deeply into them.
Speaker 1: All these approaches have benefits, all of them have integrity.
Speaker 1: Just like you choose one vitamin or one medicine for
Speaker 1: particular outcomes, we do the same with meditation. So I
Speaker 1: don't want you to think, oh, I do this, so
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that where I tried this
Speaker 1: and it doesn't work. I encourage you to look deeply
Speaker 1: into them. Go online tm dot org something called mindfulness
Speaker 1: based stress reduction. Look into them. All. Right, let's end
Speaker 1: this time together doing something that I think should be
Speaker 1: a feature of our everyday life, and that's appreciation and gratitude.
Speaker 1: So let's take thirty seconds of quiet. Thirty seconds to
Speaker 1: take a break, just take a moment. It turns out
Speaker 1: when we do that, it's good for our health as well.
Speaker 1: I'll be right back all right. Thank you for joining.
Speaker 1: This is Bob Roth. Keep calm. Thanks for listening today.
Speaker 1: I hope you heard something that inspires, that uplifts you
Speaker 1: and that you can incorporate into your own life. Until
Speaker 1: next time, remember, meditate, be kind, and be true to yourself. Hey,
Speaker 1: all of you out there, I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can send me your stories, your questions, or anything
Speaker 1: else on your mind. Just connect with me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: Facebook or Instagram at meditation Bob. You can also send
Speaker 1: me an email at meditation Bob Roth at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: I look forward to hearing from you.