Video: Dr. Herbert Benson on Meditation
Dr. Herbert Benson from Harvard Medical School conducts an experiment with monk heating up their body temperature during meditation.
Dr. Herbert Benson from Harvard Medical School conducts an experiment with monk heating up their body temperature during meditation.
Let’s get this out into the open: I bite my nails. Or at least I did. (Kinda gross, right?) But this past summer, I watched as my then three-year-old son chomped down on his fingernail. That was it. The final kick in the butt I needed to see to finally stop a decades-old bad habit. Little did I know that in my quest to stop biting my nails I’d unlock something much bigger for myself — both personally and professionally. It was mindfulness.
What’s that? According to the folks at U-Cal Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, mindfulness is about “maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment.”
For me, it’s helped me make better decisions, listen more, and above all, be present. Amidst the chaos of our busy, multi-screen, let-me-bookmark-that-because-I-don’t-have-five-minutes-wait-what-was-I-doing? lives, mindfulness helps me return to a more centered self.
And more and more people are getting in on it — Oprah, Jerry Seinfeld, Katy Perry, Anderson Cooper, and even some companies, too. So what can you do to get in on the goodness? I’ll tell you. Here’s how I met mindfulness.
Meet Paul: My Meditation Guy
I knew that guided meditation and hypnosis was probably a good bet to kick the nail-biting habit. So, I reached out to Paul Gustafson RN CH, a Boston-area consulting hypnotist. Gustafson helps people — via guided meditation and hypnotic suggestion — with anything from quitting smoking to overcoming a fear of flying.
I sat down with him for three, 30-minute sessions where he talked me into a deep relaxation and then, as I reached a deep meditative state, he provided guidance and suggestions for me to figuratively cut the cord of my past nail-biting behavior. From there, I kept his guided meditation recording on repeat.
“The immediate benefit of guided meditation is profound relaxation,” Gustafson told me. “It’s impossible to be stressed or to worry while enjoying deep meditative bliss. One of the long-term benefits of meditation is that the relaxation becomes the rule rather than the exception. People who meditate are happier, less affected by the pace of day-to-day life. They’re healthier, and more productive.”
Paul has become an oft-invoked name at my house. My wife, also a marketer, has gone to see him and notes that it’s been entirely transformative in finding her chi, both in and out of work. (After all, anyone with small children can attest to the need for mindfulness.)
How Mindfulness Contributes to Better Marketing
Mindfulness is a terrific asset for today’s marketers … but you’re probably wondering where the data is, right?
Well, a recent study conducted by researchers at INSEAD and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania found that 15 minutes of mindful meditation could help a person make better decisions. That same study shows that mindfulness “can reduce confirmation bias and overconfidence, allowing decision makers to better differentiate between relevant and irrelevant information.”
Considering the vast information available to marketers, having a filter for the superfluous can let you focus on what’s most important and make decisions accordingly.
Gustafson has helped patients deal with stress related to dealing with a boss, or co-worker, too. “I’ve had many clients come to me because of work-related stress. When someone repeats a stressful response to certain situations it becomes a pattern. Over time, patterns become rooted and people feel powerless to change the situation. Guided meditation offers access to this level of thought, enabling individuals to release and become free of unpleasant patterns,” he told me.
Some companies are getting on board the mindfulness train, too.
I’m lucky enough to work for a company that values its employees’ approach to work, rather than just the output. HubSpot’s received quite a bit of buzz around our amazing perks, but the one I take full advantage of is the Nap Room in our Cambridge office. For me, it’s a meditation chamber. Just 20 minutes of guided meditation — or slow, deep breathing as the hammock gently rocks back and forth — will clear the mind and bring a sense of focus that even the strongest cup of coffee can’t conjure.
A Recipe for Mindfulness: How to Get Started
So, what do you say? Want to give it a try? Here’s your (simple) recipe for mindfulness …
Ingredients:
Add to taste:
Nathaniel Eberle
Everyone talks about being stressed, overwhelmed and anxious. The pharmaceutical and alcohol industries pray that you stay way. We know that unrelenting stress can lead to physical and emotional problems such as hypertension, ulcers, migraines and depression. But what is stress exactly? Is it tangible? Is stress a traffic jam, money or relationship problems?
The way people commonly refer to stress you would think it would at least be something you could see or touch. Maybe stress is more like the common cold; feels lousy for a while, then it either goes away or perhaps you just get distracted and stop thinking about it.
My clients learn that stress is a point of view, or a perspective. Two people experiencing the same situation can respond in very different ways. What pushes the stress button in one person can have no effect on another. So it’s not the situation or event but rather how it is perceived or interpreted.
To take it a step further; everytime someone with the fear of flying, takes off in an airplane, and experiences panic, the phobia becomes more deeply rooted. Over time, with repetition, the fear can spread. Soon the person feels uncomfortable driving to the airport, then he or she experiences discomfort just booking the flight, and then just the initial thought of taking the trip to begin with, can provoke a stressful response.
The bad news is that with repetition fear can spread and become deeply rooted; the good news is that the opposite is also an option. Relaxing confidence can become just as automatic, you can’t have one without the other. Think of the subconscious as a greenhouse, you can grow roses or poison ivy with equal efficiency.
Hypnosis is the only way to clean out your inner house, to uproot and delete the problem patterns, and to then plant the seeds supporting new preferred alternatives. By repeating the hypnotic process daily for a couple of months, the new patterns become just as deeply rooted as the problem patterns were.
My clients experience a series of sessions offering a variety of creatively effective techniques supporting healthy change. Most have never previously tried hypnosis, inspite of this the overwhelming majority feel a significant emotional release from whatever problem they had when they arrived. If you are struggling with a problem please consider hypnosis. It’s a powerful tool that’s easy to do and it feels fantastic.
By: Paul Gustafson RN CH
Great video highlighting meditation.
Bob struggled with significant stress for a long time and then tried hypnosis. [info]