Meditation mistakes are inevitable. And they are not really mistakes, they are stepping stones to learning. What I will be talking today, is why meditation does not help people in stress. I’ve been asked so many times, if meditation is such a great tool, why is it so useless?

Well, meditation is a tool, and it is up to you to use it properly. How can you avoid so common meditation mistakes? Listen to the podcast and my music, or simply read my notes below 🙂

Transcript: Meditation mistakes: What to do if meditation does not help to reduce stress

Hi everybody,

This is Eugene Sukhorukov from Phoenix, AZ. I hope you are doing well in your corner of the world, wherever that corner is. Thanks for joining me today! Welcome to my Healthy Positive Lifestyle Podcast!

Last time I was talking about where the stress comes from. As I was saying, We are creating our own stress, yes, including yours truly. I am not a superman. I may not worry about some things other people do, but I have to deal with my own issues just like everybody else. And if I didn’t, if I have never had a chance to experience the practical effect from techniques I am talking about, would you really take me seriously? Unfortunately, I had to go through some tough things in life to experience that. That’s why I know what worked for me, and I can recommend it.

And today I will talk about meditation again. This time we will look at it from a little different perspective.
First of all, I will repeat what I said previously: a short disclaimer:
I am not talking to you as a mentor, but rather as a person who has been there and done that. I am NOT planning to give you any psychological advice, nor will I try to diagnose or treat any medical conditions. I am just sharing with you what I have done, and what worked for me. Fair enough?

Previously, I was talking about how I got into meditation. I was suffering from very strong and consistent headaches. I was examined by shrinks, neurologists, ENT’s, eye-doctors, you name it. I had MRI done. But it seemed like they had no clue about what was going on. So they gave me a generic diagnosis of neuro-vascular disorder, and the best treatment I could receive was a headache pill.
I tried autogenic training techniques while trying to fall asleep on a very uncomfortable hospital bed, and it worked. That little success encouraged me to continue my training and to do further research. The rest is history. If you are interested, I covered that in first several episodes.

This was how I started meditation, and I have been practicing it since early 80’s. For over 30 years, I have been learning, practicing and teaching meditation techniques. I recommended it to many people. And today I will separate all those people in three major groups for the purpose of this episode only:

1. First group are those people who either don’t believe in meditation at all or just don’t like it or won’t do it for any reason. I will not try to convince you. You may listen to my episode about what meditation really is in case you got misled by somebody. But if you are happy with where you are and what you do, then you may not really wanna change anything.
   Sometimes I see people who don’t care for meditation. But they start some form of training, and that training helps them. They get excited that it worked for them without even realizing that it was just another form of meditation.
2. Group number two are those who believe in meditation. They practice it, and it works for them. That’s great! Keep doing what you are doing. Not much I can offer you other then my perspective on how I can help other people to avoid stress. But you and I are basically in the same boat.
3. There’s also group #3. These people have nothing against meditation, and they believe it works. But they don’t believe it will work for them. You can hear statements like “Yeah, you can sit and meditate when you are relaxed. But it just doesn’t work when I need it to eliminate stress”.

Or something like
‘I don’t have time’
‘I feel too tired’
‘It just doesn’t help in my case’
‘I don’t wanna look weird’
‘I cannot concentrate on one thing’
‘I cannot sit still for a long time’
and the list goes on and on..

Today I will be talking to the group #3. I will share my thoughts about what to do if meditation does not help you to eliminate the stress from your life.
First of all, notice that I am not saying that meditation does not work. It does. Always. Period. Case closed. Meditation is not a magic pill, it is a tool. The result depends on how you use it.
I really love to use analogies in my teaching. And I will use them today as well.

Let’s take a hammer for example. Hammer is a tool. Can you say it is not working? You may do a good job or not so good job with it. That’s another story. This is where the mentor or the teacher comes in to teach you how to use it. You may do a decent job, but your arm will be sore for a few days after that, especially if you don’t practice every day. Or you may hit your finger if you are not careful, and it will hurt for a week. Can you say that hammer doesn’t work? It does exactly what it was designed to do. But there’s a reason we don’t give a hammer to small kids. They need to grow up a little bit, and then they need a teacher, who is often their father, to teach how to use a hammer. And once they learn how to use the hammer, then in order to build anything they need directions, plans, blueprints, guidance or even ideas regarding what they can build.

The same goes about meditation. It works just as it is supposed to work. However, the result depends on proper guidance.
Here’s another analogy. I told you I like them. Let’s say you learn to drive. Usually people get a teacher to get them started. Then they need a destination point and a map to get directions. Now it is done using computers, Smart Phones of GPSs. But what if you don’t have directions? If you need to get from Phoenix to San Diego, for example, and somebody, a friend perhaps, tells you just to go West, then you take interstate 10 and keep going West. All the way to… Los Angeles.
Oops.. how did you get off track? You didn’t. You just did not take a short route to switch to interstate 8, which is kinda counterintuitive, because you have to change direction and drive South through the desert for half an hour.

Well, this is just a hypothetic scenario. However, many other things in life work exactly same way, with the exception that you don’t have physical freeway in whatever you are doing, and you don’t have a GPS to show your exact location on the map. That’s why people have business mentors, sports coaches, yoga teachers etc. That’s the reason we suggest everybody to find a meditation teacher to guide them, or at least to check periodically where students are in their progress.
It is also quite important to remember that your destination, in my hypothetical example above, may not be San Diego. You may wanna go to Las Vegas, or Salt Lake City, or Dallas. Or you may not be in Phoenix to begin with. Or you may wanna take a different rout.

I drove so many times between San Diego and Phoenix, so I feel like I know every cactus along the way. But my best directions won’t help you if you wanna get from Denver to Chicago. You would have to find another instructor.
Now back to out topic of meditation. You need to know where you are, where you wanna go, and you need directions. Sometimes people are so lost in life that they don’t know where they are. They may not know where to go and even have no idea what is out there. The basic wish comes to this: “I don’t like where I am, but I have no idea where it is, how to get out of here and what is out there where I may end up”. That sounds to me like somebody needs guidance.

I will not even try to make this short episode a manual about how to meditate. Instead, I will make several points to keep in mind if you are beginning your meditation journey. From my experience, these are areas where people often have misconceptions about how to meditate. In fact, even seasoned meditators need a teacher’s advice periodically to keep them on track, just like professional athletes need a coach. I will not give you any specific techniques how to meditate, but I will try to point in a right direction where to go to find more information and how to get involved. If you are in San Diego or Phoenix area, send me a message or email, and I will recommend some nice places where you can learn to meditate.

First thing you need to know about meditation, it is not some kind of a weird ritual. I’ve seen quite a few people who pictured meditation as sitting down with legs crossed, eyes rolled up, arms holding some kind of awkward uncomfortable position, and the person making some humming sound. Well, this is just fine if you are trying to have some fun, or to make fun of your friend, but this is not quite what meditation really is. But it can be. Again, I will refer you to my episode #11.

In that episode I was also making another point I wanna repeat today. Meditation is not a specific technique. It is a general name used to call a huge array or various traditions. And they may be quite different from each other.
So if you tried meditation and it did not work for you, find a teacher you like and you can trust to guide you. Don’t limit yourself to one group you tried. Even Yoga has variety of schools, and they all have somewhat different meditation techniques. I have not tried to do this myself, but I am almost certain that if you try every meditation group around you, 2-3 times a week, you will have enough for the whole year, and they all will be different. Well, maybe not all, of course, but you will have an idea what’s out there and choose the group and the teacher you like.

Next thing you need to know about meditation, is that is very, I mean VERY simple. Please do not overcomplicate it. The key to successful meditation is not its complexity. The key is consistency. You just do a little bit every day. And this is where the main challenge is: this little bit is a very easy thing to do. And it is a very easy thing NOT to do. Especially when you don’t see immediate results. Yes, meditation takes time. It is not a pill. It is a part of a lifestyle. You need time and consistent practice to see results.

And this is where one of the main pitfalls is. People get stressed out and they turn to meditation. And this is when they find out that it doesn’t work for them. They may not realize that they should’ve started it long before they needed id. Just like if you need to use a physical strength for anything, maybe move something heavy or get yourself out of trouble, you may realize that you should’ve started weight lifting several years ago. In that case your only hope would to use leverage or to ask somebody for help.

In case of meditation, I can offer several options.
One of them is guided meditation. One person with good experience is facilitating the meditation and leading the rest of the group. Guided meditation can use verbal suggestions, mantras, various types of music, gongs, singing bowls, Nature sounds, etc., in different combinations. The purpose of that is to get people’s attention off whatever they are thinking about and direct them towards present moment. I use bamboo flute called Shakuhachi to conduct guided music meditations. I’ve done it in San Diego, and now in Phoenix. Guided meditation approach also helps to avoid forcing yourself, which happens in case of active meditation in the beginners, quite often. In case you don’t have access to the group, you can find various CD’s and DVD’s online, so you can practice it at home. Again, don’t forget that different schools may use totally different approach. Check before you buy.

In my episode #3, I was talking about Autogenic Training, I did at the very beginning of my holistic path. At that time we also used recordings of suggestions along with some nice music, on the tape or even vinyl records. So the concept is not new at all.
In my episodes #20 & 21, I was talking about losing inner balance. My teacher told me years ago, if you are so angry that fireball inside of you is ready to explode, then that is not a good time to sit down and meditate. You can make it worse. The best thing, as my teacher suggested, is to find a punching bag and let the steam out first. After your adrenalin goes down, you can meditate. Also, in the episode #21, I was talking about specific exercises that involve visualization and physical movement. Those exercises helped me a lot many times to eliminate stress and to regain control. You may try those. They work around stress, not against it. Going against your own feelings in your meditation will not eliminate the stress. Instead it may aggravate it.

Yes, That is another reason why meditation may not work in case of stress. Fighting inside for the relaxation causes more stress.
The next available tool, of course, is to see the holistic practitioner for a healing session and to discuss at-home meditation practice. Now I can make some recommendations in San Diego and Phoenix, but I am planning to make a database, a registry of holistic practitioners, meditation studios etc., in various cities, and I’d like to interview every person I am referring to. Maybe it is a bigger challenge than I expect, but we’ll see.

One of the main things in my opinion, is to stop stress from coming into your life. I was talking about that in my episode #22, and I will talk more in my future.

And finally, when nothing works, or if you feel really helpless, then you need to see a specialist. It can be naturopathic physician, shrink, regular physician, etc. Like I said before, I don’t give any medical advices, and I don’t want my podcast stories be used as medical advices. Notice, I never recommend meditation as a substitute for professional medical treatment. I want everybody to be clear on that, since I am holding a medical degree, so I won’t get in trouble with medical community.

Let me summarize what I was talking about in this episode to make it easier for you to take notes if you do:

• Meditation always works, but you will need a proper guidance.
• There’s a huge variety of schools and teachers. Find what you like, and try before you buy.
• Meditation is very easy and simple, but it works slow and you have to be consistent.
• Dig your well before you’re thirsty. Which in our context means start your meditation practice before you need it.
• Attend guided meditation groups or use at-home guided meditation recordings.
• If you are mad, meditating yourself into calmness may not work. Use alternative techniques and approaches.
• You may need to use help of the specialist, even a doctor, to get you out of crisis first. I would even suggest to talk to your doctor before starting any practice.

That will be it for today. I will be talking more about stress in my future episodes. One particular topic I will be discussing is related to stopping incoming stress. The question people ask, what can I do if I cannot get myself out of stressful environment? Well, this is a good question. I’ve been there too. There are ways to deal with it as well. We will talk about that in my future episode.

HealthyPositiveLifestyle@gmail.com. You can find me on the FaceBook as Healthy Positive Lifestyle or you can follow me on Twitter @HPLPodcast

If you found something useful in my podcast, or if you have suggestions how I can improve, please drop me a liner too. I would really like to know.

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You can also find a transcript of this episode on my site. Hope to hear from you soon!

Until then,

Smile, stay happy, keep the balance and make a wonderful day happen!

This was Eugene from Phoenix AZ. Talk to you next time!

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Peace!

Eugene