Turning mindfulness meditation into a lifelong habit appears to be more difficult than expected.
Mindfulness meditation is creeping into the everyday vernacular amongst a growing number of people. Whether it’s because people are looking for alternate ways to alleviate stress, or connect with themselves, or simply because it’s trending – it doesn’t matter. Any road that people arrive at meditation from is welcomed and encouraged by meditation gurus.
Meditation isn’t about becoming a new or different version of yourself, in fact, everyone has their own unique approach to the ‘why’. Perhaps it’s to be less reactive, to be like a still stone in a river, where the current of emotions flows by but doesn’t shift you.
Or maybe it’s to make you more grateful by giving you perspective on the wonderful life you live. If you’re reading this article then already you are more privileged than the vast majority of the world – you have access to the internet, electricity, have been educated to read, and the freedom to choose what you read.
In such a fast-paced world it is so easy to become numb to our opportunities and privileges.
We must find peace in a frantic world.
Meditation invites us to slow the heck down and take it in, even just for 10 minutes a day. More often than not, 10 minutes is too much of an ask for worker bees doing the ‘métro, boulot, dodo’ as the French call it. Métro being the commute, boulot being an informal word for work, and dodo being baby talk for sleeping.
Living to work. It’s these very people that need it the most.
Meditation isn’t always relaxing and enlightening, in fact to be brutally honest, it’s a tricky and tiresome path that has people weaving in and out. It’s certainly not an easy thing to do, to sit with your thoughts and hone your concentration to just your breath and do nothing else.
It’s a gruelling thing to be disciplined with an activity when its benefits aren’t physically tangible. Humans are very quantifiable creatures, as seen in the emergence of watches that can track our bodies. Slap on an apple watch and you’ll find people more committed to hitting a certain number of steps, or to losing their target calories or to hitting 100% for their sleep quality.
Technology has reinvented the way many of us engage with exercise.
Unfortunately, the benefits reaped from meditation are not so easily measured, which can cause people to drop off from their practice after a few weeks. In this case, where both motivation and discipline fail you, reach out to a third party to keep you accountable.
With a background in business and coaching, Luke McLeod is one of Australia’s most popular thought leaders in mindfulness, building a global mindful community. He started meditating at the age of 26.
After 5 years into his meditation practice, a series of events flipped Luke’s life upside-down and the only thing he could turn to was his meditation practice. This led him to buy a one-way ticket to India where he spent several months in the foothills of the Himalayas studying meditation at the Tushita Meditation Centre where his Holiness The Dalai Lama is a spiritual guide.
Luke Mcleod conducting one of his insightful meditation classes.
Luke has all the experience you’d like to see in a mindfulness guru, with over 16 years practising and training in a variety of different meditation techniques including, Vedic, Kundalini, Zen, Vipassana, and Mindfulness.
Luke is the founder of Soul Alive, Australia’s first live streamed meditation service that aims to help introduce meditation in a convenient and relatable manner. Luke makes meditation relatable and enjoyable in today’s modern world. In fact, he is hosting a 4-week virtual course called THRIVE. He created the program to help give others more support and guidance that is so needed when starting out with meditation.
It is designed to teach the art of mindfulness meditation via a mix of live guided meditations & workshops. The program is designed to essentially help people to learn to get the most out of meditation going forward.
The program starts Monday, August 16th and is truly a beautiful and valuable experience plus an opportunity for participants to carve out a little more ‘me’ time to relax & recharge.
One of the Bondi Beauty team members will be trialing and reviewing this virtual course so keep an eye out.
