Meditate on Calm

Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest– these are all the ways that we are plugged in each and every day. Your brain is always on the go, moving from text to text, app to app, video to video, class to class, friend to friend. This makes us all stressed, anxious, irritable.

The world we are living in is busy and fast. And it’s only getting busier and faster. So what if you could take a vacation from all that chaos? Imagine yourself going from the chaos of your life to the beach. It’s the perfect summer afternoon– warm sand, beautiful waves. Meditation has that kind of effect on your mind.

Meditation is a vacation from all the chaos. It’s a way to relax your mind so that you can better handle all the stress and anxiety that you’re feeling in your life. Meditation calms your mind. And when your mind is calm, you feel better about yourself. Life is simpler. You can focus more easily before a test or a big game. And you’re more in control of your mind, just like an athlete is more in control of their body.

So are you interested? Let’s do a short meditation together. Before we do that, I just want to introduce myself. My name is Dave. Just so you know. I’m not sitting here in a loincloth on a mountaintop eating a bag of seeds and staring into the sun all day. I’m a normal dude. I watch sports. Well, my favorite team is the Lakers, so there’s not much to watch these days.

I’m on Instagram, Facebook, Periscope, Twitter. I get it. We’re all in this chaotic world together. And here’s how I got into meditation. I live in a really small apartment in New York City. And a few winters ago, it was a really cold morning, and I felt like the world was collapsing in on me. So I pushed Play on a guided meditation, a lot like the one you’re listening to right now.

And everything felt better, warmer, easier. So today, I want to invite you to take a few minutes to get really comfortable and give your mind a chance to see how it feels when it’s not wired and connected to Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest. So for just a few minutes, I invite you to do whatever you need to do to get super comfortable. You can lie flat on the sofa.

You can take me on a walk with you and listen on your walk. You can sit upright and share while you’re listening– whatever works for you. And if you want to close your eyes, you can do that. If that’s going to freak you out, no worries. Keep your eyes open. And as you settle in and get more relaxed, I want to explain how meditation works on your brain.

Your brain– yes, your brain– is the most complex thing ever discovered in the universe. If you took a little tiny piece of your brain no bigger than a tip of a pen and you stretched all the neurons in that tiny little piece of your brain, all those neurons would stretch two miles in length. That’s how intricate the circuitry is in your brain.

Your brain is like a super powerful engine. But the average human being loses their attention span six to eight times a minute. So we don’t really know how to harness the power of that engine. And when you learn how to do that, everything changes. You become like a great athlete or musician or artist who knows how to channel their brain’s potential.

So let’s do that right now. Let’s calm your brain so that you can tap into its power. So getting super comfortable, and while you are meditating, it’s very common for your brain to jump around and start thinking a lot. And if you do that, repeat these words as a way to center your brain in the moment. I feel calm. I feel calm. I feel calm.

For just two minutes, I’m going to leave you to relax and meditate. And during those two minutes, if your brain starts jumping around and going a little bit wild, quietly repeat these words– I feel calm. If your brain wanders off, repeat. I feel calm.

If you start getting bored, repeat– I feel calm. If you’re dying to look at your buzzing phone on the table next to you, instead repeat, I feel calm. So for two minutes, let’s meditate. And in just two minutes, I will be back. Quietly repeating to yourself, I feel calm.

Take a moment now to just let your brain wander freely, wherever it wants to go. Just let it loose. If your eyes are closed, feel free to open up. How do you feel? A little more relaxed? Does your brain feel less distracted and more focused, more powerful?

How does what you’re feeling right now differ from how you feel when you’re glued to your cell phone? Meditation is a little easier on the mind, right? It feels less complicated, less chaotic.

Today, when you find yourself back on your computer or phone, when you feel stressed, when your brain is jumping from one thing to the next and you want to return to this place of stillness, power, and relaxation, come back to those words. I feel calm. I feel calm. I feel calm. See you soon. Peace.

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USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work

Phone Number: 877-700-4679
Email Address: sswvac@msw.usc.edu

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