Fasting For the Mind — Mindfulness and Covid19 (WHY YOU SHOULD FAST YOUR MIND!)

So, there’s so much going on in the middle of this world pandemic. There’s so much to worry about. Like, I’m worried about the economy and when work’s gonna restore. Maybe you’re one of the people who lost their job or your job seems perilous. Or kids, or loved ones, you know, haven’t got work and maybe even to thinking about food. The food supply sometimes seems at risk, so you need to stock up and you got to be worried about your health and social distancing and what I’m gonna have to go back to work, and God, my kids. I just, there’s so much to think about. But maybe today, the topic should be getting a diet for your mind, fasting the brain, so that you can start to see what’s really going on in your life and not be panicking about what you think you should be thinking about, and that’s what this video is about. Stay tuned.

As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So stay tuned, and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful. So, what does it mean to go on a diet for your mind? To take a fast for your mental energy? To fast in terms of what we thought requirements are going on to your head? Well, it’s an unusual concept, and I’ve done it a few times in my life, and I’m gonna tell you a little bit about what it’s like to be on a 10-day meditation retreat which is essentially a fast for the mind.

And a 10-day meditation retreat, which I’ve done a number of, my last one was several months ago, is a meditation retreat that’s protracted. Usually, I have a daily practice, 20 minutes a day is all I do, but once a year I try to get away for this extended marathon of meditation. And the marathon is what it is. It’s really, every day, many hours per day of meditation. And usually it’s in some relatively remote, rural location, very simple settings. You give up your cell phone when you go in. You get mild vegetarian food, three meals a day. You’re in an environment that’s got low stimulus, although beautiful natural surroundings, but it’s very much intended to settle the mind. And then of course, you practice settling the mind every day for many hours. Calm, calm, cool, collected, observing one’s thoughts, reducing the volume of thoughts. And you practice, day in, day out.

And it’s hard work. For the first few days, you know, your rear end gets sore and your mind is racing and you’re bored to death with all that sitting. And yet, there’s something incredibly powerful in this practice. And the practice is all about giving yourself this break from the daily routine of compulsive thinking, planning for your future, worrying about things in your life that you don’t certainly have full control of. Worrying in this time of uncertainty about how we deal and cope with it, and maybe even spending too much time reflecting on the past. Things that didn’t go right, the conversation that you wish had been different. That’s our typical mind.

And when we fast the mind, when we give it a diet of meditation, of calm, quiet, we get profound changes. Sometimes people talk about having a meditation facelift, that you come back away from a meditation retreat after several days and it looks like you’ve lost years off your life because you have so calmed the mind. And what’s the impact of this? It’s essentially that you find this experience that in Eastern traditions they call emptiness. We meditate so that we can empty the mind. And this doesn’t mean that we become stupid or imbeciles where we don’t have control over our thinking. It’s that we become very aware of each and every thought that comes up.

When we empty the mind, we become who we really are. We become awareness. We’re not our thoughts, we’re not our feelings. They fleet from thing to thing, thought, thought, thought, thought, feeling, feeling, feeling. And from one moment to the next of thoughts and feelings change. But when we become awareness, we just see our thoughts and feelings. And when I’m on a 10-day meditation retreat and I’m deep, deep, deep in a state of calm, I become aware of the most tiny subtleties. Things like a shift in the heat of the Sun. A cloud barely touches the Sun and then it lifts past, and you can just feel that extra heat on your body. Or the slightest breeze comes up and I can feel it in the beard on my face. That’s what the subtleties of awareness mean.

And even the subtle ‘test subtleties in our thinking and our feeling become far more acute. So I say, “Oh, this is my experience in this moment. And now the next moment. And the next moment.” It’s deeply sweet, nourishing, restorative to have a 10-day meditation retreat. But it is not the practice of meditation. The science is really clear that the practice is all about the frequency. Every day, training the mind to get quiet. Every day, in my 20-minute session, quiet, restorative, nourishing, seeing the current moment, experiencing the now, recognizing the subtleties of my shift through the day from one thought and feeling to another thought and feeling. And the benefits are huge. Calm, you get perspective. Wisdom comes when you’re calm and have a clear mind. And you also obviously get this huge mental health benefit that provides all this resiliency.

So please, follow the links below that David sets up in this video, and see some of my other teachers on meditation. At this time in our lives, with so much uncertainty, I’m encouraging you to fast your mind. Go on a diet. Find the restoration that’s going to keep you strong and at your best through this period of uncertainty and change. I’m Paul Charisma, I mean happiness expert. If you like this content, click the like button on the video, share it broadly, and if you want to get videos like this every Sunday morning in your inbox, please subscribe to my channel. Thanks very much.