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In the last 149 interviews, a common theme that comes up in interviews is the importance of self-knoweldge: of knowing what one is good at, knowing what gets one energized, and knowing what one wants out of a career and life. For today's Skills episode, I wanted to share my experience with a powerful tool: Meditation and Silent Meditation Retreats. While the benefits of Meditation is well documented with respect to concentration and increased productivity, I wanted to share four different ways in which this may help veterans. The episode covers (1) the basics of meditation, (2) why a veteran may be interested in a silent meditation retreat, (3) an overview of silent meditation retreats, and (4) resources in case you would like to learn more.
Selected Resources:
- BTU #123 – The Veterans Yoga Project (Dr. Dan Libby)
- Spirit Rock Meditation Center is where I have done my four retreats, and I have also heard very positive things about the Insight Meditation Society
- Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) - a great introduction to meditation; there are programs around the world that offer MBSR. I took mine through UCSF.
- Book Recommendations
Outline of Episode:
- Agenda
- Background on Meditation
- Why you might consider a meditation retreat
- My experience with meditation retreats
- Resources if you’re curious to learn more
- Part 1: Background on Meditation
- Dan Libby - episode 123 - veterans yoga projects
- BTU #123 – The Veterans Yoga Project (Dr. Dan Libby)
- http://beyondtheuniform.io/btu-123-the-veterans-yoga-project-dr-dan-libby/
- Not about religion; christian pastor, jewish people, atheists, agnostics
- Tool
- Being present and aware of what is happening
- Being honest of what is going on right now - in this moment
- Not living in the future - dreaming of what might be, planning about what to do next
- Not dwelling in the past - beating ourself up for past mistakes, day dreaming about things that occurred in the past
- But being present and open to this moment right here
- And doing it without judgment
- Being open to whatever the experience is
- The realization is that this moment is all that we have
- Even though oftentimes I live on autopilot
- I drive to the store and don’t even remember how I got there
- Or my wife is speaking to me at dinner and I’m thinking about a work related email I need to write
- But instead trying to be fully present in each moment, curious about what is going on right now
- John Kabatt Zinn - Raisin experiment
- Many people could explain this more elqounty
- will have resources at the end
- but that it my headline, my teaser for the rest of this
- Part 2: Why you might consider a meditation retreat
- This actually came up in my recent Reprogramming seminar
- As a group we talked about how a silent meditation retreat may be an extremely nice activity to do immediately after ones transition to a civilian career
- So a few reasons I can think of
- First - decompression
- We’ll talk about the structure of the retreat, but it is an extreme unplug from our daily life, from the news, from email, from texting, from everything that keeps us distracted
- And that might be an ideal way for many of you to take a step back from the 3 - 5 - 10 - 15 - 20 years you just spent doing what less than 1% of the population does or understands, serving in the US Military
- Second - tapping into your intuition
- My experience has not been a lot of reflection on these retreats
- Instead it is about calming and settling
- Being more aware of my mind, body, and intuiton
- Getting rid of a lot of the cloudiness
- SO i can actually pay better attention to my gut feel, to what is really going on in me
- Muddy stream
- Example post retreat with fundraising
- Third - empathy
- Many forms of retreats are great for cultivating empathy
- This is something many veterans have cited as not being a strong suit for many veterans
- Fourth - open to new experiences
- Comfort zone
- Budget for personal development
- Part 3: My experience with meditation retreats
- I started doing this 4 years ago
- My wife took me - kicking and screaming - to my first one
- Have found it to be by far the most rejuvenating experience in my life
- in a way that no vacation is
- MBSR
- Weeklong
- Silent
- Structure of day
- Types
- Non judgment
- Insight
- Metta - cultivating kindness - oneself, those around you
- Part 4: Resources if you’re curious to learn more
- MBSR
- Stanford - Compassion class
- 10% Happier
- Search Inside yourself
- Email me
- Yoga
- Dan Libby - episode 123 - veterans yoga projects