Meditation -- Pushups For Your Mind

Description

Preppers, bushcrafters, survivalists -- are you meditating? If not, you're missing out on your best tool to help you deal with SHTF situations. Even the Marines are doing it. This video goes over some of the research showing how beneficial meditation is, and gives some very basic beginning meditation instruction. This is a non-dogmatic, non-mystical approach. We should all be meditating for optimal mental and emotional resilience! =)

For a great list of research articles on meditation and the effects cited here (plus many more), check out this link:

http://liveanddare.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Scientific-Benefits-of-Meditation-PDF-LiveAndDare.com_.pdf

Visit http://rewildu.com/classes/ for unique educational opportunities in rewilding, wilderness skills, mindfulness, martial arts, primal fitness, homesteading, and more.

Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,meditation,meditation instruction

Video Transcription

your proper survivalist bushcrafter or just someone who wants to experience more of life and enjoy life more then meditation might be for you there's this idea in our culture that meditation is some kind of rule navel gazing thing from Eastern cultures and realistic but the United States Marines are meditating these days the reason why because meditation is being scientifically shown to have a whole host of benefits here's just a few the Marines are doing it because they know that it enhances combat effectiveness it makes you calmer more relaxed in stressful situations also it helps if they bend in a combat situation to come out the other side of that with less psychological impact because we again learn to reprocess trauma stress frustration we all know right in our culture eating healthy working out that makes sense we know that we get a stronger body by exercising but what we haven't been taught is that we get a stronger mind through meditation meditation is no more mystical than a push-up all right it is it's really simple and has these profound benefits stress frustration if you're quick to anger these sorts of emotions are powerfully changed when we meditate and it's not just subjective change so I can mark change by saying okay I met a situation today that yesterday I think would have liked I would have flipped out but I was really calm that's a subjective change that we know but this research is showing real objective changes in the gray matter of our mind so a brain scan is done before people start meditating and then six weeks later may see the parts of the brain of shrunk parts of the brain have grown I'll have a couple over here so that you can see some of the more specifics that if you are into that sort of thing but for most of us the important thing to note is that the parts of our brain that trigger a fear response that send us into hyperactive fight-or-flight that when someone pulls out in front of us we get a big adrenaline rush where we get frustrated or angry lowest parts of our brains shrink the parts of our brains that can look rationally at a situation and can react to it appropriately those parts of our brain grow so in a survival situation for instance if I have a hyperactive fight-or-flight response as soon as something goes wrong you know I mind don't get my fire started the first time I'm going to start to flip out get stressed things start to fall apart and degrade

if on the other hand I have my brain develop so that when I don't get that fire started I can look at the situation I can look at my skill set I can look at my current state of being I can look at the tools that I have and I can find the best way to deal with that situation without getting stressed out about it if you want to try meditating yourself let me give you a really simple way to start you maybe have been put off by it because you hear about these special postures and am I supposed to be burning incense or have some statue of some deity in front of me no really simple really basic again meditation equivalent to push ups posture is not necessary you can lay down whatever position you want if you want to meditate but the reason often that will use posture is because it helps gauge when we start to for instance fall asleep so if I'm up in a posture and i feel myself slumping or even I just note that I'm starting to kind of bow down here into a slump e posture it can bring me back are we engaging that posture if it helps you some of the Zen folks use a hand posture like this it can be left right on top doesn't matter this traditional ways but when leaving all that aside and then placing your films together and that is just like your posture it's not mystical it's just that it takes a little bit of strength and awareness to keep these up here and as you're meditating and they flop down or they start to drift you can kind of be brought back to awareness by resetting those so use posture or a hand position if you want not important when I close my eyes and you can do it eyes open eyes closed up to you try both ways when I do it here i'm going to close my eyes what we're going to do is I'm going to pay attention to my breath breathing in my nose out through my mouth and I'm putting my awareness on to that sensation of breathing what's going to happen is I'll take one breath two maybe three and then my mind will start rambling off thinking about oh you know that meeting tomorrow what am i cooking for dinner what did one of my wife say about um yeah there goes the brain no problem as soon as you catch yourself thinking come back to that sensation of breathing so that's simple and every time you do that every time you come from the thought back to your breathing you just did a push-up for your brain and so you don't have to punish yourself for thinking it's going to happen to all of us and every time it happens it gives you a chance to do that mental push up come back to your breath it's really that simple that's a wonderful way to begin a meditation practice in the research i believe they tracked people for six weeks I think 15 20 20 minutes a day and in just six weeks they've done those brain scans and seemed to shift in the gray matter so if you try meditation you're probably going to see results fairly quickly you can see those subjective results you can start with five breaths in and out you could start with ten minutes don't overdo it if you say okay I'm going to start with 20 minutes a day I'm gonna do 20 minutes every day if you've got a great willpower you'll be able to do it otherwise that can kind of be setting yourself up for failure because it's intense meditation when you first start five minutes a day let's say go with that relax into it for five minutes this is five minutes when you don't have to do anything you just get to sit there and breathe which comes a little bit of dicta because it's kind of cool in our world to have a moment when you're doing nothing sit there for five minutes and I would love to hear from you if you try this out in a week two weeks three weeks do you notice a difference some of the differences i have noticed from meditation in my life emotional balance heightened senses better memory an ability to have situations that are really challenging come at me and not spaz out you'll be relaxed move my way through those situations in the most optimal way possible for me at the time what do you notice if you're a long time meditator also love to hear from you in the comments below what are the benefits that you've seen in your life and why do you do it thanks for watching I hope if you have thought about meditation and that you thought it was just a little too out and outer space that this maybe has changed your mind this is good hard science this is as basic as exercise basic as push-ups awesome thanks for watching let me know your thoughts in the comments below you