welcome to new connection where you can tune in and grow i'm your host vicky thompson you may be familiar with new connection magazine for conscious living which has been enjoyed by readers in the pacific northwest for more than seventeen years now we're excited to bring a new connection to life in your home a new connection we welcome authors practitioners and visionaries to share new ideas for alternative health spirituality and personal growth today i'd like to welcome to new connection jamie potter who's the new renaissance bookshop and a long time member of a nonda jamie has been meditating for more than thirty years and he leads meditation classes show others how to use a simple teachings of yoga nanda to find inner peace jamie welcome to new connection thank you right to be here but i'm excited to talk with you today about meditation because i think having a meditation practice is one of the best gifts that you can give to yourself that's right there's i don't know of anyone who's been meditating for a very long time who say i was all i wish i went to waste all this time doing this anyone who's been a long time meditator just knows the value they're getting from it  the answers are life so much there are a lot of different elements and creating a successful meditation practice one one big part of it is regularity meditating the same time if possible morning and evening twice a day and it's better to do it regularly even if it's just ten or fifteen minutes twice a day then for it to be sporadic and so it's like something you're integrating into your routine like starting a running or exercise program or something and another important aspect is to create a home altar a place in your home where you always meditate if you have an extra room it's great to have a whole meditation room otherwise it could just be a corner of a bedroom it's nice to have a screen to kind of partition it off  but that is your spot to meditate and you can make a little altar with flowers things like flowers right inset candle pictures of saints or great teachers that inspire you  you can burn incense whatever uplift you personally you can put on that altar and that is your spot to meditate and some advantages to that number one you gradually over time create a by abrasion of meditation in that spot different rooms have different vibrations the office is about work the kitchen is about food and your meditation spot will be about going deep meditation alter and that will remind you that you need to meditate so it's it's you need to take part of your schedule you need to take a chunk of your time and say i'm dedicating this time to meditation you need to take a little piece of your square footage of your house or apartment and say i'm dedicating this spot this space into meditation and that's making the commitment in your life that will lead to a successful practice  taking off it's best to meditate in the morning first thing like either right after you wake up or maybe after you've had a shower or done some exercise but before you have breakfast or before you get out into the the workaday world the other great time to meditate is either right after coming home from work before dinner or right before going to bad the yogis say there's four great times to meditate sunrise noon sunset and met at midnight so we kind of have to model modify that in our modern world so some other important things will be talking about some preliminary techniques a little bit later another important thing is to set absolutely still i was fortunate to start out on a spiritual path in zen buddhism and at some long retreats with zen monks watching they made sure you didn't move a muscle while meditating and that's so important if your body is restless your mind's going to be restless if your mind's restless it will reflect on your body so how do you achieve a state of stillness because i know for turn how do you get stiff well first of all you get comfortable and you can you can meditate in a chair as long as you pull away from the back of the chair or you can meditate cross legged on the floor with a zafu meditation cushion or there are meditation benches as well the important thing is to find a position that you can call hold comfortably and hold perfectly still for the fifteen or twenty minutes you'll be meditating the other key element is to have absolutely straight back a crooked back just imagine to just imagine the statue of tree so the energy travels up and down the spine if it's straight and you'll be a bunch more likely to be calm and without a lot of thoughts coming and so those are two elements i learned in zen buddhism which have served served me well so what are some of the benefits of meditation well there are many benefits of course meditation leads you to enlightenment or self realization that's probably the biggest benefit but there's lots of other benefits including mark enhanced creativity when you meditate you actually tune in and you're going  within and you're actually contacting the superconscious we talk about the sub conscious state of consciousness predominating when you sleep or your drowsy conscious mind which is pretty much the workaday  getting things done kind of consciousness and a super consciousness which is tapping a higher realms so when handel for example compose the messiah he actually sat he heard that music and he just wrote it down it came from a different source einstein for example with his theories he would have an intuition about how the universe is set up and then have to spend years in working with  equations to justify it math that mathematically with a rational mind but that this spark of insight came direct from the super consciousness so when we meditate we are really tapping in the deeper we meditate the more we tap into that higher level of consciousness and are able to access that in our lives ideas may pop up about work or some new idea or some new project it just may come to you while meditating so you're getting in the flow there yeah sometimes i'll have a pad of paper just in the meditation room and if an idea comes i'll just jot it down that's nice and i screen it and another way and you talked about said the benefits of meditation are more successful in being more successful in your relationship that's right because in meditation you're listening to what's coming from what's welling up from inside you're listening to your own thoughts and feelings and and what's inside and those listening skills help you and really hearing what other people are saying to you and to have empathy for other people as well to see where they're coming from and of course if both people in a relationship are meditating that  is even more enhanced when you can share that richness together what about health how does it affect our health well meditation is the opposite of the fight or flight response you're probably familiar with that with adrenaline being released in the body and preparing us to either run away from danger or confront that danger but meditation is all that so it basically under stress  more joy in my life right sharpens and enhanced as a census so if you have a long meditation and then take a hike in a mountain matter how everything is just so much more beautiful and enjoy life so once you see how much manotick meditation helps you to enjoy your life and makes you want to meditate more but you have some simple techniques that anyone can use and one of the first techniques that you teach is even count breathing ok with a twelve twelve and it also means for our yama means control so this is a simple technique of working with the broth and the life energy so would you like to practice it right now absolutely ok we're just going to pour away from the back of the chair since a very relaxing way to get into your meditations the right it is and it's an interesting technique and it's so it's something to use if you ever getting angry and someone if you find yourself in a argument with here partner or if you can remove yourself from the seeing that energy and just go into a room and practice that you can not be angry and be doing that even count breathing at the same time that is a powerful to know it is yeah and you know try it next time you because with that with even th you cannot be in fight or flight if you're breathing evenly so again it's the body impacting the mind in the mind of the body but another technique you use is the tensing and relaxing with the double breath right and this is a great technique  what kind of misconception people have is they can just come straight from work sit down and meditate without any preliminary you need to one thing you need to do is dissolve the tension in the body and in the mind before you to take and this technique is a way what we're going to be doing is tensing all the muscles breathing and with a double inhalation through the nose and then releasing that tension with a double explanation to the mouth earlier and so let's go ahead and take a moment to show everyone how you can do that one we know you're going to show us that young right this is a wonderful technique that anyone can do and it's a great problem or a technique for you start your meditation to get relaxed and be calm so to begin to really effective for getting your full body involved right and saying it's also great if you feel like you're coming down with a cold or something because you can actually visualize light on the inhalation you can visualize healing light coming into all the  and on the x away from your getting rid of disease worry straus whatever you want to get rid of so it's a great way to kind of clean the clean the aura and it feels really good to just go up and down and really move the energy to your body so meditation how as you start to tap into your higher consciousness and meditation how can you integrate it into your average day life with your home life your work life and then in the world right well i think what's happening is your your meditation practice kind of permeates your life and then your lie you start working with your life so it supports your meditation practice so just when you need to solve a problem or get an answer which direction to take you can tune into the super consciousness you can just get still do one of these little preliminary very simple techniques and focus your attention right here at the point between the eyebrows and and just ask for the answer and that's a very simple thing you can do at any point in the day the other thing is to consciously set the intention for your day one thing i  do most days when i most work days is i have a three by five card with my to do list on one side and with the other side i write the affirmation for the day or equality for that day so is really tiring in your spirit to help you achieve that's right and you could be a quote of somebody you admire or could speak quality you want to see happen that day but yeah i think it's very good but you also talk about through work where you can see your work as a divine service entire meditation practice into that as well that's right now that's when my wife and our partners founded the new renaissance bookshop and that was really part of the and see our work as karma yoga see our work as service where we could practice meditation and we do have a staff meditation once a week and have the have the work at the store be at an outgrowth of our meditation practice that's very powerful and i think you talk about it where kids thinking and acting consciously how can we achieve that through well i guess what i've mentioned with relationships too it's just  as you spend time in meditation you're listening to the inner world what's happening in the inner world and if you're listening to someone else talking you're just applying that to what they're saying so instead of spending i mean it's fun to watch ourselves how we're thinking of what we're going to say next instead of really hearing what the person saying so now it's almost like holding sacred space for the people that you're with so sometimes i find when i focus in on someone more and give them kind of my energy they become more alive and and in turn i become more alive because i'm involved and interact right and you can also do a little you can visualize that you can either visualize a lotus at the heart and you can visualize a ray of light coming out from your heart to the heart of the other person or you can visualize a point between the eyebrows or it's come sometimes known as the third eye you can visualize a laser of light coming from your third eye to the other person to you those are some things we practice in the bookstore sometimes with customers is just consciously blessing the people that come into the store and that's another wonder and you know it makes a difference to him what's going on now one practice you talk about in the world is being even minded and cheerful which i like that that's more fun to be cheerful  so well that just comes out of meditation again the way i look at it in meditation you're going within and you're letting the natural divine joy just kind of bubble  up like a spring it's just i think of it as a like a spring bubbling up into your life and you can at least start the day and that joyful energy there may be things that happen throughout the day that pull your talk a lot about that you like to meditate for the joy of it how how do you tap into joy when you meditate well every meditation may not be joyful sometimes you may not want to meditate and you just those times you just need to sit yourself down on your cushion i'm going to stay here twenty minutes regardless and you just you watch what's coming up the important thing is to meditate rather you want to or not  and don't focus too much upon rather a particular meditation was good or bad or deep or shallow or filled with thoughts are not filled with thoughts but just to do it but in the very deepest  will come up to the surface from deep within and then that can permeate your entire life that's something i have difficulty with meditation is my little monkey mind jumping around what do you do when you just have thoughts jumping around well just first of all realize that every other human being has exactly the same thing because we all have the same equipment we all have the same nervous system so it's not that we're trying to get rid of all the thoughts  thoughts come and they just kind of come out of the depths and the meditation is really changing the perspective on the thoughts instead of being from those thoughts you're starting to witness those thoughts and watch your own thoughts and feelings come up more like clouds in the sky more like a natural phenomenon rather than something that i am very involved in so it's a change in your orientation a little bit on your thoughts and feelings and that's a wonderful thing for all of us to do well jamie it's been so wonderful having you here today on new connection ok well thanks for having me yeah thank you very much and you can learn more about meditation at our website at new connection