Meditation: The Ultimate Stress Buster

[00:00] Hey, beautiful people. What’s up? So it’s show one. This is so exciting. This is what happened, y’all. I was in my little pink tree house, and I was recording these podcasts, trying to teach people how to get better at stress, forcing people to meditate. Don’t worry, you’re gonna love it. We’re gonna totally get into that. And then they’re like, listen, it’s gonna be tv. I’m like, okay, you know, sometimes you gotta roll with it. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. Rolling with it. Okay, I’m gonna bring up meditation, which I have found after 25 years of working in the Atlanta mental health community. I have found that the one thing that helps people with stress the most, the ethical obligation that I have now, is to teach everybody how to meditate, because that is the single most important thing that will change your life the quickest, that will bring you the most peace, that will help you with all of that stress, stressed out, whatever you have going on. Okay, let’s do it. Let’s do it. Yay. Show one. Yes, I’m the meditation teacher, and I’m here to surprise you. Hey, beautiful people. It’s time for some stress therapy. A podcast about how to meditate and get better at stress for people living in the real world. Finally, a place to park my 24 hours. Five plus years of experience of working as a psychotherapist in the mental health field. And now your host, me, the stress therapist, sherry Flake. My name is Sheri. I’m the stress therapist. I teach people how to get better at stress, stop procrastinating, and stay motivated while we work on healthy habits like meditation and happy living. Okay? My passion is definitely around meditation because it’s just this magical thing. And if you can get your butt on the cushion every single day, just, like brushing your chumps, just for the rest of your life, right? If you can figure out how to do that, okay? And honestly, that’s the only difference between you and me. I’ve figured out how to do it, and maybe you haven’t, okay? I figured out not only how to do it, but to keep on doing it. And if I was like, hey, listen, for the rest of your life, you’re going to have to brush your chops twice a day. You’d be like, that sounds like a lot, but you’re probably already doing that, man. You’re already doing it. It’s become habitual. And so a lot of what we’re going to do together is going to be yes. We’re going to do stress tips. We’re going to do whatever. But we’re definitely going to start hitting hard on meditation and how to get you to do it every single day, no matter what, okay? Not an hour, twice a day, just until the end of January or whatever. Like, I get it. I’ve been around, okay? Like, I get how it goes. I’m a therapist. I have a private practice. I help my clients with just this type of thing. And so I completely get it. And I’m just like you, I’m busy. I got kids. I got married. I, you know, I got a job. You know, we all got our, like, little bag of rocks to carry, right? And everybody’s is different. Those are mine. Those are my big rocks. Those are my boulders. Those are my bowling balls. Right? And I’m running this little business. I just had my 18th year anniversary, my business being open, thank you very much. But we’re all busy. We all have a ton of stuff to do. And if we’re not busy, all we got to do is pick up our phones. We get busy instantly. In like 10 seconds, we’re busy. Right? And so what we want to learn is how to sit still, how to be quiet. And like, if you know anything after just listening to me for two minutes or whatever, you might get that I am a big ball of energy. You know what I’m saying? If I can do this, you can do this. Yes. And so we’re going to do it together. Every time we meet on the show, regardless of what the stress tip is going to be, we’re always going to meditate together. This is the most important thing. And it’s effortless, man. There’s nothing to it. You don’t have to get up and go to the gym. Ugh. I go to the gym twice a week. I have to pay ahead of time. I have to have the appointment in my calendar. I have to have a trainer there waiting for me or I’m not going to go. Working out is late. I hate it. But I mean, you got to do it because if you’re not getting stronger, you’re getting weaker, right? So we have to go to the gym. This is so much easier than that. But there are a couple of reasons why. In fact, it’s the hardest thing. And I’m going to teach you how to get around those things so you can find some stillness, some calm in your life, because, come on, you deserve it. You deserve this. Believe me. It’s time. It’s time to learn how to do this and stop talking about it. Oh, my goodness. You cannot throw a stick on the Internet, my goodness. Without hitting meditation, mindfulness, someone in a white flowy dress down by the beach, you know, making meditation, whatever. I mean, I don’t know. That’s not what meditation is. We’re not going to talk about it. In fact, I would invite you to not tell anyone that you’re doing it. What? Like keep it a big secret? Your ego is going to hate this. Your ego is going to want to be the most spiritual, the best meditator, or the worst meditator or worse, giving me all these reasons why you can’t do it. I’m so tired of hearing everybody tell me why they can’t do it. Okay, listen. Nobody sits down at the piano and tries to play it right off the bat. And then they’re like, oh, I can’t play it. Well, no ****, man. Like, you need to practice a little bit, so that’s what we’re gonna do. And if it makes you feel any better, which it never does, why do people always preface things with if it makes you feel any better with some kind of sentence that never makes you feel better. But anyway, I’m a terrible guitar player. I play all the time. I don’t get any better. This is not about being better. This is about being there, okay? Because here’s the thing. I can play the guitar poorly, but I can play it because I put the time in, okay? And this is so much easier than playing the guitar. The guitar is so hard. And later on, we’re going to listen to an amazing guitar player, the Sonic yogi. He is going to provide the music for us for our lovely meditations every week on the show. He’s so awesome. Definitely want to go to Spotify and check out Sonic yogi. This guy is amazing. But we’re just going to do it. We’re going to stop talking about it. We’re going to stop talking about how stressed out we are. We’re going to stop telling everybody that we can’t meditate. Most of the people who say that anyway don’t really understand what meditation is. They have strange ideologies about what it means. We’ll go over that. It’s way, way, way easier than people think. And I’m going to be with you the whole time. Okay? So what do you know so far? So far, you know, I’m the stress therapist. I’m here to help you get better at stress. I want you to be happy because meditation is about as good for you as water, people. It’s about as good for you as water, okay? And, I mean, I would rather have my kids skip a meal than a meditation, talk social services on me. I’m just saying that it’s really, really, really important. There’s always a meal right around the corner, right? Like, oh, and we can get into fasting and what that’s like and why you do it and why you wouldn’t do it and all the good reasons to do it. It doesn’t have anything to do with being skinny, okay? It has everything to do with this juicy feeling of being empty, of being still, of doing things in order to make your life calmer, happier, more joyful. Because right now, I mean, in the wise words of Joe Dispenza, and he does this much more eloquently than me, but he’s like, you know, get up in the morning, and we hurry up and go to work, and then we hurry up and work, and then we hurry up and get to lunch, and then we hurry up and get back so we can hurry up and work some more. And then we hurry up to get home so we can hurry up and watch our show or read our book or do whatever. And then we hurry up and go to bed because we got to hurry up and get up. Like, where are you going? Where are you going? You’re already there, so you might as well enjoy it. You might as well love it. You might as well have more energy, have more peace, have lower breath, blood pressure, whatever reason it is that you want to tackle your stress or just feel better or just have a better day or be in the moment or commune with nature or whatever reason you have for meditating, it’s good enough. It’s good enough, and you deserve it. It’s your nature. And you’ll find that after you’ve been doing it with me for a little while, that it really does become easy. It really does become a part of who you are without added stress, without procrastination or without excuses. You just meditate. You just do it. And it’s magical and wonderful, and it’s so good that I am determined to try to get as many people to do it as possible. And listen, I teach meditation mostly to Americans, okay? So, like, I get that we like to cross things off. We like to be productive. We’ve gotten all of our priorities mixed up on what’s important and what makes us happy. And there’s nothing out there, unfortunately, that’s going to do it. If there was something outside of you that would make you happy. Then when you were in college or high school and that exam was over, you would still be reeling from that, right? No, something else came, right? Or after you got that car that you really, really, really wanted. Yeah. You still want another car after that, right? I’m saying that when you find happiness inside, and it sounds cheesy, but some of the cheesiest things on this earth are true. I mean, when you can be quiet enough to allow peace to just bubble up, that’s already there, you don’t have to look for it. It’s already there. You just have to get still and quiet enough for it to bubble up. And when you can do that regularly, life is grander. Whether you believe me or not. Let’s say you don’t even believe me. Fine, let’s try it and then tell me I was wrong. But as. I mean, I keep telling people this, I mean, if you hear this out there in the ethereal network in the ether, please remember that on my tombstone. I think I should write, I don’t like to shoot on myself, but I think I should write, what if it works? Because, y’all, what if it does? What if it does work? And what if you don’t know exactly the way to make yourself well, give me a chance. I’m just going to try these few things. Do them with me. I know I can be goofy and loud and annoying and pink hair or whatever, but I just want you to have this one thing. I just want you to try this one thing because I want you to have the juicy benefits of meditation. We’re going to talk about that in a show or two later, but for now, we’re not going to be posers. David G. Is an excellent meditation teacher. He talks about posers all the time. We’re not going to be. We’re not going to be posers. We’re going to actually meditate in just a few moments here. And I want you to think about your little homework. Right. If you’re going to be in stress therapy with me, all my clients get homework. Disclaimer. You’re not my client. I don’t want to get in trouble. My husband is my lawyer, so I got to make sure I put that out there. But how are you thinking about meditation if you’ve tried it, or if you just laid in Shavasana at the end of a yoga class, or if you’ve tried meditation and found it to be really, really difficult, or if you erroneously think it means clearing your head of thoughts, if you figure out how to do that, let me know. I will love to know how to do that. But how are you thinking about meditation in general? I saw this interview with Jerry Seinfeld last night. I’m so glad I saw it before I came to see you for our very first show today, because he was having an interview with someone, and I think it was his 70th birthday, maybe, and he does look amazing, and he’s working really hard, and he just came out with a movie that he’s promoting, and this guy was like, what do you attribute all your success to? And Jerry Seinfeld was, like, meditating twice a day. He was like, my advice to everybody is meditate all the time, lift weights and drink espresso. But let’s get. Let’s get back to the meditation portion. How are you thinking about it? Because Jerry Seinfeld was trying to convince the interviewer that he should go for it. He was shooting on the interviewer, and the interviewer was like, oh, yeah, I tried it once. And Jerry was, like, pretty dismissive of that. He was like, oh, so you tried it once? So you’re not even gonna try it or whatever? And he said, what do you want to this guy? I mean, you definitely need to look up this interview. It’s magical. And this guy’s like, well, I want more energy to be able to be successful or do whatever. I can’t remember something about energy. He ended up saying that he attributes all his success, all of everything that he needs in his life, to meditating. Even the way that he looks amazing for 70, even the way that he’s working so hard and doesn’t really see it like work because he feels so good. And then he talked to the interviewer, who kept trying to steer him away from meditation, maybe because of personal reasons, I don’t know. But he said to the interviewer, going to the gym, lifting weights, doing all these other things, like I said, is a lot of effort. It’s a lot of work, and this is effortless. And I think, you know, if we change the way that we think about things, in the wise words of Wayne Dyer, remember that guy? The things that we think about begin to change. And so your homework is to kind of think about how you’re thinking about things. How are you thinking about meditation? Do you think it’s impossible and hard and you’ll never be able to do it, make it a habit? Maybe it’s time to start saying to yourself, I used to think that about meditation. I don’t think that anymore. Right. Meditation is easy. Meditation is effortless. Meditation is home. Meditation is my nature. I’m just getting back to it. And like I mentioned earlier, you don’t have to tell anyone that you’re doing it. You don’t have to justify it. You don’t have to explain it. All you gotta do is show up here and I will totally get you on the road to doing it, along with a bunch of stress tips that we’re going to go over that just make your life easier, that I’ve learned over the years, being people’s therapist. So we’re going to just do it. We’re going to just do it. Okay. We’re just going to do it. We’re going to stop talking about it. Which just reminds me, my daughter, she. I got her these shoes. I thought they were knockoff Nikes, but then I later found out that they were. I don’t know, maybe they’re fancy shoes. I’m not sure. They didn’t seem as expensive as Nike’s, but maybe they were. I don’t really remember. But on the side of her shoe, instead of saying, just do it, it. It said, just so. So I was like, this is terrible. No, we’re going to fully show up. Not so so we’re just going to fully show up. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. That’s like 90% of it is just showing up. So all you have to do is not go anywhere and stay right here while we meditate together right now. Okay, so we’re about to meditate together, okay? And right now your brain is probably saying something like, I gotta go tinkle. I need to go get a drink. I have to go do this instead. This is more important. Whatever. Whatever it is, okay, just know that’s your ego probably trying to talk you out of it. That’s not you. That’s not the lovely, perfect, holy and divine you that’s connected to all sentient beings. That’s not you, okay? That’s just your ego. We’ll get into that later. What’s important here is to just go ahead and ignore that voice. Just for the next few moments while we meditate together. I’m going to be a little bit like a ski instructor, so I’m going to go down the mountain with you. So don’t freak out. You’re not going to be alone. I’m going to do a guided meditation where I’m going to hold your hand the whole time. And your only job is to keep your hand in mind. Pay attention. When you start to space out, come back to my voice. We’re going to listen to beautiful music by the sonic yogi while I talk you through your first maybe, or at least a lovely guided meditation. And all you have to be able to do to do this meditation, for those of you that think you might not be able to do it, is breathe. If you are breathing, you can do this. Okay. My dogs are doing this with us. Probably my cat, too. Okay, just breathing. If you can breathe, you can do this. And it’s gonna be so good. Okay? So find a comfortable seat. Do not lay down. Comfort is important, but I don’t want you to do any meditation right now. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. I want you to sit up without leaning on something so you have a nice curve in your back, okay? And so you stay awake and you don’t fall asleep. All right? You are going to be closing your eyes. Find a place in your house or your work where you feel super comfortable, and you can just go there and sit for a little bit. Okay? I always use eye covers. That might be something that we get into later. Okay? For now, sitting up in a comfortable space, let’s meditate together.

[17:49] Right now. Take a long, slow, deep breath in your nose. Let it all go out of your mouth. Take another long, slow, deep breath in your nose, letting it all go out of your mouth. And this time, I want you to.

[18:40] Bring your shoulders up to your ears on your inhale, and your nose, shoulder, earrings.

[18:47] Breathe in. Breathe in. And then let it drop and come.

[18:53] Out of your mouth.

[18:55] And now just watch your beautiful breath find its way again, allowing your brain to handle the breathing as it usually does. You don’t have to change it. You don’t have to breathe deeper or faster or even shallower, as if you are a passerby, just a witness. You’re just watching. Perhaps someone else breathing.

[19:45] You’re not really breathing anyway.

[19:49] You’re being breathed. Your brain is handling it. Last night, when you were unconsciously sleeping, breathing went great, and you didn’t have anything to do with it. So right now, for a few moments, just allow and watch. Allow the breath. Watch the breath. You may want to find part of your body where breath comes and breath goes. Perhaps your nostrils, maybe your throat, perhaps your heart center, maybe your belly. Where can you laser focus.

[21:14] And watch.

[21:15] Breath come and watch breath go? Just imagining for a moment.

[21:44] The magical.

[21:45] Cocktail that’s perfectly perfect, perfectly made from the lushness of the earth.

[21:54] That resides.

[21:55] In the ether for you to take in so you can thrive on this planet.

[22:03] Never taking more than you need.

[22:07] Never taking less. You may notice your breath slowing. You may notice it less shallow. You may notice no changes. It’s all good. As you expel your breath, the earth takes it in and changes it, puts.

[22:39] It back into the atmosphere.

[22:44] This reciprocity goes on and on. So for a few moments, you may be able to muster a bit of gratitude. So perhaps your breath in could be thank, and your breath out could be you. Thank you. Thank you. Continue silently saying, think on the inhalation and you on the exhalation. Thank you. When your attention falters, you just come right back to the breath. It’s all you’re supposed to be doing right now. Thank you. Slowly come back. Hearing my voice.

[25:29] Take a long, slow.

[25:31] Deep breath in your nose and let it all go out of your mouth. Noticing how different it is when you take control of the breath rather than watch it. Breathe in your nose again, let it all go out of your mouth. Coming into this room, into this space, into this moment again. Breathe in your nose and then let it all go out of your mouth. And when you’re ready, you can open your beautiful eyes. I so hope that short meditation was lovely for you. It was pretty lovely for me.

[26:40] I can’t wait to see you every week. I think this is going to be really fun, and we’re going to get some work done, and it’s going to be easy, and it’s going to be hard, and it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be weird, and it’s going to be out there. It’s going to be some woo. But, you know, sometimes the woo woo is true. True. So we got to sometimes pay attention to it. You know what I’m saying? Like most of the time. Like almost all the time. But we’ll do that together and it’s going to be great fun and we’ll have some distress tips, will get you a little more calmer, a little bit happier, and will reap those magical benefits of meditation that you deserve. You deserve it. Okay, it’s time. Let’s do this. I can’t wait. Again. We’re going to take baby steps, okay? We’re just going to plug away and just show up. That’s all I ask you to do, is just show up. I mean, what if it works, right? I’ll be with you the whole way. You got this. Let’s do it. Are you liking your stress therapy sessions? I’m loving this. Okay, I’ll see you next time, right? Because you’re gonna show up and we’ll meditate we’ll hang out. We’ll learn a little bit. It’s gonna be awesome. It’s gonna be great fun. Okay. Okay. I love you. I’m really excited. Have a lovely, lovely day. How y’all feeling after that stress therapy session? Good. Awesome. Check out the show notes to connect with me, the stress therapist on social media, hestress therapist on Instagram, and stresstherapy on Twitter. You can always go to ilovetherapy.com to find out about meditation and yoga retreats and other offerings that I have there. If you live in Georgia and you’re ready to be one of my clients, go to my website to find out how you can sign up for a free face to face consultation with me. At the very least, jump on my mailer so you don’t stress or miss one thing. Until next time, have a lovely, lovely day.