Sit ... and connect
New book takes a fun approach to learning and understanding meditation
L
ike millions of women worldwide, I wanted to meditate more after watching Julia Roberts find her Zen in the 2010 blockbuster movie “Eat, Pray, Love.”
I began making mental plans of how to sell off my belongings so I could jet off to Bali and sit still in the jungle, as she did.
It never happened. Instead, I ended up on the side of my bed one morning trying to force my brain to stop thinking. I told myself, “If I just sit and be quiet. I will meditate.” Then, my dog started licking my toes, and I gave up. For many, like me, meditation can be a daunting exercise; something only to be mastered from a mountaintop in Tibet. But meditation is not that complicated, according to the new book “Just Sit: A Meditation Guidebook for People Who Know They Should But Don’t” (HarperCollins), by authors and sisters-in-law Sukey and Elizabeth Novogratz. The women, who live in New York and founded The Well Daily e-newsletter, traveled the world to study meditation and learn from masters. The New York residents wrote the book, which includes whimsical, fun drawings, colorful type and simple language, to encourage people to sit more and try meditation.
“We often make meditation a lot more complex than it is, but sitting is 90 percent of it,” said Elizabeth, who was introduced to meditation by Sukey more than a decade ago. “It doesn’t have to be perfect. But it’s a practice, and over time, you get better.”
The women don’t call themselves
meditation gurus, though they meditate daily. Both say that in the beginning, meditating can feel weird and overwhelming, but starting slow, like with any new exercise program, is key.
They encourage newbies to sit for just two minutes. Set a timer. It doesn’t matter if you sit in a chair, crosslegged on the floor, on the side of the bed or on a mountaintop, just sit. Other tips include relaxing and resting your hands on your thighs. Closing your eyes, of course. Paying attention to your thoughts because they will race, but it helps to take deep breaths, which is like giving your body a warmup before a workout.
The women also caution those new to meditation that it isn’t a cosmic light show, a spiritual bliss-out or even a way to relax. Meditation is a way to connect with a deeper self, which can help with stress, anxiety and a host of other things.
The first major study to examine the effect of meditation on the brain’s gray matter — the major part of the central nervous system that involves such functions as memory and self-control — revealed it can actually change the human brain. The 2011 Harvardbased study tracked participants for eight weeks with 27 minutes a day of meditation. Researchers found there were measurable changes in the areas of the brain associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress.
In 2015, the meditation and mindfulness industry brought in nearly $1 billion, according to IBISWorld, a global market research group.
“Meditation will change your life,” said Sukey, who learned it from her father as a young girl. It helped after she was sexually assaulted in college at age 17, then when her father died in 2008.
“Little by little, it slows you down, and it allows you to start peeling back the layers. Meditation helped me heal and allowed me permission to let go of the pain.”
For Elizabeth, meditation was the answer to kicking a smoking addiction. She quit nearly three years ago after developing a consistent meditation practice, calling it an “exercise in awareness.” That she stopped smoking was an “unexpected, wonderful surprise.”
Amy Hertz, owner of Tangerine Ink communications firm and meditation instructor at Define Living off Westheimer, said many people quit meditation before they even get started.
“People sit down and discover that they can’t enter the state of bliss easily, and it feels like ‘Oh, my God, I’m making my life worse.’ ”
Hertz, also a former classical flutist, discovered meditation in 1989 after a therapist who had been practicing Zen meditation for 30 years encouraged her to try it. She was in her 20s, single and living in New York City.
“I was in extremely bad emotional shape, and my therapist said it would help my music. When I got quiet, the noise in my head was overwhelming. It brought up all of the loneliness and drama of being young in New York, but I had to push past that.”
Hertz also worked as a book editor and went on to work on “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” by Sogyal Rinpoche (1992) and the best-selling “The Art of Happiness” by the Dalai Lama (1998). She even met her husband, Ronaldo Fraga, at a meditation retreat in 2005.
Today, Hertz meditates from 45 minutes to four hours a day, nonconsecutively. She encourages guided meditations when first starting out.
“It really can be scary to be with your own mind, but it’s about disciplining the mind,” Hertz said. “Meditation is like any muscle in the body. You have to work it.”