Why you should meditate
No longer reserved for lotus positions and quests for spiritual enlightenment, meditation could be the key to unlocking our true potential, whether that’s in the office, on the sports field, or even in the bedroom
The 2010s were A funny decade. During a period that saw Donald Trump evolve from angry TV personality to angry president of the United States, we’ve kissed goodbye to truth in politics and watched social media companies evolve from sharers of cat memes to society-shifting giants capable of swaying the world’s biggest elections. But aside from the questionable changes in politics, it’s perhaps the sport and wellness spheres that’ve seen the biggest shifts.
Over the past decade, the world has watched on as new wellness trends have emerged as frequently as load-shedding schedule changes. But, as we move into the uncharted 2020s, it’s safe to say not all wellness trends are created equal.
Some have heavily disputed benefits, while others are downright weird. Meditation, though, sits at the opposite end of the spectrum, and is proving to have a wide range of practical uses from boosting creativity and libido to raising your metabolism.
It’s estimated somewhere between 200 to 500 million people currently use meditation in one form or another – that’s three times as many as in 2012. And it’s not just how many, but who among us is meditating that’s really catching peoples’ attention.
When bestselling author
Tim Ferriss set out to interview 140 people at the top of their respective fields for his podcast Tribe of Mentors, he found his guests largely had one thing in common: they meditated. Clearly, meditation has graduated beyond being a fad and now deserves to be taken seriously by anyone who wants to improve their life.
One person who’s gone all in with meditation and reaping the benefits is Janoah van Kekem. Having worked in hospitality and landscaping before finding a job as a sales manager for an alcohol company in Sydney, Australia, Van Kekem now sets up meditation workshops for individuals, workplaces and athletes.
But according to Van Kekem, until a few years ago, he was the last person you’d imagine meditating. He’d heard it doing the rounds but didn’t imagine it connecting with his lifestyle.
‘Up until the point where I actually learned to meditate
I was probably anti-spirituality, anti-open mindednes – I was only interested in sport, picking up girls and you know, the standard sort of things you do growing up. Anything that was deemed outside the norm, I wasn’t interested in.’
The turning point came following a conversation with a client at his previous job.
‘I really respected him,’ explains Van Kekem. ‘He was a normal guy: he surfed, he drank, he ate meat and he was tough as hell.
But he said to me one day, “I just wish I learned this when I was younger.”’ Curious to see if he’d find the same results, Van Kekem started experimenting with different forms of meditation but found he was still sceptical.
‘I wasn’t quite fully sold,’ says Van Kekem of his early attempts to meditate. ‘I was like, “I still don’t quite get it,” but my intuition said, “Dude, pull your head out of your ass and just do it.”’ Soon, Van Kekem was noticing things about himself he didn’t even know existed.
‘I actually didn’t realise that I had anxiety,’ he says. “I used to get physically ill before big games of sport or even before a date sometimes. That was just normal and when I was pretty overwhelmed and stressed with work I couldn’t go to bed without putting headphones in to cancel out the shit noise in my head.’
That soon changed when Van Kekem started meditating on a more regular basis.
‘Things like anxiety aren’t even a thing now,’ he explains. ‘If I do feel a little butterfly I now lean into it and I feel it because I’ve done the work – I have a better awareness of my body, you know? Intellectually, I feel like I’ve up-levelled in how I operate.’
But don’t take Van Kekem’s word for it. It’s the science, he says, that’s irrefutable. ‘Every time we meditate, it literally is rewiring our brain,’ explains Van Kekem. ‘The beautiful thing about our brain is its neuroplasticity – we can literally change our habits.’
A study in the American Journal of Cardiology even found that meditation has the capacity to extend life span.
It makes us mentally more agile and able to withstand the pressures that come with modern life. ‘It can shift how we perceive the world in terms of what is stressful and what is out of our control,’ says Van Kekem.
Despite his own experience, Van Kekem found the people around him needed a lot of convincing. ‘I looked around at every one of my friends and I was like, “Would they go to a teacher and meditate?” I could tell you that 98% of them would’ve been a “no”. Meditation has a branding and perception problem.’
He set out to fix that issue. Rather than meditating being this elaborate thing spiritual gurus do while ‘levitating around in robes,’ says Van Kekem, he wants to remove the stigma and help people find ways to fit it into their everyday lives. ‘It doesn’t matter if you’re on the bus during peak hours, it doesn’t matter if someone’s sitting next to you and it’s loud. Let’s get real and let’s fit it into our lives and make it as important as I wouldn’t leave the house without brushing my teeth and having a shower.’
While he encourages clients to find the type of meditation that works for them, Van Kekem specialises in the Vedic form that uses a mantra to calm the mind. After free consultations with his clients, he assigns each one a mantra and guides them through the benefits, philosophy and science behind meditation. They’re then assigned homework to go away and practise on their own before coming back for further instruction.
‘The idea,’ explains the 34-yearold, ‘is that you can walk away to be a self-sufficient meditator.’
For Van Kekem and the millions of other people now meditating, the opportunities really are endless. ‘For years I thought all I needed to be healthy was meat, veggies and exercising, but I’d forgotten the most important part – your brain and nervous system.’
Next time you’re updating your workout routine, it might be worth adding some meditation in among the squats, the curls, the jogging and downward dogs. As Van Kekem says, ‘Meditation is like a gym for the brain.’