Meditation with Robito Chatwin

Each week, the WCH Mind Health Committee hosts a guided meditation on Telegram. On April 29, Robito Chatwin led us in a guided meditation that you can now watch on our website.

Robito is the creator of Covid Positive News on Telegram. Follow CPN here. Robito has been a full-time meditator for the past eight years and is a certified hypnotherapist.

The meditation begins at 15:44.

In this meditation, Robito begins with HeartMath breathing to bring us into a state of inner coherence.

We then focus on the present to get out of the head and experience the peace and stillness of just being.

Next, Robito takes us on a guided visualization to de-stress and relax.

Robito also speaks about the science and benefits of meditation before and after the meditation session.

Join the WCH Mind Health Committee every Friday on Telegram at 8 pm UTC to participate in a guided meditation.

 [00:00:00] Robito Chatwin: When we’re constantly in the mind thinking, thinking that they estimate, I must be honest. And I say, I don’t know exactly how they’ve worked this one out, but they do say in the studies that we spend about 50% of the time probably using the same brain scans, but that, but we spend about 50% of the time, not in the present moment.

[00:00:38] So it means half of our lives were actually not in the present. And that’s okay if we’re off imagining beautiful things, but actually what happens is we also spend a lot of our time thinking about the negative because we have this negativity bias. And the negativity bias. A lot of people say, and it’s possibly true that this is because of our evolution, evolution is as for our survival that we’re looking for danger.

[00:01:19] But I like to point out that there’s a tribe in Brazil in the Amazon, but I forget the name. It’s the pariah tribe or something like this. Something like Priha. And this tribe in the Amazon that’s existed for hundreds of years. They don’t have any language for the past or the future. And they’re considered one of the happiest tribes.

[00:01:44] One of the happiest peoples on the planet. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be evolution and part of our survival, it could be more to do with conditioning, more to do with the constant threats that were thrown at us all the time through the media, how we learn as we’re growing up, that we need to you know, there’s always the threat of failing an exam or the, the threat of getting your bottom slapped by your parents or whatever it is.

[00:02:17] So there’s always these constant threats around, so it could be conditioning, but either way, we’ve got this negativity bias. So when we go into the past, we usually go into the negative. So we go into regret. And when we’re thinking about the future, we usually go into everything that could go wrong. So we are worrying basically.

[00:02:40] And so, yeah, it doesn’t matter if we spend 50% of our time daydreaming, but it’s not good for us. If we spend 50% of our time daydreaming about things that are mostly negative. And then of course, you’ve got all the external threats that are real or the things that are happening now with COVID and the threat of war and, and, and, and vaccines, unemployment all sorts of threats and uncertainties.

[00:03:15] So we’ve got so much more that we’re being bombarded with. That is a threat that is negative, that we’re not, so we’re not, we’re not designed to deal with this amount of fight flight freeze. Our amygdalas are going insane, and this is creating a lot of stress. And we know because we follow all the, all the facts and all the, all the studies around COVID and everything that’s happening that suicides are increasing.

[00:03:46] Anxiety is increasing all these different types of things are increasing. So the benefit of meditation then is there’s different definitions of meditation, but I would say meditation is, is different ways of focusing on the present moment, different ways of training your brain to stay in the present moment.

[00:04:10] And we can talk about neuro-plasticity, you know, we’re just training our brain to listen to us so that when we try to focus on the present that eventually with practice, it will cooperate and we can spend more time in the present mode. And it’s not going off into these thoughts of the past in the future, and it’s not going off into the worry and we can spend more time in a nice, relaxed, peaceful, calm, coherent state.

[00:04:45] So with that little introduction, I will now turn on my camera. I’m just getting out of the kitchen

[00:04:51] And here I am. Share video, there we go. So Emma, I’m using my phone. Can you see me okay? And can you hear me okay? 

[00:05:04] Emma Sron: Yep. I can see and hear you okay. 

[00:05:08] Robito Chatwin: I’m just going to get myself set up.

[00:05:10] So, if you think about meditation as focus, whether you’re focusing on the breath, focusing on the body, focusing on a candle, focusing on the sounds in the room, or focusing on somebody’s voice, it’s all focus. It’s all training the brain to stay in the present moment. There is a second part to this which is that when we are in the present and we’re not in the thinking, the monkey mind, that’s constantly dashing off into different thoughts.

[00:05:45] Then we’re also much more connected to our unconscious, to the things that are going on inside ourselves that we’re not normally aware of. And again, I like to demystify the, the spiritual spirituality of it using science. So we know for example, that if you use the breathing exercises of the Wim Hoff now.

[00:06:08] If you’ve heard of Wim Hoff, that we can control the autonomic immune system which means that we can control temperature of the body. We can control how the body reacts to a mild version of the eco e-coli e-coli bacteria. Yeah. It’s not a virus things, a bacteria. So they, they injected a mild version of Ecoli into Wim Hoff, and then they, and then he was able to stop the symptoms and then they, they thought, ah, maybe he’s some super strange individual.

[00:06:47] So then he, he trained I think it was about 10 people, in the, or 12, I’m not sure of the exact number over, just a kind of a week. And then they did the same to them and they were able to do the same thing we know from heart math HeartMath Institute that when we are in the present moment and we’re doing breathing and we’re focusing on gratitude and love, that’s what happens to the body as our heart goes into this coherent beat.

[00:07:17] So coherence, they call it, which means each beat, it doesn’t matter if it’s fast or slow. Some people have faster heart rates, some people have slower, but you go into state of every beat is in the same rhythm. So it’s normally we’re jumping up and down, depending on what’s happening around us, goes in this perfect balance coherence.

[00:07:38] And they’ve done lots of studies on the benefits of that. So we know that when we are in the present moment, That we can actually affect what’s going on inside us in the unconscious. And this is fascinating because this all links into many, many different things. For example, lucid dreaming what is astral projection or hypnosis all these different mysteries.

[00:08:10] It’s all to do with just focusing on the present moment and connecting to what’s going on in the unconscious, that we’re not the 95% of what’s running the show that we’re normally not aware of because we’re normally up here in the head in the 5%. So the unconscious is running 95% of the show and we can access that, but we need to get out of the head.

[00:08:36] And so when we, when we get, when we get out of the head and we go into the present, not only do we have. Less depression, less anxiety when much calm and more at peace, but we feel much more synchronized with what’s going on and all sorts of interesting experiences and, and and ways that people feel that many they, they can explain the science.

[00:09:05] Some they can’t– the, the kind of the experience of feeling like synchronicity is happening all around you and all these coincidences. When you’re living in this kind of flow state, they obviously can’t explain that with science, but they do know about, for example, long-term meditators when they stay in the present moment that there’s a higher gamma.

[00:09:26] Brain activity, which is something that they don’t still fully understand, but the gamma wave brain activity, some scientists refer to that as the, as, as, as the scientific equivalent of enlightenment. It’s a state of complete peace compassion flow. So it’s all really, really interesting. So, but, but for, for, for this Friday, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m tired been on the computer a lot this week and we’ve done a lot this week and so it would be a really nice session.

[00:10:15] We just did a nice, relaxed, a nice de-stress and. I’d like to start also with just a little bit of heart math, which the heart math breathing, something that I’ve learned more recently. And if I just do a little plug, we’re doing events on the Covid Positive News as well. Every day this week was the first week we’ve done one every day, but we did one this week on the heart math breathing exercise.

[00:10:48] And it, it was amazing because the lady that did it, she had this little apparatus apparatus that she attached to her body, which showed her heart rate on computer. And she shared the screen. And you could see that when you do this breathing, how the heart rate changed, it was really incredible. So I’m not, I’m not a heart math coach. 

[00:11:17] But it’s very simple. We focus on the heart and we think about gratitude. So if we start with that, then what that will do is that will just calm the heart, calm the body, relax the body. It gets us into a nice relaxed state. Then we can do a little bit of focus trying to focus on the present moment.

[00:11:36] And then at the end, I’ll take you on just a little guided journey where we just go and relax and just release some stress. If that sounds okay to you. Yeah, I think everything else I can say while we’re meditating. So, cause if you remember, Emma, last time I was saying, if you, if you’re trying to focus on the present moment and you start thinking about something, don’t worry. It’s fine. One of the biggest kind of hurdles or one of the biggest mistakes that people make, perhaps when they start meditating is they get frustrated.

[00:12:11] But it’s all about just accepting now. So if we started to just jump off and think, just notice, I’m thinking again. I’ve decided that my task for the next 20 minutes or 30 minutes is to focus on this and just look how much my brain does not want to cooperate with me. Isn’t that curious that I want to stay here,

[00:12:37] it’s my decision to stay here, but my brain doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to play. And just notice that and go, okay, thank you very much, in the kindest possible way, and just come back to what you’re trying to do, which is stay in there, stay focused on whatever we’re focusing on. What’s happened is I’ve done this for a long time.

[00:12:58] I took this very seriously. I’ll just quickly say I have suicidal ideation, which means when I was a teenager, I used to imagine how amazing it would be if I was dead, if I wasn’t around, because nothing seemed to make sense. And I, and I decided I wanted to be happy, how to be happy. And I was reading the books and except meditation, and it said, get out of your facial fears and follow your intuition.

[00:13:21] And I was like, I’m going to do that for a year and see what happens. So I packed my bag. I took my money. I went to Colombia and I went traveling for a year and just, just got to face my fears follow my intuition, no plan. And I practice living in the present moment to see if I could find happiness.

[00:13:43] And so for me, meditation is what made me happy for other people that could be another tool that is more, that you’ve got more drive to really put the time and the effort into, but to just kind of give you an idea of how much I took this seriously, I literally spent three months in a hammock focusing on this.

[00:14:05] I literally was in a hammock in Sri Lanka every day for three months, just watching the sea to train my brain, to stay focused on the sea and neuro plasticity. It w w so now I don’t, I don’t, I don’t think about the past and I don’t worry about the future. I, I really just follow my heart and it it’s. I like to take out all of the what you call it, you know, like the high claims of this skill.

[00:14:40] Because it’s just training, its mind training. I have, I’m not going to show my arms right now, but I don’t have very much muscle. If you go to the gym every day, you get muscle. If you train your brain every day, you can control more your brain and what it does. So I like to say more that it’s just mind training brain training, it’s just practice and it works and you get benefits very quickly, but for you to be able to stay in the present, you’ve got to really decide.

[00:15:10] I want to practice this regularly. Like, if you want to do yoga, you need to do it regularly. Or if you want to build a muscle, you need to do it regularly. So it has to become a regular practice, but to do it once a week on a Friday, just to relax is very beneficial. And if this is not the modality for you, and there are many others, but but it’s still a nice one to, to do.

[00:15:35] Okay. So Emma, we ready to go?

[00:15:37] Emma Sron: Yep. Whenever you are. 

[00:15:40] Robito Chatwin: All right. I was going to take my glasses off.

[00:15:44] Okay everybody. So you just need to be in a comfortable position. Sitting down, you can lie down. If you lie down, you might not off go to sleep, just check my battery or okay. Close your eyes. And if you take a nice, slow breath in through the nose and whatever’s comfortable for you, I like to start breathing in through the nose and then breathing out through the mouth, slow and relaxed.

[00:16:19] But if that doesn’t suit you, if you don’t like that, then you can just breathe in and out through the nose or out in and out through the mouth. Whichever feels better for you. And we don’t breathe slowly enough. We should be breathing slowly. This is much more of a natural breathing state. We breathe quickly when we’re stressed.

[00:16:43] If you don’t believe me, try standing in a cold shower and see how your breathing changes when we’re, when we’re in high stress, we’re in quickly. So to relax, we want to breathe slowly.

[00:17:00] And when you breathe in through the nose, just imagine that you’re just breathing in that relaxation, that meditation.

[00:17:08] And when you breathe out, just breathing out any stress tension in the body,

[00:17:17] maybe feeling your forehead, just relax a little bit and your cheeks relaxing a little bit. Your face, relaxing a little bit.

[00:17:29] Relaxing the shoulders

[00:17:36] and you can relax all the muscles in the arms,

[00:17:43] relax the muscles in the stomach. Keep, keep breathing slowly breathing in that relaxation, breathing out any stress intention,

[00:17:59] relapsed in the legs.

[00:18:09] And then if we just focus, you can start breathing normally. Now, if you just start by just focusing on the heart space around the heart.

[00:18:23] And what I want you to do is I just want you to think about someone that you are so grateful for. So in love with love that they’re here with you. For some people that could be God, it could be Jesus, it could be butter or Mohammed for somebody else. It might be your children for somebody else. It might be a partner, could be your parents.

[00:18:54] Someone could be a pet.

[00:18:59] But just someone or something that you are so grateful for, and just focus on that object in your mind, and just try to feel that gratitude that love as much as you can just feel how grateful you are and how much love you’ve got for that.

[00:19:23] And at the same time, just focusing on the heart space at the same time.

[00:19:30] Let me just going to do that in silence, just for one or two minutes, and then I’ll keep talking and I’ll guide, I’ll do some more guiding, but just do that now and just really try to feel that gratitude and that.

[00:20:35] Did you really try to feel that gratitude and that love? Now you can also say to yourself inner peace, inner calm.

[00:20:53] Just a feeling how lucky you are

[00:21:29] really just try to feel just how special this person object to a thing is.

[00:21:56] And as you do that now, you might be feeling a bit more peace and calm is your heart now going into this beautiful, balanced rhythm.

[00:22:24] And now just focus on the breath, focus on the nose, on the breath coming in and out of no. And again, if you’re, if you start thinking if your mind wanders doesn’t matter, don’t get frustrated, just come back to the breath of the nose and just know that you’ve decided to do this because for a little while

[00:22:52] and find the amusement in the fact that it’s so difficult for you to just choose to stay focused on the nose. And for some of you, maybe it’s not for some of you is maybe easier to stay focused on the nose. Everyone’s different and it’s absolutely fine. So just focus on the breath

[00:23:14] coming in and out of the normal.

[00:23:35] See if you can actually feel the hairs in your nose, movings, the air, breath goes in and.

[00:24:13] Then we can start focusing on sensations. So if we go to the top of the head, just see if you can feel any sensation on the top of the head, maybe an itching or tingling, maybe feel the ha well the air and he sensation on the top of that.

[00:24:43] Really focused there and just see what you can feel.

[00:24:57] And then we can focus on the face and if you’ve got other sensations happening on the body somewhere else, just see if you can ignore those for a little while and just stay focused on the face. You just want to focus on the face for now. So anywhere on the face could be the forehead, the cheeks, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, any sensations on the face, and just look at the face with kind of curiosity with your mind.

[00:25:26] What can you, what can you notice that?

[00:25:33] And if you start thinking, just know, look and thinking again, but I’ve decided I want to just focus on the face and just.

[00:25:51] Maybe even notice some of you have that monkey mind, even kind it’s like fighting with you. It doesn’t want to play, but that’s okay. Because the more that we focus on now, the more that the mind will relax,

[00:26:16] maybe just focusing now on the arms and the shoulders, any sensations from the fingertips to the shoulders, you can travel down the arms. If you like, from the shoulders all the way down to the fingertips or the other direction. Just notice any sensations as you move traveled down the arms beyond.

[00:27:05] I can go back to the heart now, just see if you can feel or hear your heartbeat. Just really focus on the heart for a moment.

[00:27:43] Any sensation is in the legs, just traveled down from the hips down to the feet, to the toes. And any sensations that, and just explore with curiosity as you travel down the legs.

[00:28:28] And if you’re feeling relaxed now, just expand that relaxation and just focus on the sounds in the room around you. So leaving the body now and focusing around you, and if it’s really quiet where you are, then listen for the quietest sound that you can.

[00:29:23] I don’t know. Just say, if you can focus on the stillness in the room or in the space where you are now, because whether we’re actually in the middle of a city or sitting in the middle of nature, there’s always this stillness kind of in the air that you can sense and feel. So. Focus on that stillness that’s around you now.

[00:30:26] And now just take a moment to focus on whatever you prefer to focus on. So you can focus on the heart and imagine some object to gratitude. You can focus on the breath on the sensations, the body of the sounds around you. And if one doesn’t work for you, you can switch the move around and we’ll just do that.

[00:30:52] Just the one or two minutes, just you choose what you want to focus on as you just relax more and more and, you know, learn and discover for yourself, which is easier for you, for you to be able to focus a little bit less.

[00:32:09] If you find that your is rushing off again, just choose another one to fund.

[00:32:55] And now come back to the heart. If you’re not there now, just imagine the heart space, just give it a healing color. As we just do a little bit of a kind of a guide. Visualization meditation. Now in the guided meditation, they say, people say, imagine when people say about ICAN, imagine I’m not seeing anything.

[00:33:19] Well, that doesn’t matter. It could be a feeling

[00:33:28] just imagine. So imagine you might feel, you might see, you might smell, you might touch a healing color, a healing light in your heart, and just to allow it to just right out from the heart, just imagine it filling up the chest,

[00:33:53] Filling up the shoulders and the arms, going down through the body and up through the neck, just filling up the body now with this healing light or energy.

[00:34:20] And just imagine, however you want to do, however, that is for you could be a feeling could be seeing, just imagine that there’s a boat in front of you on a, on a stream or a river. We just get into that boat and just gently, slowly say, or down that stream or river to a beautiful island of green.

[00:34:52] Just imagine that you just go on now.

[00:34:58] Maybe you can just imagine that you can just feel yourself, just kind of peacefully traveling down that road.

[00:35:09] We should just get to that green space.

[00:35:15] And on that green space is the most beautiful, peaceful place that you can imagine. Now,

[00:35:24] I just want you to just go find the most relaxing, play, the most relaxing spot on the island and just go and sit there now. And relax could be a rock, could be a tree. It could be a bit of sand, whatever it is that you find. Just imagine that you just sit there lie down on your back. Relaxing,

[00:36:00] totally safe with this healing. And energy coming out of your heart, filling up your body.

[00:36:16] If you lie there now, just imagine you’re looking up at the sky.

[00:36:27] Maybe there’s clouds, maybe there’s no clouds.

[00:36:33] And just imagine that all of the stresses

[00:36:41] just release out of the body and float up into that sky. As you just lie that comfortable and relaxed on the ground. Lovely healing energy, just going through the body.

[00:37:03] Me as you do that now, just imagine only imagine that the body is relaxing, that the mind is relaxing, that you feel the stress disappearing, and you can feel that peace. I can feel that calm.

[00:37:38] Just imagine only imagine that person, that object or whatever it is that you gave all that gratitude to and all that love to when you were focusing on the whole.

[00:37:55] Just imagine that, that person, that thing, that object, whatever it was, just imagine that it just comes now to just give you a really big hug.

[00:38:11] Let’s see if you can imagine actually feeling it in your hours.

[00:38:30] Just say thank you and say, thank you. Say, tell how the person or the, the path or the object or whatever it is, how much you loved love it and love them a thankful you are just putting them into your heart.

[00:39:04] Now perfectly safe, but if that’d be fine, just come back to the body, come back to your physical body and just feel, how does it feel now, now notice how it’s feeling relaxed. I just have all the muscles are relaxed.

[00:39:26] Notice how now it’s easier to focus on the body and focus on how the body feels than it was when you started

[00:39:42] and notice how you can kind of feel that love gratitude feelings inside you.

[00:39:57] As we slowly, when you’re ready,

[00:40:04] just start to slowly open your eyes and come back to the room. But when you open your eyes and come back to the room, see if you can still stay focused on now, see if you can stay focused on the screen, stay focused on the room and what you can see in the room. And don’t open your eyes and just jump back into the thing and see how long you can just stay here.

[00:40:35] When you open your eyes. Now I’m coming back to there.

[00:40:41] ’cause what happens is some people they say, okay, meditation done. But no, try to stay in this peaceful place for as long as you can

[00:41:04] and take a moment to really enjoy the feeling of just being so relaxed. Stress-free chill.

[00:41:26] And I would love for anyone if they want to. Emma, I don’t know how you want to do this, but if anyone wants to let, let me know how they feel in the chat, in the discussion group, I believe, or Emma, I’m not sure if you’re putting the microphone on now. So that people can speak

[00:41:50] Emma Sron: If anybody wants to say anything or ask a question, you can type it into the chat, or if you raise your hand, I can give you the ability to turn on your mic to say something.

[00:42:04] Anne O’Reilly: I just wanted to say that was really lovely, Robito. And unfortunately I’m, I’m somewhere where there’s very poor reception and I’m outside, which has made the meditation, it was very interesting. Quite a low battery, so I’m just saying that I might end up having to go inside just to charge up. But when I was outside, I noticed just being guided to start the meditation from when I started, they– actually, I was much more intensely aware of the signs after a little while.

[00:42:40] And it was like, I was this [inaudible] swell and layers of noise that initially I wasn’t even aware of when I first came. So that was really interesting. And I don’t often meditate outside, so that was actually quite quite lovely. And, and I love the heart that healing, and imagining the healing color and the heart. It took a little while, and then it was just beautiful, this lovely sensation.

[00:43:10] So thank you so much.

[00:43:12] Robito Chatwin: You’re welcome. I just turned off the camera because I had to put the phone right up to my ear, but no, I’m really happy that, that– so I don’t know if you’re still there and you still got the mic on, but did you see, did you see the color when you were imagining that color in the heart? 

[00:43:30] Anne O’Reilly: Yes, I saw it.

[00:43:32] Yeah, it was yeah, very, very visual. And it was like, it was, then it became very sort of flooding. You know, I was waiting for a color and then there’s a beautiful, like sunlight color. And and in fact, the sun has just come up as well, I suppose, are the trees. So but again, it was more from inside and that was just a beautiful sensation, but I think it was because of being settled down and the breathing being led into, you know, the focus and the present and the signs and, yeah, and it was beautiful.

[00:44:06] I was so aware of the birds around and was aware of the fluttering of the birds is like, I could feel the birds as well as he hear them. So that was really unusual and lovely. So it just, yeah, like all your explain that the beginning and your whole has become heightened, I think. And you know, with the focus here actually much more connected 

[00:44:32] Robito Chatwin: Are you feeling calmer than, than before you started? 

[00:44:41] Anne O’Reilly: Very much, because I was very stressed at trying to find the right place to go to get reception. And absolutely that’s probably, I didn’t start in a very good place, so that’s right. Absolutely.

[00:44:56] Robito Chatwin: It’s perfect because you can you can notice the difference and the change.

[00:45:06] So one thing I would say is, yes, so, I mean, I was in a before this whole Corona situation, I did a lot of traveling and I was in India and you can’t get much noisier than. And actually there’s some really beautiful, peaceful places, but in the towns and cities, it’s really noisy. And it’s interesting that when you do practice meditation often that you can find that peace and that quiet in the noisiest environment.

[00:45:44] But also, yes, when you’re focusing on the sounds, it was the same here. It’s very quiet where I am apart from this boy next door who’s playing outside. But in the room itself, it’s very quiet, but I could feel that when I was focusing on the sounds in the room, I could feel them becoming heightened, but even if they’re heightened also we move into a state of observing and not reacting.

[00:46:14] So we move into a state of this kind of noticing, or even curious, or even enjoying the sounds instead of becoming frustrated. And, and the other thing went with the visualization or seeing the color. This is something that’s really a big passion of mine is, is the, the, the hypnosis and, you know, demystifying hypnosis.

[00:46:47] It’s, it’s just relaxing the brainwave states down. So as soon as we start visualizing something, then where we’re moving into the hypnagogic state, it’s the theta brainwave state between dream and awake. And so this is what I said at the beginning before we started the meditation. The first thing is the focusing on the now.

[00:47:12] It’s very peaceful, very relaxing distresses us, but then it also takes us to the subconscious, to the, the subconscious, for example, dreams, imagination, creativity, instead of the logical thinking side of the brain. So I would describe hypnosis as the feta brainwave state or the hypnagogic state, which is down between dream and awake.

[00:47:42] Delta is sleep. So if you were to go one step further, you’d fall asleep. And for some people it takes longer to get down into that state where you start to really see or really feel like something’s very vivid. And for other people it’s easier to get to that state. And it usually just depends on how how active the mind is because it’s about.

[00:48:10] The mind it’s about letting go. And some, for some people the mind doesn’t want to let go. So for those people, it takes more practice. Some people say that that, that not everybody can be hypnotized. I would say that everybody can, but some people put it takes more practice to just get out of that Headspace and go down into the the more relaxed brainwave states.

[00:48:36] Yeah. So fantastic. Would anybody else like to share how they feel or how it was?

[00:48:48] I can see somebody typing.

[00:48:50] Emma, I’m using my phone. I’m not a hundred percent sure how to check the discussion and look at the connection room at the same time. 

[00:49:00] Emma Sron: I’m keeping an eye on it. There’s nothing in there right now. I will say that this time, since I’m by myself, it was a little bit easier for me to, to do this with you today.

[00:49:14] And I definitely feel very relaxed now. So thank you very much for that. 

[00:49:21] Robito Chatwin: Great. So you did the whole, the whole shebang? 

[00:49:25] Emma Sron: The whole shebang, yes. 

[00:49:27] Robito Chatwin: Great, and you’re feeling relaxed now. 

[00:49:33] Emma Sron: Yes, I am. 

[00:49:34] Robito Chatwin: I mean, I’ve done meditation sessions before and people have said to me that I’ve never known what it’s like to feel relaxed.

[00:49:45] You know, like some people, they do the meditation and they experienced that. Just that piece of just being present for the first time. For some people it’s like, okay, yeah, I want more of this. You know, for some people that’s, that’s the that’s enough for them to commit to doing meditation more regularly because it’s, it’s such a more peaceful place than being constantly thinking, thinking, but for other people there’s other ways, you know, for the people that music, I’m not a musical person, but for other people playing, I mean, if you, how you cannot play a musical instrument without being in the present moment I, if you, I’m sure you have, if I I’m terrible at bongos and things like that, but if you try and do something like that, you’ve got to focus on now.

[00:50:45] So music is wonderful for it. Reading also it’s, you know how like you lose the page or you lose where you are and then you have to go back and read it again because we can’t read without being in the present moment. So anything that gets us in the present moment is very helpful for just relaxing for anybody out there who is who’s busy and got a lot going on.

[00:51:13] And then it’s just finding your, your way to focus. So when I did that guiding down on the river and just relax, and that will distress what you were focusing on then was my voice. And but I would argue, I would say that all meditation is focus. You’re focusing on my voice or you’re focusing on the breath.

[00:51:38] It’s all about focusing on now. And when you do the focusing on my voice and it’s guided, so this is the, the hypnosis we’ve relaxing down into the imagination when it’s guided. Then that’s when we can, we can, we can, we can really allow ourselves to let go and just follow the voice and we can go on a kind of a dream journey and that’s all it is.

[00:52:04] It’s just a dream. Any while we’re still conscious. I would really love to know. We’ve still got a few, well, I’ve still got a few more minutes. I’d really love to know if anybody else would like to share, or if you’ve got any questions.

[00:52:20] Emma Sron: We do have one comment in the chat. Not a question, but Nina says that you have a smooth, relaxing voice, well guided, and she hadn’t heard the heart box focus before. She appreciates you. 

[00:52:35] Robito Chatwin: Thank you. The heart maths, heart math, like mathem– well, in England we say maths mathematics, heart math Institute, and they have done a decades of research on the power of the heart.

[00:52:56] I’m not, as I said, I’m not a, I’m not, what’s called a certified heart math coach. I’m learning about, about it more myself. But it’s fascinating. And the one thing that we did today, which is super easy for all of us, is to just focus on the heart and feel gratitude and love. And if we focus on the heart and feel the gratitude and love, then as, as I said before, we started the heartbeat becomes in a, in a very beautiful rhythm of, of every beat within the same distance.

[00:53:33] So just this beautiful balance, they call it coherence and. The benefits are peace and feeling very intuitive and very present. But as I say, I’m not even a an expert on all the benefits of being in that coherent state. All I know is that when I do that now, I feel so well when I, when I do the, when I sit and focus for five or 10 minutes on just gratitude and the heart, I, what Wim Hoff cause high on your own supply.

[00:54:13] I feel very euphoric when I do that and very good, but there’s much more to it than that. There’s also the the someone else perhaps can, can give me the right word, the kind of the energy field of the, of the heart that they can actually measure coming out about one and a half meters from the bottom.

[00:54:38] And that they’ve shown that that can actually, for example, this is what I remember from the, the session that I went to this week is that if you focus, if they do a a scan of the of the heart activity and, and another one of the brain activity of two people within a certain close distance of each other, and one person focuses on the gratitude and the heart that the brainwaves go into the same rhythm as the heart, we’re at waves of the person that’s focusing on the gratitudes.

[00:55:19] That’s a scientific explanation of how through us being full of gratitude and love and kindness and peace, we can actually calm down. The thoughts and feelings of other people. So it’s fascinating.

[00:55:35] Yeah. So, and I’m not even, I don’t even know everything there is to know about that. I’m learning myself, but I did that first just to relax is down. And then I just showed that meditation is focused. So it can be breath, sensations sounds the stillness, you can focus on a candle. And then the guided part, you need someone to listen to, to focus on the voice, but what you can do, I’ll just say, this may be before we finish, is there anybody that’s struggling with insomnia, anybody that’s finding it difficult to sleep?

[00:56:16] Just when you’re lying down in bed, just try to relax every muscle in the forehead and every muscle in the eyes and the cheeks and the shoulders and work through the whole body. From the top to the bottom, relaxing all the muscles and focusing on the body. You might also want to try imagining that all your thoughts, just go up into the sky like clouds, but just relax or the body.

[00:56:43] And you’ll start to take yourself down in the brainwave states. They’ll start to slow down and then if you can relax yourself down enough, then you’ll just drop off with practice. I’m not saying it, or, you know, if you’ve got severe insomnia, I’m not saying, you know, they’ll fix it in one go, but that’s the, that’s the practice.

[00:57:05] Emma Sron: I like the frequent reminder that it’s a practice. I, I like to be good at things right away. Sometimes I get frustrated when I’m not and have to remind myself, but there’s a lot of things that no one’s good at right away. It takes time. And that’s– 

[00:57:27] Robito Chatwin: Yeah, it’s the same as I mean, yoga is another good example.

[00:57:31] Like how flexible are we when we first do yoga, I should do more yoga. I do it occasionally, but Lucia, my girlfriend, she does yoga and she’s like super flexible. And it’s just practice. It’s just daily practice. And then we can take many, many different examples of things. If you just try them everyday, you get better and better.

[00:57:58] But but it’s, it’s mind training. It’s like we’re training us that way. And what’s interesting because they talk in meditation about the observer and the observed. So we think that we are the ego. We think that we all the thoughts, you know, I am Robito, you are Emma and everybody in this chat, you are this person.

[00:58:23] But if you think of it this way, when you were born before you knew your name before you knew your country and your agenda, you still existed. So who were you before you knew your name before you knew your agenda and before you knew what you like and don’t like, you still existed. So if you think of it like that, then when we say the ego, what we mean is the conditioning.

[00:58:51] It’s all that stuff that we learn about who we are. And I’ve completely forgot why I was talking about that now, but it would have been super fantastic and amazing to know. No, I don’t remember why. 

[00:59:11] Emma Sron: You’ve just gotten yourself too relaxed.

[00:59:17] Robito Chatwin: Very relaxed now. Yeah. And what was I going to say? 

[00:59:21] Anne O’Reilly: Would it be like the idea of being trying to be good at everything like Emma was saying, you know, expecting to be good straight away rather than the practice would that have started what you were talking about Robito? It was very interesting.

[00:59:38] Anyway, that idea of ego. 

[00:59:41] Robito Chatwin: Yeah. I don’t know. I mean the, oh no, that was it. I remember now. But but what you were saying about the practice is this isn’t what I was going to say, but yes, you could say for example, that the idea that we need to be perfect now is something that we’ve learned, something that we’ve been taught.

[01:00:05] We know as a child, when you’re when you’re born, where were you when you were a young child and you just want to play and jump in puddles and things like that, you’re not really trying to be the best at something immediately. You just want to enjoy. So perhaps we could say that that, that, that desire to be the best at something is something that we learn through society.

[01:00:31] That could be ego. We could talk about ego in that way, but now what I wanted to say was about this observer. So we think that we are. The thoughts. But if we think about it like that, then we can’t be the thoughts because we all, or we can’t be that identity because we learn that identity over a lot of it over the first more or less five years, five, six years of life.

[01:00:57] We learn a lot of information in that period that shapes who we are. But we still existed when we were born. So who, so who were we then? And so what’s interesting is if we decide to stay focused on now, I have decided that I want to focus on my breath and then I start doing something else. And then we’re watching that thought and we’re like, look at that, thought about me thinking this now, but I actually want to focus here.

[01:01:31] So I’m going to bring that thought back here. And I’m going to focus back here then. We are observing that thought. We’re not the thought. Do you see what I mean? 

[01:01:47] Emma Sron: That’s actually where I thought you were maybe going to go with this. You, you, you made me kind of go back to when you were explaining that before and thinking about just how fascinating that, that is, that we, we think we’re all one thing what we have in inside of our minds and what’s going on.

[01:02:05] But then there are those times where there’s different things happening and, and you’re that, that’s a good example of when there’s a conflicting thing happening, you’ve made a choice and you want to do something, but there’s a piece of your brain, the thought that wants to do something else, and you can end up butting heads with yourself in that way.

[01:02:26] And it’s just kind of fascinating that that’s possible. 

[01:02:30] Robito Chatwin: So one thing, one way you could describe meditation is to discover who you are, if you are not your thoughts. So they, in, in Buddhism, they talk about the observer. So you, you, as the observer are observing, we start off with the breath and the, and the sensations in the body, but you can observe your emotions.

[01:02:54] You can observe your thoughts. And so what you can do for example and I do, this is if I notice, oh, anger is coming up, oh, I feel really angry, but I am watching that anger. I am not that anger. I’m not in that angle so I can watch that I’m being angry. And from the outside, nobody. Can see you, you, you have more control over it.

[01:03:26] I can still decide, you know what, I’m going to go over here and just be angry for awhile because I need to release it, but I am not it. And that’s also part of the, the practice of meditation is you have, you have a, that kind of more practice, but it’s this kind of, when you’re the observer of you, you don’t identify so much with this version of you that you that you thought you thought you were growing up.

[01:04:01] I don’t know if I’m making sense anymore, but I’m trying to explain that, that the concept of the observer. 

[01:04:07] Emma Sron: No, that, that makes sense. I, I get it. 

[01:04:09] Anne O’Reilly: That’s a great explanation Robito. It’s fantastic. You did . Really well. 

[01:04:18] Robito Chatwin: Thank you. Cause I, I, I’m not sure. Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. And also maybe one other thing I should say, because I know there’s people that Christian, so religion, and when we talk about meditation, we often talk about Buddhism.

[01:04:43] But if you want to pray then when you want to pray, you want to be focused on now. So you, you, you, you want to be as focused on the praying as possible. And so I don’t see any conflict between the two, because if you want to pray for thankfulness to God or thankfulness to the universe, or gratitude to God or the universe and your.

[01:05:16] If meditation is only focusing on the present moment, then that’s exactly what you’re doing when you’re praying is you’re just, it’s, it’s just, meditation is just the practice of prayer of, of, of staying in the present moment as you are doing your prayer, for example. So you might want to focus on gratitude for someone or for God.

[01:05:38] And, and I guess maybe it’s a bit different if you’re having a conversation with God still, like if you’re talking to God or the universe you, you want that connection to be as, as present as possible. And meditation is just the practice of staying present. That’s all. It’s, there’s no, there’s nothing else to it.

[01:06:06] In fact, Buddhists don’t even have an opinion about whether there’s a God or not.

[01:06:10] And I just want to say that, because I know that there’s people that do these meditations at the world council for health, and I’ve read comments in COVID positive news saying that it’s helping with my press. Well, of course, because it’s, it’s just practicing, staying, present. That’s all it is. It doesn’t conflict with any, with any other I would argue it doesn’t conflict with any of that religion.

[01:06:32] Anne O’Reilly: And I wonder, you know, you mentioned too, I thought it was quite nice just to meditation, you know, enjoy it. It’s a time of rest and respect and relief really. And you know, even to notice that you’re not, you know, you’re not your thoughts, you’re not kind of totally consumed. It’s actually can get a bit of this instance.

[01:06:57] I mean, to me, that’s a really. I’m ready to and it’s kind of fun, you know, maybe you can just, you can enjoy it, enjoy the breath, enjoy the sensations, enjoy the signs. Cause I think we need, you know, like we need some rest and we need some relief these days too. So 

[01:07:19] Robito Chatwin: It’s a common mistake. I did it. I, I think many, many people that meditate have done it is just get really frustrated at the beginning. I mean, I can talk about now how I’m able to stay in the present moment, but and I, and I, and I emphasize it’s just practice because when I was younger, I used to think so much that I would drive myself crazy.

[01:07:46] And when I first started meditating, I remember the very first time I started meditating, I was sitting there and I thought, what’s the point in this? And just got up really angry and walked out because I couldn’t meditate for five minutes. I couldn’t meditate for a minute. I didn’t even know what the point was of staying still and not doing anything.

[01:08:07] I was totally different to how I am now. And and I think for many, many people when we start, I mean, as far as meditation, but the, the, the one of the processes that we go through perhaps is, is maybe always emphasized enough that meditation is not about not thinking it’s about accepting what is, and it’s okay to have a busy mind.

[01:08:42] It’s, it doesn’t, there’s nothing to there’s no competition. It’s just learning to be more present. That’s all it is. And I don’t, yeah, I would say perhaps certainly with my experience when I was learning meditation, is that it wasn’t explained to me that there’s nothing to be stressed about.

[01:09:09] Just to enjoy it, the joy, the peace that you’re going to get from it. And sometimes everyone me included. Sometimes it’s easier to get into the present quickly. And sometimes your mind is very active when my mind is very active and I’m meditating. I just observe how active my mind is. So I just watch all those thoughts and just kind of watch what I’m thinking about.

[01:09:36] And that’s still meditation. So. We can get exactly what you just said. We can just enjoy it, enjoy the experience and just remind ourselves that we’re just practicing us up, practicing to just come back to the present and stay in the present. We’re just practicing that. And and and, and, and do it whichever way works for you.

[01:10:02] Some people like to sit in total silence, some people like to listen to a guided meditation. But for me it helps just to remember the, the, the benefits and the reasons why we do it. Yeah, I think that’s something that I am really liking about how this connection room meditation thing came together and how we’re doing it every week.

[01:10:33] Like most things we’ve all sort of created our own. Definitions for, for different things based on the information that we’ve gathered about it throughout our lives. And that’s easy to do, especially for things that we don’t actually have a bunch of personal experience with. We just create what we think it is.

[01:10:57] And that’s what we, you know, if people mentioned meditation and, and you create what you think it might be based on what you’ve learned and heard people said, if you’ve never tried it yourself and you just kind of carry that, that on. And it’s really, there’s so many different ways to do it. Even people that practice all the time and getting to know all of you that have been leading us on Fridays there’s there’s similarities and variation.

[01:11:25] And I think even experienced people have a lot that they can learn from each other. I’m hoping that we’re having a lot of less than experienced people come into the connection room to, to kind of fill in those holes of, of maybe what they’ve thought meditation was and then learned some things about it and, and have a chance to explore it now with a little, little bit more of a wider sort of definition and learning as they go.

[01:11:58] Yeah. I mean, I, I say that meditation is different ways of, of, of learning to stay focused on the present so that we can. And our suffering. So get out of the stress and the, the, the, the anxiety, the default mode network, and so that we can connect in to the, to the parts of us, which is running most of the show that we normally are not aware of.

[01:12:28] That’s my definition, but I know that we were talking about maybe in the future, having a group discussion where we discuss what meditation is for us, and there are different perspectives on it. And I, yeah, and I saw once, but this is still not exactly the same. It’s not what is meditation, but I, and I think I may have mentioned this last time, but one time when I was in India, there was a Buddhist monk and of the vedantic practitioner, which is another type of a meditator, and they were arguing with each other over whether there’s a self or there’s a no self. And the they’re both referring to this state of being present and out of the ego, but using different language. So one of them was saying that this, this, this state, this kind of inner peace, this connection to heart, this connection to to, to soul, this is the self with a capital S and then the other one was saying, no, this is the no self, because for them, the self was the ego.

[01:13:47] So it was just people using different language. For the same thing. And so I’m not saying that’s, what’s going to happen in this discussion, but it will be interesting because I I feel that very often we talk about the same thing using different words and different language, but actually we’re talking about exactly the same thing.

[01:14:16] So for me, for example, I talk about getting out of the head and following the intuition, but there’s so many different words for intuition. There’s gut instinct, there’s a higher south, the soul, the spirit is in a knowing some might even say, God, you know, a heart, heart space flow, but these are all different words for describing some things.

[01:14:47] So yeah, sometimes I feel like. Yeah, we, it was sometimes we’re talking about the same thing, so I’m not saying this was perhaps it will be very interesting. And we have this group discussion to see what people’s different definitions of meditation are. 

[01:15:07] Emma Sron: Yeah. I guess just to add a little context about, for those listening on Wednesday, in our last mind health committee meeting at world council for health, we, we just discussed since we’ve been having these meditations on Fridays and having different people lead them and in, in different ways that we have so many people in the mind health committee that are experienced with, with different types of meditation and a bit of what we, we had just been talking about that there are so many people that are not very experienced with it.

[01:15:45] It’s something that is incredibly useful for all people. But then there’s also some people who just kind of have a block and won’t try to experience it because of maybe what, what, they’ve the perception that they’ve made of what it is. So doing some sort of an event, that’s just sort of an introduction to, to what meditation is that maybe– we’re still kind of putting it together, but it could go into a little bit of the history of what meditation is, the different types of meditation and the science behind it.

[01:16:15] Why, why, why we need it, why it’s useful, what happens to you that it’s you know, some people think of it as a very like woo out there kind of thing, but there is science behind all of it. And that, that is really great for some people to learn more about. So we’d like to put together some sort of an event soon where we’ve got a,

[01:16:37] maybe a panel of some of our wonderful mind house committee members that that can contribute information to this. And it can become a resource for people who want to learn more about meditation. If that would help them before jumping into it, to understand a bit more of what’s going on and why. 

[01:16:56] Robito Chatwin: And meditation is one of these woo things that has got some of the most scientific studies done on it, mindfulness, meditation, and mindfulness which is yeah, that would be interesting, actually the difference between meditation and mindfulness to have a discussion about that, because that’s a, there’s a, there’s lots of different viewpoints on that.

[01:17:23] Is it the same thing? Is it different? How is it different? Mindfulness does not mean mindful. Right? It means being mindful being present. So mindful of what you’re doing, not having a mindful, so it’s not a very good word actually to describe. But yes, yes, no, that is, I mean, there’s even, there’s many gurus and many, many people within that, you know, that meditate long-term meditators.

[01:17:56] Let’s put it that way. There’s a lot of long-term meditators that have different opinions about meditation and mindfulness. So that’s that that’s opening a can of worms. That would be a great discussion. 

[01:18:10] Emma Sron: That’s always good to know. And to acknowledge though, because just to be reminded that there even. Who you might call experts, whether it’s in science, medicine, meditation art, anything, there is always a difference of opinion, even when it comes down to things that do have like proof that back them up.

[01:18:35] That’s very few things are like settled, you know, that people like to say the science is settled and there’s a lot that actually isn’t, and it’s okay. That there’s differences. And it’s really interesting to learn about them and it’s good to be open to all of them. So if we do end up having discussions where there are big differences of where people are coming from that’s okay.

[01:18:59] Cause that’s that’s real life. 

[01:19:04] Robito Chatwin: Yeah. I mean, if someone were to ask me, what’s the difference between meditation and mindfulness, I’d probably need to go away for half an hour and think about it and come back. 

[01:19:13] So that would be a really interesting one. 

[01:19:16] Emma Sron: It’s a good one though, because they’re both kind of things that people talk about a lot right now, especially mindfulness.

[01:19:22] It’s very much one of those buzz words that get tossed around and probably gets tossed around inaccurately and used the wrong way too, depending on, I guess, on, if you believe there’s a right or wrong way with that, but it would be good to kind of talk about that. And what, what are these two things?

[01:19:42] How are they similar? How are they different? 

[01:19:45] Robito Chatwin: Yeah. Well, I know that when, when, when you do meditation, you start with mindfulness. If you go to a if you went to an ashram or a Buddhist monastery or something like this, you start with mindfulness, which means you start with focusing on breath, or you start with focusing on the present moment and meditation, then as far as I understand it although I haven’t really prepared myself for the question that I’ve just created for myself, but meditation then is also includes for example, observing thoughts, observing emotions, observing feelings things like so.

[01:20:37] So yes. And also like when you’re observing the thoughts and the feelings and things like this, then you, you, you can also be trying to understand why you’re having those thoughts, why you’re having those feelings. You can ask questions. Like I said, you know, if we’re not this ego, if we’re, if we’re not the, the, the, if, if you’re not Emma, when you’re born, you learn that you’re Emma.

[01:21:07] Then one of the questions you can ask is to just reflect on who am I, the only, the only And my personal opinion, the reason that I would say that we’re kind of using different words for the same thing is because it’s all still focusing on the present. Because if you ask him the question, you’re focusing on that question.

[01:21:31] If you’re observing the emotions, you’re focusing on those emotions or the dreaming or the sort of the thoughts or the breath. So you do that for different, you get different things from it. But, but, but the focus is the main aim on the present, I would say. But yes, it will be interesting to know what other people have to say about that.

[01:21:54] When we do the, when we do this discussion at some point in the future, I don’t know if anyone’s got any opinion right now. I know it’s a bit late now. It’s already 10 30 where I am, but if anyone’s got an opinion now and what the differences between mindfulness and meditation, if you don’t agree with me working to share.

[01:22:13] Emma Sron: Oh, everyone must agree with you. 

[01:22:15] Anne O’Reilly: You did a great job, Robito. I think it’s like an endless discussion. It’s a bit like a colon probably, but again, you know, I think it’s, it’s, it’s good to tease it out because again, I think it gives, you know, it’s lovely to, I think many people have different approaches and there’s many types of meditation and I think it’s all, maybe it is that way of just gathering ourselves to be more fully ourselves in the work, you know, and more, I don’t know, not so sort of to be more

[01:22:52] Robito Chatwin: Maybe what you just said, you know, there’s many different types of meditation, many different types of meditation. It is, is that maybe the way maybe you could say that, you know, meditation is more, what are you doing it for the purpose of it?

[01:23:11] Anne, if you’re there? And then the mindfulness would be the staying in the present moment. And then the meditation would be the, kind of the reason for doing it, which might be to get some insights or it might be to find peace.

[01:23:25] Are you still there? 

[01:23:40] Emma Sron: I am. Yeah. I think Anne has a little bit of a delay, so I was waiting to see if she

[01:23:48] know you are still here, but I wonder if we should let you go because its the end of your day, I think it’s the start of Anne’s day. 

[01:23:56] Robito Chatwin: Yeah. And I’m not, I’m not finished yet, but it’s very nice to, to, to have the meditation and relax. And and then I can go back to the thinking again,

[01:24:12] Emma Sron: It looks like an left. I wonder if her connection finally petered out there, but yeah, we’ve been together for awhile. It’s late for you. You’ve got more to do so we should probably get going. We have another connection room next week on Wednesday. I’m not sure who’s going to be leading this one, but our theme I believe is stepping away from your fear.

[01:24:35] So that is nine o’clock BST four o’clock Eastern daylight time and that’s 8:00 PM universal time. So figure out when that is by you. And then again, we’ll have a meditation next week on Friday. I believe Robbie is leading it for us again on Friday. So same time, same place for those who want to come back and as always, this was recorded and I, we will get them on the website we will, and then you can visit them again anytime that you all would like to.

[01:25:17] So look for that. Eventually, we’re just all kind of busy. 

[01:25:24] Robito Chatwin: And a big thank you to those people. I mean, now, as we’re, as we’re all involved in telegram, we’re starting to see familiar names and familiar faces. And so I recognize names here and and also before, when, before people left and I think it’s wonderful that we’re, we’re creating a kind of a community here and what social media was really made for, for connection.

[01:25:50] So thank you all of you for joining and I will do my best. I think it will be possible for me to join next Friday. Yeah, I’ll be here next Friday to do the meditation as well. Yeah. 

[01:26:07] Emma Sron: Well, thank you everybody. And thank you Robito, for leading us again. This was your second, second time. So thank you. 

[01:26:16] Robito Chatwin: Yeah, you’re welcome.

[01:26:18] All right. So thank you everybody have a wonderful day or evening or, or whatever it is you’re doing.

[01:26:24] And I will be in connection with all of you again, at some point in the future, I guess. All right. Bye-bye Emma. 

[01:26:37] Emma Sron: Bye everybody. 

[01:26:39] Robito Chatwin: Bye-bye everyone.