Mattt Guya

Calm

It took until I was about thirty to realise I must slow down my super busy work, play, and home life. I searched the web for 'calm' and it led me to a few different resources.

First, I found an excellent book called Calm by Fearne Cotton. Then I found Calm.com, the meditation app. I went on to study a lot of mindfulness and meditation practices. Additional details follow on this page.

Meditation as Rewarding NOT Boring

Being an active person and enjoying action sports, to me, the initial idea of meditation sounded incredibly boring. I really thought it may be a misuse of time. Then as I progressed with it, I learnt mindfulness was a great use of time. A ten-minute meditation would slow me down and get me more present. I'd exit meditation feeling deeply rewarded. Having realised it's benefit, I wanted to learn more meditation.

TM - Transcendental Meditation

I studied Transcendental Meditation (TM) and practiced TM for 3.5 years. As with mindfulness, I found it very rewarding. They both became fixed in my daily routine. Ultimately, I found mindfulness preferable and stopped TM.

Years later I came to recognise that the spirit or energy of Transcendtal Meditation had strong connections to Christianity. I conclude that they are both Matrix created systems and later I'll explain that in much more depth. For now, I'd encourage anyone towards mindfulness which is far more natural, and far easier as a practice. TM is great but it has a lot of rigidity and demands about how and when to practice, the potential impact of foods. I found it time inefficient compaared to mindfulness and I only contiuned for 3.5 years after drastically reducing the meditation duration (as approved by my TM teacher). TM is also relatively very expensive compared to mindfulness. They're both good, but in my experience and recommendation, Mindfulness wins hands down. I will never practice TM again.

1 Hour Meditations

Tech entrepreneur Naval Ravikant described meditating by just sitting with closed eyes for an hour i.e. no use of breathing or mantra techniques which are often used in meditation. I tried this technique and loved it. I used this practice for a number of years and still use it sometimes today.

Calm the book, by Fearne Cotton

Having lived overseas, I wasn't aware of Fearne Cotton, but Fearne is a very well known British radio and television presenter. Fearne is an excellent communicator.

In her book Calm, Fearne describes exploring and experimenting with many different techniques on her journey to improve calm. The book is packed with ideas and suggestions. Her book is available on Audible (plus other formats).

Calm.com Meditation App with Tamara Levitt

On the Calm app, Tamara Levitt and Jeff Warren provide new ten minute meditation sessions each day. There are also many other meditation teachers. Basketball champion LeBron James provides a series on mindfulness.

Calm contains sleep stories from others, including singer Rose©, plus exclusive music from Moby and others.

Waking Up by Sam Harris

Waking up is an excellent mindfulness meditation app. In addition to the core meditations by Sam Harris, the app is packed with loads of amazing courses and material. Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, philosopher, New York Times best-selling author, host of Making Sense, and creator of Waking Up.

Mindfulness is endorsed or recommended by the NHS (British National Health Service).

Below, some links to services and resources for learning meditation

I made this short video about Transcendental Meditation (TM) and Christianity (Site is in a rebuild, the link will be added].