Vedic Meditation: The Path to No Resistance

Ever wondered what it feels like to have no resistance in life, no fear, no worry, no guilt, no frustration? That’s the experience Vedic Meditation gives us, and it’s closer than you think.

In this episode of The Path of Least Resistance, I take you through why this practice does the heavy lifting when it comes to stress release, how it changes your body chemistry, and why it’s a paradoxical yet effortless path to clarity and joy.

Even if you’ve “tried meditation before” and thought it wasn’t for you, hear me out. This is different.

You can also watch the podcast on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/lnoGHzcu38k

USEFUL LINKS:

Learn Vedic Meditation or enquire about mentoring with me: https://brettjarman.com

Find a Vedic Meditation Teacher near you (all of the teachers listed in this directory meet the criteria I outline in the podcast): https://thomknoles.com/vedic-meditation-teacher-directory/#global-teachers-directory

You can find me here:

BrettJarman.com (Vedic Meditation and Mentoring enquries): https://brettjarman.com

The Meditation People (Vedic Meditation courses): https://themeditationpeople.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brettjarman/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@brett.jarman

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettjarman/

Chapters

• 0:00 Vedic Meditation Does the Heavy Lifting for Releasing Stress
• 2:35 A Primer on Meditation
• 4:17 The Chemistry of Stress Release
• 7:41 A Paradoxical Practice
• 12:22 How to Find a Vedic Meditation Teacher
• 15:08 Small Effort, Big Rewards

Transcript

0:00

When was the last time you had a total absence of suffering? By that I mean no fear, no worries, no guilt, no disappointment, no frustration, no concerns whatsoever. It doesn't happen very often, however, with Vedic Meditation, that's an experience you can have on a regular basis. You can have an experience of no resistance, no suffering whatsoever. So this is our subject for discussion today. Vedic Meditation, the path to no resistance, and ultimately it's all part of creating your path of least resistance. Just this episode alone is going to get you 80% there if you don't listen to any other episodes, you'll be fine just with this one, 'cause it's, this one's going to do the heavy lifting when it comes to releasing stress that's accumulated in the body, helping you regulate the destructive stress that's coming at you, or the destructive stress opportunities if you like, that are coming at you on a daily basis, and to help you bring more of the productive stress into your life. So you get just that right balance. Minimal destructive stress. Just the right amount of productive stress so you can enjoy a life of flow, a life of fulfillment, a life of excitement, exhilaration, a life of joy, if you like. And as much as anything, Vedic Meditation also gives you a different reference point for life. So for example, when we're talking about the path of least resistance, our point of reference is resistance. So we're looking for less fear, less worry, less frustration, less disappointment, less guilt. So we're kind of, our, our baseline is sort of, it's a bit murky and unpleasant, whereas with Vedic Meditation, when you have an experience of no resistance, of no suffering whatsoever, that becomes your new point of reference for the rest of your life. So instead of trying to move away from something, you've now got something that you can move towards. And as I mentioned in the previous episode, in case you haven't watched that, even if you think you can't meditate, please, hear me out. Just watch or listen to this episode. I'm going to address all of the misunderstandings you might have about meditation, because there are so many different types of meditation. Even if you've "tried" meditation before, it may not have been the right type for you, you may not have been taught correctly, if you've been taught at all. You know, if you've been relying on apps or something else, you haven't given yourself the best opportunity. So this is what we're going to dig into today. It's a little bit of an explainer about Vedic Meditation, how it can help you on your path of least resistance and hopefully arouse your curiosity, maybe give you some interest in learning it for yourself if you haven't already. Now, let's put some myths about meditation to rest for a start. Firstly, with Vedic Meditation, you don't have to sit half naked on a rock. There's no chanting involved. You don't have to sit really uncomfortably. There's not even focus. There's no concentration. There is thinking, but there's no focus and no concentration. And there's, there are very few demands on you, in fact it's a very flexible practice. It's the the practice for everyone basically. Now it originates from India. The Veda is a kind of like a body of wisdom that originates in India from thousands and thousands of years ago. It predates the Egyptian pyramids, predates religion even. It's been around for a very, very long time, the Veda itself, but also this particular practice. But let's just talk about meditation in general first. So the word meditation, it actually means to think, and it's ironic because the concern that most people have about Vedic Meditation is, they say, " Oh, I couldn't empty my mind. I just keep thinking." Well, ironically, that's exactly what meditation is. Meditation is thinking. So you don't have to beat yourself up if you were thinking during meditation. In fact it's an integral part of Vedic Meditation. Pretty much all meditation types require you to think. However they require focus or concentration, and this is the bit that people struggle with, is it's kind of outside of our human nature to focus or concentrate on a specific thing, a specific idea, and this is why so many people struggle with it. They think they're failing at it because they can't overcome that sort of focus or concentration barrier. With Vedic Meditation, as I said earlier, there's no concentration required. Now, the way that it works is, you are given a mantra by a qualified teacher. So someone such as me, we give you a mantra. And a mantra is a, it's a word or a sound. Now you're probably familiar with mantras. You may have gone to yoga and you might have chanted Omm or you might have heard Om Namah Shivaya you know, there's millions of mantras out there. But what makes the mantra's in Vedic Meditation different is they are, they're not even words, they're just meaningless sounds. And the teacher assigns a meaningless sound to you knowing that that sound is going to have an impact on your mind and on your thinking. And so now, the peculiarity of the mantra that is given to you, it's not like other thoughts, where you're constantly at the surface of the mind, with the mantra, the nature of the mantra allows you to experience it at a finer state, at a finer state, more subtle state, more quiet, more subtle, more subtle, more subtle, until you get to the point where you transcend the mantra altogether. You're not even thinking the mantra, not even thinking any thoughts. And this is a state, we call it the state of Being, with a capital B, because you're not doing anything, you're just being. There's no thinking happening. You are in a state of pure contentedness, and this is where the magic happens because at that point, that field of Being, we also call it the source of thought. This is where your thoughts come from, it's where they originate from. And what's also happening down there is, number one, your body chemistry changes. So instead of the stress chemistry that you're probably used to, things like adrenaline and cortisol running through your body, now you start to get feel-good chemistry running through your body. Things like dopamine. Regulated doses of dopamine, not the little hits that you get when you're scrolling on Instagram, but regulated doses of dopamine. You get oxytocin, running through the body. Oxytocin is the chemistry that you feel when you're in love. You get serotonin running through the body, feel-good chemistry, and endorphins, another form of feel-good chemistry. So that chemistry flip causes changes in the body. One of the most profound effects is that the body treats it as an opportunity to releast stress from the physiology. So basically, all of us, our bodies, our physiology, we've got 70 trillion cells, give or take, in our body, they are storehouses of accumulated stress that we've gathered up over the years, but when we get relaxed to that point, to that point of transcendence, the body sees an opportunity to offload some of that stress. So it starts offloading, offloading, and hence you get a state of relaxation, a state of deep rest, which is even deeper than sleep, three to five times deeper than sleep. That's how deep it is. And you can get there within a matter of minutes. When we sleep, it can take quite some time before we get to the deepest part of sleep, whereas with Vedic Meditation, you get there very quickly. Just to summarise what's happening, you start with a mantra, that mantra allows you to transcend thinking, gets you to the field of Being, the source of thought, where profound states of relaxation occur, not just for the mind, but also for the body. Now to put it in the context of the path of least resistance, or the path to no resistance, at that level, you have no fears, no worries, no frustration, no disappointment, no guilt, because there's no thought, you're transcending all of that. And so this becomes your new point of reference for what's possible for you as a human being. And if you do that on a regular basis. Our recommended dose for Vedic Meditation is 20 minutes, twice a day, so two sessions, one session in the morning, one session in the afternoon for 20 minutes. And you might be throwing your hands up thinking, "I ain't got time for that!" One of the many benefits of Vedic Meditation is it doesn't take time, it makes time. So even though you're setting aside these two 20-minute chunks each day, that will pay you back in terms of productivity, less time wasted doing other things because you're not so stressed out all the time, you tend to run more efficiently and so on. So to be honest, the time concern isn't really a concern at all. It's actually the commitment that's the hard part, but I'll talk more about that later. So as you can see, it's a very paradoxical practice. We're using thinking to go beyond thinking, thoughts to go beyond thoughts. And at the same time, thoughts are actually allowed during Vedic Meditation. And this is why you need a teacher to teach you how to do it properly. Because without the deeper understanding of the practice, this stuff can go way over your head and you can just end up experimenting and frustrating yourself because you don't quite have a full understanding of how it works. And so when we're at that state, that state of deep rest, that field of Being, even the brainwave function changes. So you can get down to theta states, or theta, depending on how you want to pronounce that, and alpha brain states. in that state, that's where the magic really happens. You're, as I mentioned earlier, you're going beyond the subconscious down to that area, that field of Being, that source of thought, which we could also call the superconscious. one of the inevitable impacts of being down at that superconscious level is that you tend to be inspired more. You tend to be more creative. Your problem-solving capabilities increase. Your decision-making capabilities increase. And all of this contributes to that productive stress that I was talking about earlier. Productive stress being the stress that allows you to rise to a challenge, that helps you evolve, that helps you develop better skills and evolve more as a human being and basically enjoy life more. How do you learn Vedic Meditation? What's the correct way to do it? Vedic Meditation, if taught properly, is taught over four short lessons. They're taught on consecutive days. Each lesson goes for about an hour to an hour and a half. In the first lesson, you are given your mantra by the teacher. It's preceded by a little ceremony. As I mentioned, this practice, it originates from India, and traditionally a teacher, when they're issuing a mantra, they do a little ceremony. It's called puja, P-U-J-A. It's a very sweet little ceremony. It involves flowers and fruit and flames and these kinds of things. We do the ceremony, give you the mantra, and you have an experience of it on the first day. On the subsequent days, you're given additional knowledge. You're also given homework, so you get to practice at home and also practice together with your teacher and maybe with other students if you're learning in a group. And on the subsequent days, you're given additional lessons to help develop your knowledge of the practice. So there's a lesson about the practice of meditation. How do you know if you're practicing correctly? What are the signs to look out for of incorrect practice? Which there are very few by the way. You are also taught in great detail about stress. How does stress get in the body and how does the practice of meditation help stress get out of the body? And the thing is, people talk a lot about being "stressed," but they actually don't really have an understanding of what it means. They just know it doesn't feel good, but they don't have an understanding of what's really going on in the body. So we teach that in some detail. And then the last lesson is basically a lesson that prepares you for life as a meditator. What kind of changes can you expect by taking on the practice and how do you prepare for those? And at the end of that course, after those four lessons, you're totally self-sufficient. You don't need to see your teacher again. You have everything you need to know to go out and practice. However, most teachers will support you beyond that. So most of us, we have group meditations, which we do either in person or online. Most teachers allow you to come and repeat the course again at no extra cost, repeat days, two, three, and four of the course at no extra cost. And there's additional support available to you as well. Now, how do you find a teacher to teach you Vedic Meditation? So I'll put a link in the description below that'll help you with that. Obviously, I'm on that list, but I've also got colleagues all around the world. I'd love to teach you if that is feasible. Certainly if you're in Australia or New Zealand, we could make that possible. And to be honest, if you want to fly me to Borneo or Timbuktu or whatever I'd happily go and teach you there. Most teachers actually do travel to give courses in various places around the world as well. Now, the thing to look out for, the link that I'll put in the description will take you to a list of people that meet all this criteria. You want teachers that teach you all four lessons and they teach you those four lessons on four consecutive days. There are some teachers who might condense it to three lessons or try to teach you over two days. To be honest, this is not something where you want to cut corners. You don't want the "microwave" version of Vedic Meditation, you want the slow-cooked version because this is a practice which hopefully you will take up for the rest of your life. So the thought of making... of cutting the course short just to make it convenient... Now, the convenience of the course is nothing compared to the inconvenience of the actual practice. And this is the thing the course is designed to not just teach you to meditate, but also to teach you how to become a meditator. They are different things. We could condense this probably into one lesson, teach it over three or four hours, and then send you on your way. But you're not going to become a successful meditator. The chances of you becoming a successful meditator are very slim. So the course is designed very specifically to give you a balance of practice with the teacher, practice on your own, practice with the teacher, on your own, on your own, over that period of four days. The knowledge is drip fed to you so that by the time the course of instruction ends you've got the level of experience, the level of knowledge that you need in order to continue the practice beyond that. And plus, you've also got the support of the teacher beyond that. So please do yourself a favor. Don't try to cut corners. Don't try to make it "convenient" just to fit it into your schedule. So you want to give yourself the most solid foundation you can and know that you are working with a teacher who's going to support you in your commitment moving forwards. Now, even if you can't find a teacher on that list who is nearby you, it'll be worth your while to travel to them to do a course if you can. Or in some cases they may come to you depending on what else can be arranged in your city. They might have other people in your city that they're, who have inquired, and then when they've got sufficient numbers, they will come to it. So don't write yourself off just because you don't see a city or a town nearby you that has a qualified Vedic Meditation teacher. So that's it. That's a very brief overview on Vedic Meditation. Once you do find a teacher nearby you or someone who you think you want to work with, they will give you more details about the course itself and what it might be like to work with them. But the main point I wanted to get across today is the path of least resistance, Vedic Meditation can get you 80% there, and it can give you a lived experience, one that you can experience on a regular basis. An experience of no resistance, no suffering, no worries, no fear, no disappointment, no frustration. That is possible for you. It'll Take a little bit of effort, but I promise you it's going to be worth it. in the next episode, we're going to address the subject of doing nothing. For a lot of people, especially high achievers, the idea of doing"nothing" for 20 minutes twice a day, that can be threatening to them. So I'm going to be going into that into a little bit more detail, talking about how you can slow down in order to speed up. How you can get a return on your investment in terms of the time spent doing nothing, not just with Vedic Meditation, but also with other aspects of your life as well. So that episode is ready for you now. It's called Life Rewards Inaction. Hopefully I'll see you there, but either way, please remember, choose your path of least resistance and see where it takes you. Bye for now.