One of the paradoxes I noticed about us humans over the last 15 years coaching humans – and being coached myself – is that we live in this information age, yet “lack of information” is clearly not our challenge when it comes to changing the world, or changing our world for the better.
Imagine you are offered the option of taking one of a series of pills, all of which have zero side effects.
The first pill will boost your IQ by up to 23 points , while also combatting brain degeneration by ensuring that as you enter your 50s and beyond your brain will resemble that of a 20-year old.
The second pill will lower your stress hormones by 60% and decrease any insomnia symptoms (if you have any) by 31%.
The third pill will measurably increase your amount of gamma waves in the brain by 14% – these are the waves associated with higher cognition, information processing, perception, high alertness and attention.
The fourth pill is focused on memory, and it will raise your performance on a memory task 10x.
The fifth pill will measurably decrease each of the known psychological factors that weaken and ultimately end romantic relationship, or prevent us from finding one in the first place: including cynicism, criticism, attacking, pessimism, discontent and perfectionism. As a bonus, if you have children, it will also improve both your parenting, and improve your parent-child relationship.
Which one would you take?
Whatever your answer, now imagine that a smart scientist has devised a way where you can take one pill per day that has all five benefits however it does have one side effect, it will increase the amount of joy that you experience throughout the day, irrespective of outside events.
So there is a catch. The pill has an initial consultation charge of $200, where a profession instructs you on when and how to administer this pill. Thereafter, the pill is free. And, it will take 20 minutes each day to administer this pill, during which time you will need to sit down in a comfortable position and relax.
Would you still take the pill?
Yes, the pill is a combination of meditation and a few simple breathing techniques
Let’s break it down a little further: even the breathing techniques by themselves (SKY Breathing, from the Art of Living) has been shown to increase all five types of brain waves (2% higher delta waves, right up to 14%+ increase in gamma waves).
Delta waves are associated with the deepest levels of relaxation, and are normally only seen in deep restorative and dreamless sleep.
Theta waves are associated with learning and memory.
Alpha waves are associated with concentration. There is also evidence that alpha waves have the potential to combat both depression and anxiety
Beta waves are associated with a heightened state of alertness, logic and critical reasoning
Gamma waves, as mentioned above, are associated with information processing, perception, high alertness and attention.
Maybe next time you’re thinking of digesting some information, be it news, a book, or a podcast, you could experiment with swapping that out for some implementation time, by learning breathing and meditation techniques, which allow you to implement so much more of what you know.
Disclosure: I am a breathing and meditation teacher, so you could say I’m biased. But then the research is objective, and has been reproduced many times. Also, the reason I started teaching these techniques was not random, it was because I noticed from my own direct experience tremendous benefits. Also, it’s something I do as a volunteer not as my profession, so there’s no financial incentive for me to spent time writing about meditation or teaching it. It does of course give me joy and a sense of higher purpose to see other people reproduce the same benefits I experienced. So it is not without reward. If you are interested in knowing more (ie: you’d like this last 5 minutes of reading time to result in implementation, not information) then flick me a note at @dsbatten on Twitter.