Meditators swear by results

By JULIE MIDDLETON

No doubt about it, real estate agent David Hilliam was heading for burn-out.

"I'd had seven years of real estate stress," he recalls. "I couldn't sleep, my joints ached, I was grumpy as anything, and I'd be lucky if I went to the toilet once a week.

"My blood pressure was absolutely incredible. I needed to get my health back again."

The catalyst for change: his boss learned to meditate and handed on a brochure about its benefits.

"From the first second I learned how to meditate," says the enthusiastic, friendly Hilliam, "there was a release, an easiness."

His wife was so impressed by the changes, she started learning to meditate three weeks later.

"I've now been doing transcendental meditation for 10 years," says Hilliam. "My health has come back, I feel more relaxed, I'm more in tune with what's around me. And house sales - they just fall over me."

Meditation is becoming mainstream - other high-flyers who swear by a daily dose include jeweller Michael Hill, Young and Rubicam head Peter Scutts, foundation Lotto marketer Phil Prosser, athlete Allison Roe, businesswoman Frances Hollis, painter Peter Beadle, actor Jim Moriarty, and Peter Thorburn, an All Black selector.

But you might not have noticed this mainstreaming. Meditation's focus on personal internal peace means it's not the sort of thing that true devotees feel the need to push in public.

And scepticism, often derived from meditation's genesis in what is perceived as the scary great unknown of eastern religion and philosophy, tends to curb admissions of involvement.

But scientific evidence for its benefits is huge, says University of Auckland psychologist John Raeburn, a daily meditator for the past 30 years.

"It has relaxing effects, and they can be quite profound," he says.

Studies have found that the deep relaxation brought about by meditation can immediately reduce stress and anxiety, enhance stamina, memory, stability and concentration, lower blood pressure and improve sleep, among other things.

The first major study to confirm that meditation had positive effects on the nervous system was published in the Scientific American way back in 1972 - that's right, at the time that the make-love-not-war ethos and the Beatles' visit to a meditation retreat had given the practice prominence.

But what happens in the brain? An experiment in which a meditator's brain was scanned showed that the prefrontal cortex, the seat of attention, lit up: the meditator was focusing deeply, after all.

But it was a quietening of activity that stood out: a bundle of neurons towards the top and back of the brain - the part that processes information about space and time and the orientation of the body - had gone dark.

Upshot? The brain perceives the self as light and endless, intertwined with everything around it.

Meditators may feel they have touched some sort of infinity, or God, if they are that way inclined. Either way, they are very relaxed with all the physical benefits that suggests.

Various forms of meditation exist, and are learned in days rather than weeks. Probably the best-known form in New Zealand is transcendental meditation, or TM.

Teacher Martin Jelley, son of running coach Arch Jelley, says more than 42,000 Kiwis have learned the technique.

Other techniques draw on Christian or Buddhist teachings, some on none at all.

Jelley describes the average human mind as being like a radio that's not quite on the station and produces static - lots of buzzing noise. "Meditation is like getting the radio on to the station - great clarity."

Characteristic of many meditation techniques is the use of a silent, mental mantra to ease the mind into a more relaxed state.

The desire to control stress led Jelley, a meditator for more than 10 years, former ad agency general manager Kathy Crockett (seven years) and PR company head Grant Leach (six years) to TM.

Says Leach: "I have absolute clarity of thought as a result of meditation."

Busy, career-minded types might say they don't have time for two 20-minute or half-hour meditations a day, but Jelley reckons that the practice orders the brain so that people become more effective, getting more done in the same time.

Hilliam agrees: "I work less hard, take more holidays, and sell more homes."

Leach says that meditation reduced his aggression and improved his EQ, his emotional intelligence, the gift of dealing effectively with people and relationships.

Crockett says she sleeps better, talks less and listens more.

Surely even a good thing has a downside? Hilliam says there isn't one; Crockett observes that meditation is becoming increasingly acceptable.

Certainly, the meditators the Herald met seemed relaxed, confident, youthful-looking and energetic people.

However, psychologist Raeburn says that meditation is not "a one-shot thing: you have to keep it up".

Market researcher Andrew, who doesn't want to reveal his surname, advises avoiding meditators or groups which exude "spiritual vanity". Some meditators he has met are "banging a drum, trying to tell everyone how wonderful they are, which seems to be missing the point.

"Meditation isn't a vehicle for you to display your ego," he says.

Prompted by a friend and initially unconvinced, he learned to meditate at the Auckland School of Philosophy, and followed that up with a 10-day silent meditation course at the Buddhist Vipassana Centre in Kaukapakapa, north of Auckland.

Trawl the internet and you'll find all sorts of negative stuff, some of which claims that meditation's effects can include muscle twitches, convulsions, headaches, fatigue, sleep disorders, inability to focus, anxiety, panic attacks, depression and dissociation.

However, this writer's partner learned to meditate two years ago, and the changes have all been for the better, especially in relationships and stress management.

Scepticism will keep meditation a slow grower among career high-flyers.

In his 1994 book Hello, Michael Hill Jeweller, the man himself describes how he looked up transcendental meditation in the Auckland phone book one day while passing through the city.

"[Wife] Christine and I were staying at the Sheraton in Auckland and had a fellow come down to instruct us in the practice.

"Christine was sceptical, thinking we would be sitting on the floor with a swami chanting mumbo-jumbo.

"And I must admit that while we were all cross-legged on the lounge floor - and this fellow lit some smoky incense - I was certain I was going to get the giggles.

"Still, I took to it like a duck to water and can now use it daily to refresh my thoughts.

"I have tried to put a number of people in my organisation on to TM. But the desire has to come from within."

And as shown by global meditation sessions held in the wake of the September terror attacks in the United States, meditators believe that their actions can quietly influence the world towards peace.

Peter Scutts, who followed his wife, Diana, into meditation and has about 85 staff, is one.

"It's about having a better quality of life for the whole world," he says.

"By me behaving differently as a result of meditation - I'm much more even-tempered now - I influence 85 people's lives.

"That's the greatest benefit.

"If you can get a certain core of people meditating, you can influence a hell of a lot of the world."

Links


The School of Philosophy

The Transcendental Meditation programme