How to Use Meditation and Yoga to Step Back from the Daily Commotion and Finally be Still 

A type-A personality is often described as someone who is competitive, outgoing, ambitious, impatient and/or aggressive – i.e. the kind of person who thinks that a seven-second internet download is a time-suck.  And in this age, with its over-scheduled, over-connected, over-everything mentality, it’s hard not to develop some Type-A personality traits along the way.

Many career and leadership coaches have offered their advice on how to manage the (seemingly unmanageable) cycle of jobs, families, friends, homes, social lives, community, etc….and many of the solutions have to do with time management, self-discipline, eating well and exercising. So what’s a Type-A person – who may be harried and rushing around, not eating well, and skipping exercise — to do?  Answer: just unplug.

While women have often been credited with having an innate talent for multitasking, they often exhibit that without actually being mindful about what exactly they’re doing. How many times have you walked into a room looking for something and forgotten what it was?  Or “lost” the eyeglasses that are propped up on your head? Or called one of your children by the other child’s name? Depending on your age, you may attribute that to stress, lack of sleep, or the passage of time, but perhaps there are greater forces at work here: over-stimulation (the bad kind).

Heard of De-Cluttering? Now it’s Time to Tidy Your Mind

After reading enough books on happiness and organizing your life, you may notice that a lot of the remedies come down to one thing: de-cluttering. To de-clutter is to remove that which is no longer  necessary or wanted, with the goal being a kind of organizational re-birth (for instance, cleaning out your closet and falling in love with your wardrobe again — or deciding that there is now more room for new, updated clothes).  By freeing your space, you effectively beget some psychological breathing room.

Similarly, eliminating thoughts and actions that don’t serve you is a kind of spiritual de-cluttering.  It is like unplugging from the connected universe and mindfully experiencing the now. Impressed? Believe it or not, this is how people lived for thousands of years, before Steve Jobs and Bill Gates happened upon the scene.

The challenge then becomes: how do we pull the plug? How do we make time stand still – or at least ward off the buzz and hum of distracting activity all around us? Through meditation and yoga. The simple act of tuning everything out, focusing on the inner breath and aligning our movements with our minds, provides a way forward while standing still.

Ten Steps to Personal Peace, Every Day

Try these 10 steps.  Don’t get discouraged if you find it difficult at first, or can only do it for a couple of minutes.  Just as with any repetitive activity, you can work your way up to a higher number with practice:

1. With eyes closed, sit in a comfortable position on the floor so you can feel grounded.
2. Breathe in through your nose and out of your mouth, slowly extending the inhale and exhale
3. Do a mental check on your body (not a run through of your to-do list, a common error for newbies).
4. What parts are tight? What parts hurt? Where do you feel discomfort?
5. Focus on those areas and mentally picture your breath going to that area and creating space.
6. Now think of an intention for the day— it can be “patience,” “empathy,” “strength,” “calm” — whatever you want your inner focus to be.
7. Repeat your intention silently while maintaining your breath.
8. When other thoughts pop up, simply imagine them as balloons and let them go (corny, but it works).
9. Mentally thank yourself for taking this brief time to check in with yourself, for being alive, and for being aware.
10. Slowly open your eyes and resume your normal breath.

There, you just did your first meditation—or inner reflection. Whether it was for five minutes or 50, the practice is the same. Control your breathing, focus on yourself, and connect with the moment. Once you get the hang of it, you can expand your practice with guided instruction, visualization, primordial sounds (an actual type of meditation, as expounded by Deepak Chopra, among others) and other meditative practices.

Yoga: The Focus-Inducing Way to Deflect Stress

So what about yoga, you ask? “True yoga,” as a daily spiritual way of finding peace thru exercising control over one’s breath and mind, is found in the life you lead off the yoga mat, but it certainly starts there. It is the practice of coordinating your breath with your movement, slowly controlling poses, and working through difficulties with mental strength and focus. It is about inner and outer balance, creating space and filling it with energy and positive thoughts. If you like, you can think of those thoughts as the new “mental clothes” you have acquired because you now have room from clearing out the closet of your mind.

If all of this sounds like just taking a “chill pill,” it sort of is; but since “chill pills” don’t come in bottles, we  have to create them for ourselves. Unplugging is not the art of stopping as much as it is the art of starting: starting to be aware of what you are doing in any moment, starting to breathe with intention, starting to align your mind and body….and when you do that, your soul will follow.