Main Points:

• Meditation is for everyone; but it may need to be modified for Western meditators.
• Making meditation accessible can be done by looking at the physical positions associated with meditating, offering different types of meditation, tailoring meditation to your audience.
• Meditating can lower stress based on recent research.

 

00:47                                     This is the hundred and 17th episode of changing the face of yoga. And my guest today is Gin Carter. Gin is part of my meditation theme and she's also has a podcast about meditation. And it's called Meditation Monday's with Gin. And we're going just talk about her take on meditation, how she teaches it.

                                                She is used to be a conservation scientist. And she's changed to teaching yoga because she realized that all the science in the world won't save the planet unless people are willing to make the choices to implement that science. And she feels that by teaching yoga, she decreases people's stress, which allows them to make better choices for themselves and for the world. She teaches very alignment based asana, but also lots of practical yoga philosophy and meditation. And she has an incredible diversity of clients: young athletes to 911 dispatchers to 90 year olds doing chair yoga, which I think would be interesting to talk about how meditation fits in with each of those different groups.

02:11                                     Welcome. Gin. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about?

02:17                                     No, that was a great introduction. I will say I have not updated my podcast in a while, but there's a lot there already. I think about updating it sometime, but I've got a lot going on these days and I haven't done it, so I'm glad that you guys listened to it though.

02:34                                     I thought it was very interesting, one of the things I would like to talk about is you really do have a very diverse group of students. Young people, very stressed people, 911 dispatchers I would assume would be very stressed and 90 year olds. Do you have any way that you approach this? So that might be different for each group or do you think that meditation...

03:02                                     Oh, definitely. So I teach almost exclusively privately. So even when I'm with a group, it's a private group. They're not usually public classes. So I've been brought in specifically to work with that group or that individual. And so every time I teach its customized to whatever's going on with that individual or that group. So it's very different from class to class. Certainly the 15 to 25 year old athletes are doing very different things than the 90 year olds in the chair.

03:40                                     Is the meditation also different or is that a bit more universal?

03:45                                     So the meditation varies between groups between days and and between whatever we're focused on that day. Sometimes they're the same meditations, but depending on who is the audience, I often explain them slightly differently to make it a little more relatable to their life and what's ever going on with them at that time, if that makes sense.

04:09                                     No, that does. I listened to your first meditation podcasts and I thought you had very interesting way of going about it because you gave them some tips for meditation success. And I was wondering if you could kind of talk a little bit about that.

04:29                                     Sure. I think a lot of times we think that meditation has to be a certain way and I'm a big proponent that it doesn't, and so setting yourself up so that you're comfortable. Like you don't have to sit cross legged on the floor. Like it's not a requirement, I promise.. I think the most important thing as far as your position is that you're able to keep your spine long and you're able to breathe. So , if that means sitting in a chair with your feet planted on the ground, I usually, if people are sitting in chair encouraging not to rest against the back of the chair, but told yourself up and sit on the front. If you're sitting on the ground and it doesn't feel that great, you can elevate your hips so that your hips are in line with or higher than your knees. And that usually will take some of this stress out of your hips and your back and help you to sit up tall.

                                                 Sometimes I have clients that both of those things just don't feel good and they're not accessible. And I love having people meditate in Savasana, laying down, because if it's straining you be in the position, you're definitely not going to get where you want to go in meditation. And so it's beautiful to sit in Lotus. I don't ever teach Lotus. I just don't. It's beautiful, but like you can get so many benefits of meditation without trying to get into some crazy pretzel pose. When you're in that pose and you're hurting, you're not going to be focused on the meditation. You're going to be focused on the pain in your body. I think there's some schools of meditation where that's kind of a part of it. Like you're meant to work through it and whatever.

                                                But I think for regular people, they can use meditation so much and making it easy for people to do is really important. I also think there's a lot of ideas about what it's supposed to be like if you can just sit in your mind quiet and it's going to be magic and that doesn't happen. And so meditation can work so many different ways , I think that's one of the things that people can realize is set themselves up for success. So there are so many different ways to go about it and you try something, it doesn't work for you. There's always different things to try.

07:17                                     so if I were really uncomfortable, If I were really uncomfortable sitting in Lotus, which I don't do lotus anymore, what would you suggest? Because I agree with you, if you're in pain, that's what you're thinking about. You're not thinking about the meditation or whatever it is that you want to think about.

07:36                                     I would tell you don't do Lotus.

07:39                                     Just stop that.

07:41                                     Yeah. I'm a firm believer, actually I, we could go on a lotus rant like I feel like in the Western world, we don't sit on the floor and we don't sit cross legged that much in our life up until the point where we think, oh, it might be good to do this meditation thing. Maybe I should try to sit like that or we started yoga and we tried to sit like that and so for a lot of us, our bodies aren't made to go that way. It's hard on our knees and our ankles to be in Lotus. It's also hard on our back to keep your spine long and its hard on our hips. For Western bodies. I'm not a fan. For bodies that started out sitting on the floor, that makes a lot of sense. But for most of us it just doesn't. And so I would advise you to come out of it.

                                                There's a few different ways you can sit on the floor, you can sit obviously in easy pose just cross-legged. You can kind of sit with one leg sort of folded in front of the other, which is I think what I do most of the time. But there's a few different variations. You have to see where that person's at as far as their seat goes, but there's a lot of different options other than trying to pretzel yourself into Lotus.

08:55                                     Okay. no, I think that's smart. I think you're right. We haven't really grown up sitting on the floor or squatting either one. That one I can't do very well either. You said there was lots of different kinds of meditations and there are. How do you match the meditation with the person or the group that you're going to be trying to teach this too?

09:28                                     I think it just depends on that group's needs. There's a bit of reading the room and reading the person or the people. I also sometimes I like to just cycle through different meditations to let my students experience them. And then I have some students that will really hone in and say when we did, heart-centered meditation or that breath-centered meditation, it really worked for me. And then we know that we'll do more of those kind of things for that person.

                                                But with my students, I do like to try a variety and kind of show them how there are all these different things that you can do so that they're aware. Then once they feel like they want to really start getting into it themselves and then you can kind of hone in on something. I think it benefits a lot of people to do different ones at different times. I change my meditation practice constantly. Sometimes I'll get going with one and focus on it for a few weeks or a few months. But I like to change it up because I think there are all these different techniques and each technique can kind of be a window into where you're trying to go. As human beings we can get complacent and we can get bored in a way. And so having a bunch of techniques in your tool belt to change that when you need to, I think it can be a really great thing.

11:02                                     Great, great idea. I think that's another rule, shall we say, of meditation that you do the same thing every day.

11:12                                     Right.

11:13                                     I hadn't thought about that and it's probably not true either. So what are the kinds of techniques that you try to cycle your your students through?

11:26                                     There's so many different ones now.

11:28                                     Okay. Pick your favorites.

11:29                                     There's kind of groupings. So there's breath focus meditations and those, I feel pair well with other meditations. So a lot of times we'll start with focusing on our breath in a certain way and then maybe we just stay with that. But maybe we also move to a mindfulness meditation where you can even pair that with breath in a way where you're being mindful of your breath or mindful of something.

                                                I love guided meditation as in visualizations. So really getting deep into a scene or something you're trying to imagine. I teach sometimes meditations that are very body focused, so giving different focus to different parts in the body depending on what meditation it is and that's kind of a mindfulness meditation tool. And they all kind of overlap in different ways.

                                                But there's so many different ones. I love it. I love learning different ones. One of my favorite texts is called The Vyana Buyerva and I think it has 112 or so. They're not all different meditations, Most of them are meditations, some of them are also just what we call pointing out instructions. with the idea that the state you're trying to get to in meditation is a state that you've been in many times in your life. We call that being in the flow. And so my favorite example of that is like a concert musician who doesn't even have to read his music and he's just playing right? And you can tell nothing else in the world is going on. He's just there completely present.

                                                There's some instructions that are about moments like that you can find in your life. So there's even sometimes instructions for students to think about those things. There's also open eyed meditations that are kind of mindfulness meditations, taking a walk and focusing only on the wall. And when your mind starts to wander, bringing it back to your feet, hitting the ground, the tree that you're seeing, the plant that you're seeing whatever it is as you're walking. So, yeah, there's so many different things we can do.

13:51                                     Okay. Interesting. What was the name of that book that has the mostly meditation's in it. So I can spell it right.

14:02                                     It's called the Vijnana Bhairava., so let's spell it. Let's see. I have to write it down to spell it right. Okay. So it'd be V I, J A. N. A. Yana.B H A I R. A. V. A. Yeah, it's an interesting older text. It's lots of little verses on meditation and pointing out instructions. And my meditation teacher, her name is Sallie Kempton, she has a downloadable, or you can buy a CD called Doorways to the Infinite, and she actually walks you through that whole entire text. It's really lovely.

14:54                                     Doorways to the Infinite, I'm writing this down. Okay. So if somebody was out there and they said, well, I don't know how to meditate and I'm not sure I want to do that, what would you tell them that might be a benefit for them.

15:15                                     I would encourage them and tell them that it really doesn't have to fit what do you think in your mind It is, like what it is that you're resisting. Because I imagine usually they're thinking I'm just supposed to sit still and my mind is supposed to be quiet. I can't do that and I don't want to do that. I would tell them that it can become this beautiful thing that you look forward to. And in fact it can be a very actively-minded thing.

                                                 I believe rather than getting your mind to be quiet, you really trying to get your mind to focus. So to focus on one particular thing so that it becomes nice and easy and isn't fluctuating about. And so I think sometimes by explaining that to people so that they understand that it's not just trying to sit and be quiet but rather really to help them tame their monkey mind. Because I think we all have that wild mind that wants to flux about.

                                                There's a lot of science now behind the benefits of meditation. So I often bring that up. There was a recent study, actually from Harvard now I want to say like in March that actually showed that the genes involved in stress are downregulated and the genes involved in the relaxation response, which is the opposite of stress, are upregulated which I think is incredible to show.

                                                Well, when we meditate, there have also been other studies that actually show that our brain gets rewired. There's science behind it. It's not just this hand-waving, yoga teacher thing to do. Like it really makes a big difference. When I go and speak with the 911 dispatchers and first responders and folks like that, we really try to emphasize, the science behind why we're there to teach them what we teach them. And we really give them very practical ways of meditation.

                                                 I also encourage people and tell them, no, it doesn't have to be that long. You don't have to sit for four hours even; five minutes or seven minutes or three minutes or 12 minutes has tremendous benefits. I think that takes away the intimidation factor. Oh, I just have to do this for a couple of minutes so it doesn't have to be this whole day long thing.

17:45                                     Well I noticed that you said you were on a mission to make meditation accessible and I you're starting to talk a bit about that, but is there anything else that you would add that you're doing to make it accessible?

18:02                                     I mentioned it a little bit, but I feel like making it practical and making it not so hand wavy and soft and out there. I think is really important to let people see oh, this is a thing that I can use. Like right now in my life in five minutes, even when I'm at work or my kid is being crazier, my partner is stressing me out: just a couple minutes next with my breath. It can be such a useful thing. It doesn't have to be this thing where you think you have to go and sit on a mountain for hours alone? Right. It's something you can really use. And so I think expressing that, to be willing to making it practical is very important.

18:53                                     I recently had a guest on and she was my first student. I was so excited. She said that when she went to her very first yoga class, she was in a very high stress position at work and she had a lot of medical issues because of it. And it was just too much, too quiet. And you say you work a lot with people that have stress, so how do you get them from that really high stress position to meditation?

19:25                                     I believe that meditating with a teacher, at least at first, is super important. So having that guide so that it's not just you sitting and being quiet and I don't know what was going on in her first yoga class. But what I specifically know, maybe the teacher was guiding and it was still a struggle for her, but maybe the teacher had given them quiet. The quiet is important, but I like to get people there slowly.

                                                You listened to my podcast. I talked for quite a bit at the beginning of the meditation usually. I think that's one of the really important things is to start with a teacher. And I mean, I'm a big advocate, keep going with the teacher. I've been with my meditation teacher for almost 10 years and there's something powerful in having a teacher that can guide you especially when you're in those places where you are just beginning or you're in really high stress. Because there is a bit of a transference- an energy transfer?

                                                I also do Hawaiian bodywork called Lomi Lomi and we talk about energy work. And I think a lot of times people, like I don't really know what that's about, but I tell people anytime you enter a room, you're doing an energy exchange, right? Whether you realize it or not. And if you've in a room where people are really calm and like a crazy person, not a crazy person, but a person who's really high energy comes in and there's this energy exchange. Something else is happening now. And so the same goes in reverse. So if you can be in the presence of a teacher who's guiding you and grounding themselves and really settling in, that can really help you get going with your practice in that moment and, and going forward.

21:25                                     Okay, I agree with you and making it accessible. But it is maybe for western consumers a very different way to think about it and, just to use your brain that way. I think it can be very difficult sometimes for people to really feel it is good for them. How are you breaking down those stereotypes?

21:56                                     Well that's interesting. So I believe that people are not going to do something until they're ready for it or until they need it. I wouldn't just walk up to people on the street and say you should meditate. There has to be a moment where there's a connection; where there's either a need and the person is obviously reaching out for help or they've already seen oh, this is kind of something I want to try or something I know I need.

                                                I don't tend to talk directly about meditation when I first meet people randomly through whatever reason. But I will see where they're at and see if it fits inappropriately because I teach yoga and I do the body work that I do. Sometimes people come in through those two avenues first. Then I hone in on actually, maybe we should try this meditation thing. With Yoga students, I think there's a magic in pairing up the movement of your body with introducing new ideas. I think we're more receptive when we're doing kinesthetic things. I think there's science behind that, but it's also just something I've seen in my life. It's the way the practice works anyway. I'm moving around doing yoga and then at the end you're like, we're going to close our eyes and breathe and they're like, okay. Because I just did all the other stuff too. Right. Maybe there's a bit of tricking someone.

23:39                                     Guiding, guiding that's the word. Yes. So this has been really interesting. Do you have online classes too? Did I read that on your website?

23:52                                     So I teach a few different ways. I teach in person and then I also teach online. So I teach in person online over Zoom, Skype, Facetime or Facebook messenger too. However you want to access, you can access me. And so I have a few clients that do online yoga and meditation with me.

                                                 I occasionally have an online course going. So right now I have an online course that is sort of an introduction to stress management and meditation with my business partner, Dr. Jessica Norris. She and I do our 911 dispatching, first responders stuff together. Our course online right now is just for anyone and it's kind of an introduction to meditation and stress management. And then I periodically run other online courses too. Sometimes I teach a very goddess focused course about the way energy works in our lives and a few different other things. I'm online a lot. Also in person.

24:56                                     We're coming to the end of the podcast, but what I would like you to do is if there's anything that you felt we didn't cover in enough depths or something that we didn't cover at all that you would like the listeners to know, please go ahead.

25:15                                     I think maybe I'll just share the reason that I teach all of this meditation, Yoga, and my practice of Hawaiian body work. It's all really to help people feel better and it's driven not just from helping individuals feel better, but from trying to help the planet feel better.

                                                 So as you said at the beginning, I was a conservation biologist for the Smithsonian for about 12 years. And I got out of that and started teaching yoga. As you said, I found all the science in the world isn't going to make a difference unless we do implement those changes. And I believe that when we feel better in ourselves, we're better able to make better choices.

                                                 I always use this example: if your neck hurts and you just want to go home and lay down and you're somewhere and you need to throw a can away, but the recycle bin is 50 yards away and the trash can is by you. I think you're not going to walk the 50 yards to go recycle your cans. Things as simple as that if people can heal within themselves, then I feel like we can heal together and heal the planet.

                                                Meditation, I think is a huge part of that because we know that a lot of our healing deals with pain that isn't specifically physical. And so the more I think we can stress less and manage these kinds of things, the better we will fell and the better the whole planet it would feel.

26:45                                     Well thank you. I want to give people your contact details so that they can perhaps, either talk to you in person or online. Gin's website is Yoga with Gin and that's one word and it's g i n dot com. And her email is Gin, which again is g I [email protected]. She has couple of Facebook's: yoga with Gin; we've got a whole bunch of Yoga with Gins: Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. It's been really great talking to you. I like your attitude towards meditation. I like meditation, but it does seem to scare, I think just the word sometimes scares people.

27:41                                     Yeah, definitely.

27:45                                     So I think your idea of making it accessible for everyone is smart. I want to thank you for coming on the podcast. I think you really contributed some different ideas about it and hopefully will make people feel a little more comfortable trying it out. So thank you again.

28:05                                     Thank you. This was wonderful.