Episode 7: Is meditation the key to feeling youthful?

Mar. 31, 2023 | 35 mins

Join our host Brent Bishop as he chats with Lucie Hager, a registered social worker and therapist from Toronto Ontario. Brent will also chat with Tasha Romanelli, the founder, owner and chief meditation officer at Zen Den from Erin, Ontario. They will discuss whether meditation is the key to feeling youthful. 

Announcer:

You are listening to the Beyond Age podcast series.

Brent:

Hi, and welcome to Beyond Age, a Manulife exclusive podcast where we chat with experts to uncover the truth about holistic health and aging to help keep you living healthier for longer, no matter your age. I'm your host, Brent Bishop, and today I'm joined by two special guests. My first guest is Tasha Romanelli from Erin Ontario. She's the founder, owner, and chief meditation officer at Zen Den. We'll be better defining what meditation is and how best to practice it. Welcome, Tasha.

Tasha:

Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

Brent:

I'm so glad you're here because I love this topic. I started my practice several years ago, you know, off and on, that kind of thing. I'm much more consistent now, but I found that the consistency allowed me to feel more grounded, to be less stressed and really productivity went up overall. So I'm really excited and I'm sure our listeners will get a lot out of this as well. But before we get into everything, maybe tell us a little bit about yourself, Tasha, and you know, what it is that you do and how you got into this field to begin with.

Tasha:

Well, you know, I have this belief system that we're a spiritual being, having a human experience. But through that journey and through that experience, I've also recognized that we're a human being, having a spiritual experience, and throughout our lives we have the opportunity to ebb and flow through different states of consciousness. And through that journey we can experience a lot of pain and suffering. Right? So that's like the stress and the trauma that we go through life. And we also experience a full spectrum of emotions without necessarily learning how to navigate them. So this has been my journey to find understanding and meaning. And along the way I have found that I have a gift to help others do the same. So what I do in the simplest form is I'm a healer. That's what I say. I'm a healer. I meet people where they're at and I help them work through what they're growing through in mind, body, and spirit with teachings of mindfulness, meditation, and powerful quantum energy healing. I love all things about the mind, the body, and the soul, and how to really bring it home and be holistic through the spiritual self and the human self and really embodying the two because we need both. We need both.

Brent:

Absolutely. I'm going to ask you a question that sounds like a very simple question, but I found myself asking this myself when I started meditation, but what is meditation exactly?

Tasha:

Yeah. In the simplest form, meditation is both a skill and an experience, and I would love to elaborate a little bit more on that in the sense that it helps to create simple awareness, but it's also compassion acceptance. So being compassionate and accepting one's truth in that present moment, it can also help to discover emotions that we typically don't land on that spectrum, which is calm, clarity, contentment, and that compassion and truthfully, meditation is for everyone. Everyone can do it.

Brent:

Excellent. That definitely answers my question there. Why should I meditate? When I started, I was kind of just doing it because people said it's good for you. And you know, my question was, well, what's it going to do for me? What benefits in my life and my health? Maybe you can elaborate on that a little bit just based on your experience.

Tasha:

Yeah, absolutely. The first thing I would love to address is to rephrase the question slightly. Which is, instead of saying "should" meditate, we can ask the question why "learn" to meditate, if that's all right?

Brent:

Yeah, absolutely.

Tasha:

Yeah. So, you know, the word "should", just to educate the listeners here, is "shoulds" are preconceived notions of someone else's belief system. And when we meditate, we really truly learn to learn more about who we are and sometimes detach ourselves from those preconceived conditions and biases. So it's important to be aware of the "shoulds" and the "coulds". So why learn to meditate is really a great question because meditation again helps you to witness all things that are happening within you and all around you. So life is happening all around us every single day. And unfortunately, as much as we would love to try, we can't always control what happens outside of us. But we do have the power to control or change what's happening on the inside. And so how we choose to respond to life and to the things we can't control, meditation truly helps you to sit with yourself so that you can know yourself, so that you can be yourself. It helps you to be aware of your thoughts, feelings, behaviours, and how you choose to connect with others. And it really does give you the opportunity to witness yourself fully in that moment with a compassionate heart. And it can inspire you to take action to become the change that you truly desire to be, and helping you to stay in that present moment.

Brent:

Wow. I love how you take a certain word and you know, you may be very aware of where that is coming from, what it means, and how it could be changed to, like you said, not take on other biases. I hope the listeners got that because that's really powerful. Thank you for that.

Tasha:

Well, that's also where that self-compassion comes in, right? But it's also the thoughts, right? Our thoughts are words. And so those words in our head and out loud really can change our life experience and how we perceive reality. I do want to add that whole body, right, of what meditation can do for someone is that it really does help calm the central nervous system down. On a physical level or situation or experience or conversation with someone can either put us in a fight, flight or freeze mode, sending a signal of like, this moment does not feel safe. Now you may say, well, you know what, I'm not stressed, but the body is having a whole other thing going on inside. So sitting in meditation can help to calm that central nervous system down, and science is really here to prove that theory. There is a lot of studies and research that I have done that really supports that message.

Brent:

That's great. I think that's a really important point for people to realize the impact on the central nervous system. I'll ask you for some advice about if somebody wants to start meditation but isn't sure where to start, what advice would you give that individual?

Tasha:

Well, the first piece advice I would say is, are you breathing? And if the answer is yes, because obviously they are, they're having a conversation with me, then I will say, then you can meditate because there's so many different ways of meditation. But a great one to start with is to just breathe, right? Because something that is so simple can be so impactful. And so the best place to start is I would say, do you have 27 seconds to just breathe? There is this beautiful method that I have and I love to teach newbies, and it is simply inhaling, holding your breath and exhaling and doing that three times for total of 27 seconds. That provides your whole central nervous system to calm down, to like really settle in and start to relax. And the more that you just practice 27 seconds of breath work throughout your day, the body starts to get familiar with this new sensation and it becomes a part of your every day. Right? Just breathe. That sounds so simple, but I'm telling you, it's such a great practice to get the body into the familiar sensation of what it feels like to calm down. Wow,

Brent:

That's such a great place to start. Everybody has 27 seconds, it's a great place to start. And I'm sure you can start to build on that as you continue your practice. Speaking of, you know, it becomes easier to do it throughout the day and throughout the week and so on. How do you actually make meditation a habit?

Tasha:

So for me, because I love to educate and to teach, I think it's important that you understand your why, right? So why meditate, know why you're meditating and to have good practice with meditation is to start with three key principles. So these are my three key principles that I have adopted through my practice: set an intention first of all. Is it just because your doctor said it's good for you? Perhaps, and that might be enough, but it could also be certain things throughout your day. I want to find a little bit more courage to be able to speak up and share my truth. I want to be able to, you know, find love and compassion from my loved ones, right? Like what is your intention? Start there first and foremost, know your why, okay. And then be able to have a focused attention. We have a lot of stimuli that is coming at us so fast. It's been researched and studied that we as humans receive 11 billion bits of information per second. So that means stimuli of like our five senses, what we see, what we hear, what we smell, what we taste, what we feel is coming in hot, 11 billion bits of that information. And so it has been said and proven that we can handle 40 pieces of that information. That's it per second.

Brent:

That's a lot of filtering.

Tasha:

That's a lot of filtering! So having a focused attention and a practice helps you to stay anchored in your practice. So for example, if you know you're trying to meditate and you're having thoughts of like, oh, I'm hungry, or you're thinking about a conversation that you want to have with somebody, whatever, the mind will do all sorts of things to get you out of that zone. Because it's unfamiliar, right? Right. The mind is always trying to keep you safe at all times. The first "get" at anything you ever do in life, if it's unfamiliar, the mind will try. It's hardest to get back to the old you. That is how you need to be aware of like, I recognize that I am going back to my old self, but that's okay, but I'm going to refocus my attention on what it is that I want out of this practice. What's my intention? Come back to that. And the last thing I would always say to my students is attitude. What's your attitude? If you're going to show up with like a closed mindset or like, oh, I just can't do this today, or I'm not into the mood of doing this, then don't practice. But if you can be open to receive what comes out of that practice, miracles can happen.

Brent:

That's so true in many things in life too, right? Just being open, because there's always something you can learn. There's always something you can benefit from. That's a really good point,

Tasha:

Right? Like you have to take things by step and change happens at the speed of safety,

Brent:

Right? I love that. You have

Tasha:

To put yourself in a safe space to create that environment for yourself. What happens is that you literally create extra space in your head so that when you come back to the moment to come back to reality, you can look at it differently. Thinking of this experience like this, now I have a whole other perspective because I cleared the space in my mind, I gave my body the permission to feel safe and now I can go ahead and take action and do something about it.

Brent:

Very powerful. I think you answered this next question. How long should you meditate for? And I think you mentioned the 27 seconds is a great place to start. Maybe if it's somebody who's a little bit more intermediate or seasoned, is there a typical amount of time that you will sort of receive the best benefit from it? Or is it dependent on the person?

Tasha:

It depends on the moment to be honest. As myself, I'm an experienced meditator. I've been meditating since 2003. I've had many different meditation experiences, but as I said at the beginning, it's also a skillset, right? So like anything, if you are an athlete and you're learning to do high jump or whatever it might be, you get out there and you jump. And the first time, eh, it was okay. But you keep practicing, practicing, practicing because you have passion for it. You know why you're doing it, you love it. And so right over time you build that skill and going back to the mind and how the mind works is it becomes familiar. Just to be in your truth can happen a lot faster when you're an experienced meditator than when you're just a beginner. So it is a skill and it is also an experience. So to answer your question is how long? Well, it really depends on what you need and what you want out that moment. For me it's morning, mid-afternoon, late afternoon and evening to have that practice and dedicate more time in the morning and the evening to really ground myself to really reconnect, but also come back to a place of gratitude at the of my day.

Brent:

This is great stuff. I love this. This is really great stuff you're sharing with us. I can relate to this. I've heard, you know, people saying that they've tried meditation and they get easily distracted, their mind's wandering about, you know, the meeting they have coming up or even what they're going to have for lunch or whatever it might be. What would you say to this individual? Like how would they address that, that wandering?

Tasha:

Yeah, so again, it's just you're human first of all, being human. We have a variety of emotions and sensations that we experience. So what I would suggest to anyone is start simple, right? Like start simple. If you are stressed or worried or having anxiety, really tune into that is sensation. And not judge yourself for having those sensations or those feelings or thoughts, right? Because again, we are our own worst critic. So really come into yourself, recognize where you are without judgment, which provides safety to the body. And then take just again a breath, a breath, inhale, open your mouth and you let it out. Like let's just do that together right now. You can close your eyes if you want to. You don't have to.

Brent:

Everybody join in on this by the way, we all need it. <laugh>.

Tasha:

If you are in a space where you feel safe to close your eyes, close your eyes. If you do not feel safe, you can hood your eyes, meaning like just stare at the floor, stare somewhere on the wall to go into that gaze. But close your eyes, place one hand on your heart, one hand on your belly, and you can take a long deep breath in. So we inhale for 4, 3, 2, 1, and then open your mouth and let it out. Let all that stress go. Let it out into the ether. Allow the universe to take it. Okay? Take a deep breath, we're going to do it one more time. Exhale that out. Good. What is it that you want to intend? You breathe that and you receive it. We give so much as humans, but we rarely receive. Receive that intention, allow it to enter your body and that literally will change your life so tremendously. That simple practice,

Brent:

I hope people did this. If you didn't try it afterwards, you know, after doing the breathing techniques, I feel more relaxed. I have a smile on my face.

Tasha:

Your whole energy has shifted. Not only is your body feeling more calm or looking more calm to me, but you're glowing. You're like emitting like an energy that is very inviting and approachable,

Brent:

Right? Wow. I'm glad we actually did that. I'm sure it helped a lot of people listening as well, but it helped me. Another question for you in terms of myths and misconceptions. I'm going to ask you a few of them here that I've heard: 1. You must be sitting to meditate. And this is something I struggle with. 2. Do you have to be in a certain position? You know, I'm sure you've got that too.

Tasha:

Yeah. So there are postures that I would recommend for anyone who is starting to meditate. Sitting upright is a great way to start for sure. But standing, walking meditation and lying down. The reason why I say those four is because it helps our posture to be upright. You can be anywhere and meditate. Like you literally could be folding laundry and doing a meditation. You can be walking your dog and doing a meditation. You can be sitting at a ballgame in the stands doing a meditation. However, having your body be upright is what I would recommend because it provides the maximum capacity for your lungs, for your central nervous system, for the physical body to reset itself and to find that state of calmness in order to put you in a state of homeostasis. And that really helps us to like calm everything down. You don't need any fancy pillow, you don't need the material things, you don't need them. They're nice to have.

Brent:

You don't need to be in the lotus position.

Tasha:

You do not need to be in the lotus position! You do not need to be in a mudra hand position either. You know, you see like the Buddha right with the hand position. Simply as long as you can be upright to allow your body to be in a comfortable position, again, safety, safety, safety. Safety is key. You're in a golden space.

Brent:

Well said, well said. I have a second one for you. It's quite common too: meditation must be practiced in silence.

Tasha:

So there are silent meditations which are absolutely beneficial and I don't want to disregard that. However, life is messy. Life is noisy. So Zen Den, I have a storefront in here in Ontario, it's a storefront, meaning I hear traffic in the front. I hear people when they walk by. I have neighbours who I hear often, and I actually love that and invite that in because I want to provide an experience for people that's real and tangible. Everything that is happening in this moment is supposed to happen just as it's supposed to happen because it's happening. So how can we integrate it into our practice. So to answer your question, does it need to be in silence? I like silent meditations. They're beautiful and welcoming, however, it's not real. So I would encourage people to start to get comfortable with the idea of meditating in loud places. We need to learn that everything has to work together to really create an experience of life for ourselves that feels good in our truth and in our integrity,

Brent:

So a mix of silent in busy areas would be probably beneficial. I have another one for you. I've thought about this to myself: meditation is like hypnotism. So you know, some people will believe that maybe it's something like going into a whole different world or this outer body experience, which I'm sure it could be. But what are your thoughts on that? If that's somebody's concept of meditation.

Tasha:

I would say that is only one part of meditation. You know, again, there's so many different styles of meditation out there. Like yoga in practice has very different types of practices that will take you to those type of places. As a healer and someone who works with energy in quantum energy, and bio resonance, is going to give you a different experience in meditation as well. But what I will say is that it comes back to your why, like what's the intention? Really, truly. And you can have many different experiences if you want to, but you got to be open to it. So your attitude, what is your focused attention? What's going to get you there? Is it breath? Is it visualization? Is it a guided meditation? Is it singing bowls that it's going to help you get to that place? There's so many different practices and modalities that will get you there and a variety to choose from. And then your attitude is like, how do you want to approach it? How do you want to show up to it? So there's no real yes or no simple answer. Truthfully, it is really dependent on the person and what they want to experience. But having those higher consciousness meditations, they're beautiful. They're absolutely delightful because it allows you to work through your humanness with set self-compassion and acceptance, and be able to tap into new possibilities that you never thought of before.

Brent:

I find a lot of times, you know, I meditate to reduce stress and to help with my sleep as well. But when I go running I become so clear and I come up with ideas and such creativity that I feel what you're saying. Mainly when I go running, it's like active meditation for me. I will run just for that reason.

Tasha:

Yeah, because you're receiving new information that wasn't there before that you can choose to do something about it. It's where inspiration and motivation comes from. And so what I would recommend to anybody is like be open to trying a variety of different styles and find the one that works for you in that moment. It's not one size fits all, they all have the same end goal. So how you choose to get there is your choice.

Brent:

It's like exercise for me. Is there a meditation method you recommend more than another? And why? I think your 27 seconds is an amazing place to start, but what would you say about recommending a specific method?

Tasha:

I would suggest doing guided meditations. Guided meditations really help to get you out of your own thinking mind and be able to focus your attention on someone else. If you are someone who is creative, who is a visual learner, I would say do visual meditations. Allow yourself to be immersed in the elements, whether it be in a garden, if you're wanting to do that, like as humans, we have to see often before we can believe something, right? Yoga's also really, really good. You don't have to do hardcore like power yoga, but you know, there's so many different types of yoga out there: gentle yoga, yin yoga, deep flow. Yin yoga is a great one, but it allows you to move your body. So if you are a very physical person, it helps you to move the body, but also work with the mindset. So yeah, there's so many different options out there, but these are some great places to start.

Brent:

That's great. And I've never thought about the visual meditation. So Tasha, what have you observed in your practice and your experience on the benefits of meditation on longevity and aging?

Tasha:

Oh, such a great question. My experience personally, I would say is that when we have a practice of meditation, it allows our whole self, every cell of our body, our whole central nervous system to really start calming down. When we are in a state of homeostasis, it allows ourselves to sort of like almost reengage ourselves in going back in time versus ahead of time. And that's simply because we are rebuilding and regenerating new cells in the body and also helping to create more blood flow, more oxygen in the body. And that provides us creating a healthier self from the inside out. Now from the appearance of skin to our hair, to our nails, these are things that become sort of like byproducts of a continued practice of meditation because we're choosing to choose the intention of allowing ourselves to feel good. And when we feel good, we look great.

Brent:

That's great. Great point. And when you're shining, you're fighting off disease or at least decreasing the onset of some of these age-related diseases as well. So that's a really good reason to start meditating if you're not already. I want to ask you, for the audience, for our listeners today, are there two key things you would want our listeners to take away from today's discussion?

Tasha:

Yeah, the one thing I would say is meditation's for everybody, right? So it doesn't matter if you are religious or part of a certain creed, it's really important to know that it is for everyone and it doesn't need to be spiritual, it can just be a human experience where you learn to calm yourself, de-stress yourself. So it is for everybody. The second thing is just give it a try. Just try it. And if you have a teacher or someone who inspires you or someone that you look up to, talk to them about it. Ask questions about it. Find someone that you know that is going to make you feel safe in making that choice to choose meditation and mindfulness.

Brent:

Amazing. Amazing. So many golden nuggets here you've given us. There's some things I'm going to implement for sure. Tasha, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it and hopefully one day I'll be out there and I can come in for a session with you.

Tasha:

That would be great. Look forward to it.

Brent:

Well, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back after this message.

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Brent:

Welcome back to Beyond Age. My next guest is Lucie Hager. She's a registered social worker with a master's degree in clinical social work. She's also a therapist at the Mindfulness Clinic in Toronto. We'll be discussing whether meditation is the key to feeling youthful. Welcome, Lucie.

Lucie:

Thank you Brent. It's good to be here.

Brent:

Great to have you. Listen, I'm a big believer in meditation. I started years ago, you know, I did the whole start, stop, start, stop. But I found when I became very consistent with it and put it right into my routine that I noticed my focus was better, I was better, my stress was less. So I'm really excited to hear what you have to see. Let's first of all just get to know you a little bit more. You know, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this field.

Lucie:

Okay. Like you said, I'm a registered social worker. Prior to that I was a teacher, and in my work with students, I became very, very interested in social work and learning more about their lives outside of the classroom. And then in my own personal life, we all have things that happen in our lives and it sort of led me down this path. It's been pretty amazing. It's a pretty great path to be on.

Brent:

Great, great to hear. As a fitness expert, I believe fitness is medicine, and I know that the positive impacts on mental health and brain health are undeniable. And I know meditation of course has multiple benefits as well, and sometimes in the same way, maybe you can expand a little bit and tell us a little bit more how meditation can contribute to helping keep our brains younger?

Lucie:

Absolutely. And I'd like to start by saying there is a lot of research that's come out about this. I'm very, very fascinated in all the research that is coming out about the connection between aging and the brain and meditation. So as most of us know, the brain is an incredibly complex organ, and it's relatively recently that we've come to realize that the brain is in fact changeable. It's not fixed after childhood, which is what we used to think, and that our brains change and adapt every day through neuroplasticity, which is a fancy word of saying that our brains have an ability to create new neuro pathways and connections. So basically what you do with your mind can change the structure and function of your brain. Aging entails the loss of gray matter, and gray matter is the outermost layer of the brain and it has a high concentration of neuronal cell bodies.

Gray matter plays a significant role in how we function. It serves to process information in the brain, how we control our movements, retain our memories, regulate our motions, and studies of frequent and consistent meditators like Buddhist monks, for example, have shown us that they have more gray matter than other people of their same chronological age. It doesn't point to causation, right? We need to do more research, but the research is significant enough that we really want to know more about what is this about having more gray matter. And so the other piece in addition to the gray matter is in every single cell in our bodies at the center of the cells, we have chromosomes. And this is where our DNA is, the tip of those chromosomes. It's like a little cap like the end of your shoelace, that little plastic bit. And they're called telomeres and they protect our chromosomes, they protect our DNA. And we know that as we age, telomeres shorten and stress and anxiety can accelerate this shortening process.

There's an enzyme in our body called tase, and that enzyme impacts our telomeres and contributes to longevity. Meditators have longer telomeres and more tase, and that contributes to healthy cells and longevity. And the other piece is this chronic stress piece. And so we all know how chronic stress contributes to heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, strokes, anxiety and depression. Mindfulness practices and meditation has a profound effect on the stress response in our bodies. The activation in your amygdala actually decreases. And they've done other studies that shows that in, again, in consistent meditators, the size of the amygdala changes. I geek out on these studies because I just think it's so, so fascinating that we have the ability to change.

Brent:

Absolutely. And it's very positive to know that we have some control slowing down the aging process and slowing down the, you know, degradation of our cells and just having a healthier brain altogether for longer. So very exciting information for sure. Maybe you can expand a little bit more on some physical effects on the body that meditation based therapies could provide?

Lucie:

There's three specific hormones in our bodies. Okay. Anti-aging hormones that are impacted by meditation. One of them is melatonin. And most of us are familiar now with melatonin. It's that sleep hormone. It'll often people will take it as a supplement. But aside from being a sleep hormone, it's also an anti-aging agent, an immune regulator, an antidepressant, an antioxidant. And it helps to slow cell damage and keeps our energy levels up. And the studies have shown that meditation can increase melatonin by anywhere from 98 to 300%, depending on which study you look at. That feels pretty incredible. There's another hormone, Dehydroepiandrosterone, DHEA for short. It's a hormone that's produced by your adrenal gland and it reduces as we get older. It guards the body against disease, it increases your libido, it helps increase other hormones including testosterone and estrogen.

And low levels are associated with lower bone density. Some researchers call it the longevity molecule. And as we get older, our DHEA levels decrease year after year. And that opens us up to disease and accelerated aging. And they did a very, very interesting study on 240 men between 50 and 79. And the results were pretty interesting. And they basically found that the less DHEA you have, the fewer years you have left. Wow. And another study, another well-known longevity researcher discovered that meditation practitioners have over 40% more DHEA than everyone else. Wow. And then the last hormone I'd like to mention is cortisol. The stress hormone, and this is a hormone that we don't want to have too much of. High levels of cortisol over long periods of time will really wreak havoc on your brain and impact your memory, your muscle strength, your body's healing response. It can lead to high blood pressure, osteoporosis lowers your metabolism. And the studies have shown that meditation can reduce cortisol by over 40%.

Brent:

Wow. If we have tools to control our stress levels, I think that can make a huge impact. You know, not only on the hormones, but of course our overall health. There is some research based said, I believe UCLA, the article was titled "Meditators have Younger Brains". You know, they had a group of meditators, a group of non meditators, and they found that the people that meditated consistently on a regular basis had a life about 10 years longer than the non-meditators, you know, where they hit their mid fifties or so, which I find pretty amazing. And there's no reason why we should not meditate. Just knowing that information and what you've told us, perhaps you can share your experience in regards to meditation based therapy and how it can contribute to slowing the aging process itself?

Lucie:

Absolutely. So I think really in the immediate period of time, like when I'm working with a new client and they're going through a lot, it's really that stress response. So how can we find a way to help this person cope with that stress response and to cope with all the things that are going on in their lives. I talk about mindfulness and meditation and encourage them to sort of dive into that and look at how that can really have impact on their life.

Brent:

I would imagine there's probably a significant number that have not actually gone that direction or tried to add that tool to their toolkit. I know there are some therapies, like cognitive behavioural therapy, CBT solution focused brief therapy, how do these tie into meditation based therapies?

Lucie:

So CBT, cognitive behavioural therapy, they're sort of new waves of therapy. For instance, acceptance and commitment therapy is essentially combining the two. It's combining cognitive behaviour therapy with mindfulness and meditation. We definitely start there with clients. I do a combination of CBT with that mindfulness piece.

Brent:

Is the strategy, just curious, and I think maybe some of the listeners might be, is the strategy very similar for each person? And obviously customized for what they're going through, but is it more about giving them the tools to cope with what they're dealing with or helping them learn to be their own therapist, for example? Is that sort of the direction you would take?

Lucie:

Absolutely. And I love it when a client's really on board for looking into mindfulness and meditation and that they kind of dive into this and then they start to feel better pretty quickly. Cuz you're right, we want to be able to be our own therapists. We don't want to be in therapy forever. The goal of solution focus therapy is what's already working in that person's life. You know, what kind of shifts can be made so that they can really achieve some of their goals and start to feel better. And it's brief. I see a lot of similarities between clients in terms of how people think of their brains and their minds. And a lot of clients will come to me and in the first session they'll say something to me along the lines of, I have a really, really busy mind. It never stops thinking.

And I often have to say to them, we all feel that way. And we often all feel like we're the only ones that have this very, very busy mind that never stops thinking. But in fact, we all experience those constant thoughts and it's really what we do with those thoughts. And we don't have to believe everything our brains tell us. With cognitive behaviour therapy and with meditation and mindfulness, it becomes about sort of stepping back and starting to practice listening to those thoughts, starting to really label them as, okay, that's worry, that's sadness. And getting good at sort of labelling the emotions. And so that's one way that people are very similar. But then the way that people are different is that we all have sort of different go-to cognitive distortions. And cognitive distortions is just a fancy way of saying like unhelpful thinking styles.

And so for instance, some person might go to catastrophizing, so one small thing happens and suddenly, their whole world has come crashing down. Whereas some people don't tend to catastrophize, but what they'll do is they'll go to, you know, mind reading and they'll think that they know a lot of the negative things that people are thinking about them and saying about them when in fact they have no proof that any of these things are being thought or said. And so we work with people, helping them identify what are their particular go-to cognitive distortions and then what do you do about them, right? Like how do you get yourself back into that more grounded, neutral space? And that's where the meditation comes in. And so that's where I start at least.

Brent:

Oh, interesting. So I know we're getting close to the end of the time, but maybe for our listeners today, are there two key takeaways about the benefits of meditation on your mental health and wellness that you feel are most important?

Lucie:

Well, I think the two key pieces for me are really the long term benefits that we're seeing through all this research about the things I mentioned: the longer telomeres, the more gray matter, the better stress response. And I think that the short term benefits are so important. So really starting to get better at and be more comfortable with coming back into that present moment. Awareness. We're not continuously living our lives in the past or in the future. And that the life you're living is the life that's right here, right now. Cuz all we have is this present moment.

Brent:

It's so important. Like as long as you can make a commitment to work it into your schedule, you're going to see the result and you're probably going to spend more time doing it as well and benefit even further. Listen, thanks so much for your time. It's been so great to speak with you. Really appreciate your time.

Lucie:

Thank you so much, Brent. It was lovely to be here. I appreciate it, Brent.

Brent:

Well, that's it everyone. Thanks for tuning in to Beyond Age, an exclusive podcast from Manulife. Tune in to the next episode where we talk to Shirée Hanson Segerstrom, an interior designer and wellness expert from Sacramento, California about whether your home can help you live a healthier, longer life. Don't forget to visit our website, manulife.ca/LiveHealthier for more tips, videos, and content from Manulife to help you live healthier for longer, no matter your age.

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