On Failed Meditation

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1:56Now, it's sometimes claimed that meditation can fix just about anything. If you speak to any advocate on the topic, they'll claim it reduces your anxiety, it makes you healthier, it might even result in you earning more and mean your relationships are more successful. Now, it's a very popular thing, meditation, but I know personally it's notoriously hard to keep up. I have tried and I have failed. And so has broadcasting legend Kirsty Young, who admits she feels she's really bad at meditation, but it doesn't stop her having a go at it every day, even if it's just for a few minutes. At the other end of the spectrum, we have the historian and writer Yuval Noah Harari, who claims he still fails at meditation, despite being able to do it for two hours every day.

2:44But he makes the valid point that in meditation, you constantly fail, but that that's actually a good thing. I hope that these two brilliant minds inspire you to meditate as much as they did me. First up, it's Kirsty Young.

3:02Final failure is your failure to meditate. I try every day. I remember when I was first sort of suggested that yoga might be a good thing to do along with a huge amount of medication to try yoga to help to calm down my cortisol, my nervous system, and all the things that don't help rheumatological complaints, which I have. And I found a yoga therapist, and I was talking to her, the incredible Jane, who's now part of my life, and I've been with her for five years, and practicing yoga, which I'm obviously incredibly average at, and part of it is meditation. and there was a wonderful moment when Jane said to me, well, everybody finds it hard.

3:48Nobody can really do it. She said, the only people who can really do it are the yogis at the foot of the Himalayas who spend seven hours a day, and it's their life's devotion is to do this. And for the rest of us, it's a daily practice to try and get us to come back to it. And as soon as she gave me that wonderful golden key, I thought, we'll just keep trying. So every day I try, and sometimes it's a little bit successful. Sometimes it's a total washout. I'm always glad I've had a go at it. Sometimes, rarely, it's a magical thing. And it's also made me, I think, probably a wee bit of a nicer person and better.

4:27But I understand that failure is part of it. It's the practice is the thing. It's like, I don't know, I mean, I'm never going to be a runner, ever. But is it being in it? Is it simply doing it? And I think it is that with, and now I'm fine with the fact that I'm really bad at meditation, but it doesn't stop me having a crack at it. And when I do it each day, I don't do it every day, but I try. I really try to have a few minutes depending on the amount of time I've got my day. Could be five minutes, could be 25 minutes. It just depends. And I'm bad at it. And that's fine because that's sort of the deal.

5:05And I think especially for a high achieving former good girl, as you have described yourself, it is really a learning to sit in mediocrity. Totally. Because you don't get that anywhere else in your life, potentially. Yeah. Well, you're a very high achiever, though. I mean, you've... Oh, thank you. Can I quote that as well? Yes. But aren't you? I mean, like your education, everything. You've sort of done... I mean, I'm not one of those people. Relentless quest to be loved. Yeah. Is it that? Probably. Yes. Yes. But I also fail to meditate every day. Do you? Yeah, and it's a relatively recent thing, but people keep telling you to do it.

5:41And you're like, okay, I understand I should try this. So I try every morning for 10 minutes now. Yeah. And do you feel a bit better for even trying? I actually do. Yeah. Yes. I always do. I think what it helps me with... And also you can do it anywhere. So the whole kind of nonsense about you could be sitting your legs across. Cobblers. You can do it. I've done it in a makeup chair before I've gone on air in front of 20 million people. You can do it anywhere. Was that before Queen Elizabeth II's funeral? No, that was before the Platinum Jubilee and I hadn't been on air for four years. I hadn't done anything.

6:16So the BBC asked me to anchor and it was three days of coverage. It was a very big deal, obviously, Platinum Jubilee, very big deal. The BBC for television this was. And I said to my husband, I said, it's like, I haven't even done the school run in a Fiat Punto for four years. And somebody said, you want to go around Brands Hatch and a McLaren? And I've said, I'm the woman for the job. So I needed to just remind myself. And I, yeah, so when I was in the makeup chair, I just did a little bit of, just shot myself down and did that. And it was very helpful. You mentioned that you hadn't worked for a while.

6:51Yes. And you mentioned that this meditation is linked to your health stuff. Yeah. And I wonder if I can just ask how you're doing. How are you? Yeah, I'm doing fine. I have, so I have rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia. and those are things that don't go away. So they're sort of things that you have. I mean, so many people have got immune conditions and I'm one of those people. And I think the thing is, well, I'm very fortunate because I was able to completely reshape my life to make sure that I could take time out to take care of myself, to find the right medication, to find the right lifestyle to just to support my wellness.

7:35And so I did that and I'm very fortunate. So that's so lucky me. It has at times been very difficult and painful and excruciating and frustrating and all those things. And right now I'm pretty good. I mean, it has little flares and I have to be mindful of that's the sort of pain stuff. But I do things that are important to keep me on an even keel. And the thing is with sort of immunosuppressed or rheumatological complaints, kind of if you do the same thing all the time, it's good for your body. So if you stick to very, so sometimes that's compatible with work and not compatible. And sometimes you can't control the stress factors in your life and all that.

8:11So, and it can flare up, but generally I would say I'm pretty good and sometimes less good. And that's also fine. There are so many other parts of your life that open up if you allow it to, and so many different, and I live very differently and have a very different attitude and definitely made friends with what I would have perceived previously, I think, as failure. That's a failure of my body to do. Well, it's not. You're just human and something's happened. Find a way, not around it, but with it. Find a way with it. It's my sort of view of it in my head and my practical view of it.

8:54Okay, your final failure, meditation. Now you say it's a failure, but you meditate for two hours a day. Yes. One hour in the morning and one hour in the evening. Usually, yes. So why do you categorize it as a failure? Again, it's not exactly a failure, but in meditation you constantly fail. But this is a good thing. This is part of the meditation. The meditation often is a process of observing your failure and coming to terms with it. because, you know, like the most basic, at least in the type of meditation that I practice, Vipassana, which I've learned here in the UK when I was doing my PhD in Oxford.

9:32So I went to a center near Hereford and learned from a teacher called S. N. Goenka, Vipassana meditation. And the first and most basic instruction sounds incredibly easy. You just focus your entire attention on your own breath around the nostrils and around the nose. you just feel when the breath is coming in and when it's going out. That's it. You don't need to control the breath. It's not a breathing exercise. You just need to observe, to feel, is it coming in or is it going out? That's it. And the amazing thing is, it's so difficult. Like you do it for five seconds, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, and then your mind wanders away.

10:14Some memory comes, some thought comes, some fantasy comes, and you start rolling in the memory for like five minutes before you remember, hey, I'm actually supposed to be feeling my breath. And you come back to it and you do it for 30 seconds. And then again, it runs away. And when I went to my first course, this was such a shock that, again, I have no control over my mind. I don't know what's happening there. Like I thought I was a very intelligent person. and by then I was also out as a gay man and I thought, okay, I know my deep secrets now. And here I am sitting with closed eyes trying to do this simple thing of just feeling the breath coming in and out.

11:01I can't do it for more than like 20 seconds. What's happening? And it's been like 24 years since then. I've been practicing two hours every day. Every year I go to a long retreat of 30 days or 60 days of meditation. And still, I do it for a few minutes and the mind wanders somewhere. So it's a failure in this sense. But this is how I get to know my mind. And this is how I get to know reality. This is the inner reality of what's happening in my mind. and noticing this and also noticing where the mind wanders away and what happens to the body and to the mind when a particular thought comes up. This is a process of getting to know yourself, not by reading books about psychology or about biology or whatever.

11:55You're actually in a laboratory observing yourself second by second. and really there is nothing like that in the world. It's so interesting to hear you describe it as a laboratory where you're observing your mind because a lot of people would describe it as a spiritual practice. I'm a scientist. I know. So are you uneasy with the idea that it's a spiritual practice? I don't think there is any contradiction between these two. I mean, for me, spirituality is about big questions. What is the meaning of life? Who am I? and the willingness to follow these questions wherever they lead you. And this stands in contrast, I think, to established religions, which require you to believe in a certain dogma.

12:41So the answer is at the center, not the question. Whereas science is, in this sense, much more spiritual. Science also is about raising these big questions and following them, of course, with different tools. Like scientists also, one of the biggest questions in science is what is consciousness? How does electrical activity between billions of neurons, how does this create the sensation of pain? We have no idea. But we investigate. So in the scientific laboratory, we investigate it with tools like microscopes. In meditation, we investigate the same question, basically. What is pain? Where is it coming from?

13:24but by directly observing the pain, not with the help of any microscope, but just feeling the pain. God, that's so well explained. My final question, it's a slightly odd one, but I'm interested, so that's why I'm going to ask it. Okay. Odd questions are the best. Good. So if someone were to ask you, where do you want to go for dinner tonight? Or what hotel would you like to stay in? Or what time would you like to fly? Or what do you want to wear today? Do you answer from your feeling or your intellect? I often let my husband decide. So interesting. Do you think you're a people pleaser? In some ways, yes.

14:04But in other ways, completely not. I mean, I please them in the areas which are less important to me. Why fight about it? Let them do what they want. But when something is really important, then no. Again, like with these meditation retreats, I disappear. every year for like 30 days or 60 days. If you ask my husband or my mother or the people in my company about it, I'm not sure they're happy about it, but it's just like, deal with it. I imagine it's also because your intellect is so overworked a lot of the time and you're constantly having to make decisions about what to write and what to think.

14:41So sometimes if someone asks you where to go for dinner, you're like, I don't just, that's just too much. Yes, absolutely. But if I forced you and if I said, OK, you're in London tonight and you can eat one kind of cuisine, does that response come from feeling or thought? I think from feeling, but I would probably pick a place I've already been to. I'll go for the safe choice. Ever the scientist. But as we now know, that's also being a bit spiritual. Follow the questions. I want that on a T-shirt. But Yuval, it has been such an illuminating and invigorating conversation. I cannot thank you enough for the work that you do and for giving up your valuable time to be here today.

15:23Thank you so, so much. Thank you.

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