As I’ve mentioned, I meditate pretty regularly as part of my daily routine. My habit is to do it for 20 minutes in the morning, first thing, and 20 minutes in the afternoon usually a couple hours before dinner. I’ve dabbled with meditation for years and years and have tried lots of different modalities — Zen, vipassana, body scanning, having no head (check this out, it’s pretty cool), you name it. I took a class to learn Transcendental Meditation (TM) a while ago, and the habit of meditating with that method really stuck with me. One of the reasons I searched it out is that I kept stumbling across references to TM. Podcasts, interviews, videos… for years I’d hear little remarks and notes about it. Rick Rubin does it. David Lynch. The Beatles. Oprah. Hugh Jackman. Mick Jagger. Brian Koppelman. Ray Dalio. Ellen DeGeneres. Clint Eastwood. Jerry Seinfeld. The list goes on and on. I’m only naming famous people here because, well, they’re famous. Lots of other people practice TM as well, millions of them in fact. Because it’s so wide-spread, it’s also very well studied, and being a man of SCIENCE, I love to read some studies. Go ahead and Google it. I won’t waste your time listing study after study, but it’s pretty amazing. Okay, one study — even the U.S. military thinks it’s super useful.
For some reason, though, Jerry Seinfeld’s interview on the Tim Ferris podcast flipped the last switch for me to write the check to learn this method. Maybe because Seinfeld is so clearly a sceptic and also so clearly an incredibly creative and successful guy. I went to the web in search of more Seinfeld On TM and discovered a treasure trove. One particular line that struck me:
“You’ll feel better sleeping four and half hours and doing that 20 (minutes of TM) because that’s deeper than anything you’re getting. Look at your bed when you get out of it. [this morning’s image above] What does it look like? It looks like a war went on in there! That’s not restful. All you did was stop. You took the fight from your day into the bed. But you’re fighting all day, you’re fighting all night — you need a break, folks. That’s what TM is.”
I have to say that this is completely true. Now, I prefer to sleep at least seven hours and try to hit that number regularly. Four and a half would be a strain on the system. But adding the 20 minutes of TM in the morning makes more difference than you’d believe. If you don’t trust me, ask Seinfeld.