Giveaways, not Takeaways: Learnings from 939 Meditation Sessions

Meditation is not about takeaways, it is about transformation. And transformation is more accessible than you think.

Sometime in mid-2019, while shuttling between cities, hospitals, blood banks and the ICU, my meditation practice restarted with occasional, irregular bursts. My dad was critically ill and I would spend a lot of time in hospitals, the ICU waiting areas - teeming with tense, worried, tired faces. I would close my eyes, focus on the breath but the sounds and waves of worries would distract and often irritate me. My dad, the fighter, managed to pull through. And then the pandemic struck.

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

The early pandemic years were intense and I was part of a voluntary response team, working closely with the Government: the Prime Minister’s Office and other central agencies. The work hours were gruelling, with phone calls or meetings anytime of the night. Just before the start of my dad’s illness and multiple hospitalisations, we had moved to our new apartment and were just about settling in.

One of the welcome distractions during the lockdown were the weekly drinking sessions with a small band of warm, friendly neighbours. A tiny band of passengers on a ship stranded in the middle of nowhere. Weekly sessions became twice-a-week and then frequent. It was an escape for all of us—and something that I really began to look forward to.

My partner Esha, found her refuge in Old Path White Clouds, a retelling of the life of Buddha by the venerated monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Our conversations over the book brought back all that I had journeyed through—including a 5000+ miles of travelling rough through India’s spiritual landscape, in my earlier years, following my graduation from design school. It was the path that the Shakyamuni Buddha would have transversed over the course of decades, nearly 2600 years ago.

The book, and those conversations, became the turning point. Once again, I was back on the old path.

Takeaways from the Vipassana Retreat not taken

I have not been to a Vipassana retreat, so I never had the chance to write about my top 10 or top 5 takeaways via a blogpost or a twitter thread. I would come across these often though. But I did observe a very common phenomenon for many of those who did attend such retreats—it was usually after the initial experience, most often euphoric, that people fell back on their old ways. The enthusiasm of sitting for a 30-minute or 60-minute session would dwindle to zero. There was no sustained practice after the spike of a week or the 10 days of retreat.

Daily active usage

DAUs (or daily active users) is a key success metric of the digital products that my team and I happen to design. And ‘active usage’ was my goal—with or without the apps. Just that the apps made it a little easier.

For me, personally, the quest was an ideal of 30 mins of practice - even if it was broken into 2 or 3 sessions. It could even be as short as 5 minutes. Everyday consistency —daily active usage was the key. I used a few YouTube videos of timers (they had a bell every 1 or 2 minutes) and a gentle music, a chant, or no music, in the background. The bells would help bring the wandering mind back to the breath.

I wrote to a few YouTubers asking if they could create specific ones of longer durations and customisations. There are a lot of guided meditation apps out there, but I didn’t want too much of the commentary (found it distracting initially).

Of these, in the early days, I found Balance App helpful. And I stumbled upon Insight Timer, which was superb at customising timers (with its 8 polyphonic bells, no less). Besides, there were tons of guided meditations too. I would do multiple sessions in a day, often as short as 5 mins, until I could find it easy enough to sit through 30 mins and eventually stretch it to 45 minutes.

Mixing maths and meditation

Currently, the only stats I check daily on the InsightTimer App is the ‘streak’ of meditation days—the longest unbroken chain is 61 days continuously. But a few months ago, I dug deeper and realised I had gone past 700 sessions. Today, as I write, I am at 939. But, that excludes longer sessions without the apps or the ones with my other favourite WakingUp app.

Esha and I have been sharing the first morning session, with an almost 90% consistency, although, she mostly prefers the guided ones while I go with the unguided.

All of the stats in service of a singular goal → making meditation a daily habit.

Giveaways, not takeaways

Social media is full of takeaways (threads, posts, videos, podcasts and listicles) from meditation, mindfulness exercises and breathing ‘systems’. However it is not just the takeaways, but what you also give away, wilfully and consciously, and how you let go—that is at the heart of the actual transformation. 

It is this transformation that affects your work life as much as your relationships with your loved ones, your colleagues, neighbours and those things that matter the most in the world around you.

“Letting go is not the same as giving up.” The Buddha

Giving away is not giving up. Giving away or letting go, is wilful. Not forced, not with your back against the wall. It’s a decision you arrive at, after a thoughtful consideration and reflection.

Awareness, before giving away

You cannot let go of, or give away, the things that you are not even aware of. These aren’t exactly that unused book shelf or that ukulele, sitting abandoned in some corner of your house, awaiting their turn to be sold off or given away.

Meditation teachers often evoke the metaphor of thoughts as waves of the ocean. They are large, they are powerful and we can get deeply immersed in them. However, in order to enhance our awareness, we must learn to pull back, or zoom out, so we may be able to see the patterns and make sense of them. That is how awareness happens.

Photo by Matt Hardy on Unsplash

Meditation opens up the space to zoom out—little by little. With every session, everyday, you chip away, and learn to look at and look beyond the chatter in your mind. You begin to realise that you are neither just your thoughts, nor just the endless waves in which you soak, play, drown and swim, but you’re also a watcher of your thoughts. It’s about recognising the patterns, “without getting lost in the VR of your thoughts,” as the meditation teacher and author, Tara Brach says.

My ‘giveaways’?

There are many, and there are lessons in each of these. But that calls for separate letters addressed to you in the coming weeks.

For now, I have just one thing to share. I am happy to say that I have given away my membership of those weekly drinking sessions. My attendance has come to a nought over the past 70 weeks, although I do meet folks over conversations. The drinking though, I rarely indulge in, now—often, based on choice, not compulsion. It is more of an awareness that is self-regulated and wilfully letting-go of another crutch that we think we cannot do without. And it feels just fine.

Getting started with your 3 min sessions

If you think meditation is hard, or if you’ve struggled with it in the past, here’s a simple exercise for you. Just commit to 3 minutes daily.

5 things to remind yourself before you start:

1. Consistency is key, small sessions but consistent.

2. There is no such thing as “a good meditation session.”

3. You can’t suppress thoughts, that’s not the aim.

4. Focus on watching your thoughts arise like waves, and pass away.

5. Using an object of attention, like your breath, you learn to build focus and zoom out. In short, you become the observer. Breath too arises and passes away like waves.

Your 3 minute session

This is a quick way to get started and make meditation a part of your work day and every day, without absolutely any elaborate prep. It also works wonderfully in the world of online meets…

• Before the start of any meeting or the end of one, or when there’s some buffer time between meetings, give yourself a 3-minute break. You can use a timer (like the ones from the InsightTimer) or just set a reminder!

• Sit upright and comfortably in your chair and dismiss all open windows.

• Close your eyes, do a quick scan and check if your facial muscles, shoulders, back, neck, jaw or the space around your eyes are tense. If they are, even a tiny bit, simply release and relax.

• Focus on your breath—entering and exiting and the points along which you feel them in your body. Within seconds, a thought will come crashing and distract you. Don’t shoo it away. Simply acknowledge and shift your focus back to the breath.

• Keep repeating this dance of attention for 3 mins. Keep building your meditation and mindfulness muscle. Breath by breath. More on that to follow soon.

You can also try this exercise while on public transport, on a park bench, at lunch or just after waking up, but obviously, never when driving or whilst engaged in activities that require focus and attention.

Doing this at different times of the day, before or after meetings also allows you to examine the state of your mind and the sea of thoughts at different times. Calm? Rough? Choppy? Stormy? See if you can start to spot the patterns there.

Please share your experience of getting started, or re-started and keeping it going, consistently.

Stay curious, stay consistent…