You Don't Even Have to Do It Well

Mary Karr talking about the benefits of meditation with Dan Harris on the 10% Happier podcast (Feb. 1, 2017): 

"There’s a great Christian meditation practitioner named Thomas Keating. He also talks a lot about Buddhism and he’s very ecumenical kind of guy.

He’s a Cistercian, you know, one of those “don’t talk” dudes – monks. He talks about how even when you don’t realize you’re being healed by centering prayer, that you are.

He describes it like sediment [settling in water]. That just sitting there, you might not have that clearness at all.

I just urge you to try meditation because they know that your mood’s better, your immune system’s better, your stress level is better, your blood pressure’s lower. You’re smarter, faster, funnier if you meditate.

So whether you believe God is healing you or you believe your big, smart mind is just being cleared out of its fear – you think of it in psychological terms – it’s two different models, but it’s the same.

A friend of mine who runs the internship program for shrinks at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center sent me a double-blind study maybe three or four years ago about how tens of thousands of people over many, many years showed that meditation was as useful as medication in relieving symptoms of stress and depression.

I mean, it works. All you have to do is do it. You don’t even have to do it well – or right."