Sol Celebrates National Meditation Month with Linny Curry

May is National Meditation Month. Here in the office, we are fortunate to have our very own yoga and meditation teacher (who also happens to be Adam’s mom!), Linny Curry. She comes every Thursday at noon to guide us in our practice. Linny grounds us, centers us and helps us be more present at work and in life. If you need some Linny in your life (because honestly, she’s the best) just reach out to her here. She has students all around the world and connects to many via phone.  

To celebrate Meditation Month, we want to share Linny’s wisdom with all of you, and give you a chance to experience a guided meditation.

Q: For those who may not know, what is meditation?

Meditation is commonly, daily, maybe hourly misrepresented. Most people who answer that question don’t really know what meditation is, so they just wing it and say whatever comes to them. The problem is that people remain really unclear about what meditation is, and they don’t want to do something if they don’t know what it is. Unless you can tell them clearly and simply what it is, they’re gonna run from it, and that’s why most people have run from meditation since the beginning of time.

So what I do is keep it really simple. People say, “Well, it’s like praying.” It’s nothing like prayer because prayer is asking. Meditation is receiving. It is the opposite of prayer. People will say, “I meditated on that thing that I want, that house that I want or that job that I want.” You’re not meditating if you’re thinking about the house you want or the job you want. Meditation is about quieting the mind.

Q: What are the benefits of meditation?

The benefits of meditation are that you remain more sane than most humans. You live more happily throughout your day. If you do it daily, you feel you’ve got a handle on your day, that you’ve got yourself intact, that you have connected to who you really are so you’re not by yourself, ever, even if you are in a room alone. You’ve got you. And you are healthier. You are wealthier. You are more successful in creating what you want instead of creating what you don’t want.

Q: When did you discover meditation?

At the age of 20, I found meditation. I had been a troubled teenager. I didn’t look like it because I’m a ham and a diva, but I was still troubled on the inside. I wanted an answer and nothing in religion or church ever satisfied me. Nothing ever made me feel better or complete. And so I started searching and there was nothing in Atlanta about meditation. There was no yoga either. So I started going to California and they knew all about meditation, of course. And they had special meditation conferences. They had yoga conferences. They had self-exploration kinds of conferences that included meditation. When you find meditation, you learn to be in the receptive mode and you can receive who you are. Meditation literally changed my life forever at 20. As did yoga.

Q: As a yoga and meditation teacher, have you seen meditation affect and transform others?

For the most part, every single time someone takes meditation or yoga or both from me, I watch a transformation take place. If they’re sincere, if they’re not doing it for someone else–because if you’re doing it for someone else, it’s never effective–but for those who do it for themselves, I see a transformation. Especially the littlest ones. Even children Georgie’s age [Mary’s 7-year-old son]. He’ll say, “I’m meditating, Linny. I’m meditating, Linny. I’m meditating. I’m done.” And he is doing it. That’s how quick children are. They have not forgotten how to meditate.

Q: Do you have a favorite place that you like to meditate?

Yes, I do it the moment I wake up. I just sit right up in the bed where I am with my dog and my cat and I meditate. I turn on my iPad Air with nature sounds or something else I like, but you can pick really anything you want. Anything that can keep your attention. Sometimes it’s waves of the ocean. Sometimes, it’s the river stream. Sometimes, it’s an oscillating fan. It depends on what personally takes you deeply into the stillness and silence.

I am a very firm believer in meditating the moment you wake up. You have a very small window of time where your mind hasn’t gotten control of you yet. You’re still in pure positive energy–where you go when you sleep–and you’ve got a little time before your mind starts saying, “Blah, blah, blah.” And in that time, if you meditate then, that’s when you’ve got a handle on your day. If you wait until later, it’s too late for it to be easy. You might be able to meditate later in the day but it’s more difficult unless you’re in a group like we have here [at Sol]. We meditate well here because we’ve got a whole group with the same purpose.

I also have a yoga studio in my home where I meditate if it’s a different time of day, but I want to get ahead of my mind first thing in the morning, right there in my bed. So you sit up, turn on whatever you want for sound, and begin to focus on that sound.

Q: How do you meditate?

This is the most effective way to meditate. First, begin to breathe deeply from your belly to your rib cage, expanding your intercostal muscles all the way up to your chest and your sternum. Bring your shoulder blades slightly down and back so your spine is straight. Imagine lifting the crown of your head up toward the heavens and the sit bone in your body down toward the earth, so you’re pretty much the conduit between heaven and earth–which is also what meditation is. When you breathe deeply in that way it is called a Dirga breath in yoga.

After you’ve started your derga breath, then you add the Ujjayi sound. Ujjayi sounds like the ocean. You open up your throat, right at the back, and allow the air to flow through your throat, but you’re still breathing in through the nose and out through the nose. Then, at some point you will take a breath in, and this time breathe out through the mouth to let go of everything that happened before meditation time. And then you will take another deep breath in, and breathe out through the mouth to let go of everything that’s going to happen after your meditation practice.

And then you even let go of the derga breath and the yogi’s breath to focus all your attention on the sound you’ve chosen.

Meditation is not hard at all, but it does take focus. What you’re going to be focusing on is whatever sound you’ve picked for that day. It might be the same one for your whole life. Some people have certain “mantras” that they’ll use but I like nature sounds. Find what you like, put all your attention on it, and then go back to your normal breathing pattern. Go into the stillness and the silence that is always within you. It never goes anywhere, ever. It never takes a break. It never goes to lunch. When you go into the stillness you naturally quiet the mind. When you quiet the mind you release resistance. When you release resistance you allow yourself to move into the Receptive Mode.

After our conversation, Linny led us in a short guided meditation that we are honored to share with all of you!  Listen to the audio below to bring some peace to your day, the way we get to experience peace and rejuvenation with Linny every Thursday at Sol.

Namaste.