Sophia: I have a confession. I've tried to meditate at least a dozen times. I've downloaded the apps, sat on the cushions, and every single time, my brain just produces a shopping list, replays an awkward conversation from 2008, and then wonders if I left the stove on. I'm a meditation failure. Laura: And what if I told you that the reason you failed is because you were trying to succeed? Sophia: What? That makes no sense. That’s like saying the reason I can’t run a marathon is because I’m trying to cross the finish line. Laura: It sounds crazy, but that's the exact problem that Light Watkins tackles in his book, Bliss More: How to Succeed in Meditation Without Really Trying. What's so compelling about Watkins is that he's now a world-renowned teacher, but he started out as a total meditation imposter. He was literally leading guided meditations as a yoga teacher while secretly thinking the whole thing was spiritual torture. Sophia: Okay, I already love this guy. He gets it. He’s one of us. Laura: He’s one of us! And his whole argument is that the cultural image of meditation—this disciplined, rigid, mind-clearing exercise—is precisely what sets us all up for failure.

Sophia: What do you mean, 'trying to succeed' is the problem? Isn't that the whole point? To get to that zen, blissed-out state with a perfectly quiet mind? Laura: That's the myth! Watkins shares this hilarious story about his seven-year-old niece. He asks her to show him how to meditate, and she immediately sits up ramrod straight, crosses her legs, pokes her chest out, and starts chanting "Ommmm, ommmm," while giggling. Sophia: Oh, I love that. That’s the movie version of meditation. That’s what we all think it is. Laura: Exactly. It's a caricature. We think we have to force ourselves into this perfect posture and force our minds to be silent. But our brains don't work that way. Watkins brings up this fascinating psychological concept called the 'Polar Bear Effect.' Sophia: The Polar Bear Effect? What on earth is that? Laura: It comes from a famous experiment. If I tell you, "For the next minute, do not think about a polar bear," what's the only thing you're going to think about? Sophia: A polar bear. A very large, very white polar bear, probably on a block of ice. Yep, there he is. Laura: The act of trying to suppress a thought makes it more powerful. And that's what we do in meditation. We sit down and tell ourselves, "Don't think about your to-do list. Don't think about that email." And in doing so, we've just guaranteed a meditation session filled with to-do lists and emails. Sophia: Wow. That is my exact experience. The harder I try to push thoughts away, the more they scream for attention. Laura: Watkins lived this. He tells this story from his early days in New York. He was desperate to find the 'bliss' everyone talked about, so he joined a meditation class at the historic Riverside Church. The facilitator, Martha, would play this New Age music made by her deceased meditation master—who was apparently an enlightened ex-snowboarder. Sophia: An enlightened ex-snowboarder. Of course. The wellness world is never boring. Laura: Never. So, the instruction was to sit upright, close your eyes, and focus on the music and bodily sensations. But Watkins felt nothing. Just boredom, an aching back, and frustration. Meanwhile, other people in the class were reporting these incredible experiences—feeling energy moving through them, having celestial epiphanies. Sophia: Oh, I know that feeling! It's like you're the only one in the room who didn't get the secret memo. You start to wonder if you're just broken. Laura: Completely. He felt like a total outsider. And it got worse. A few years later, he became a yoga teacher and started leading guided meditations himself, despite having no real personal practice. He called it the "Emperor's New Clothes of Meditation." He’d be up there, softly telling people to visualize waterfalls and white light, all while thinking, "Is everyone just pretending? Are we all just faking being blissed out?" Sophia: That is so honest. And it raises a huge question. If he felt that way, and I feel that way, and probably thousands of our listeners feel that way... was everyone in that room just faking it? Laura: He wonders that too. His conclusion is that maybe some people were, but the bigger issue is that the instructions themselves were setting them up for a battle with their own minds. The very act of trying to focus, trying to feel something special, created more mental noise and a sense of failure when it didn't happen.

Sophia: Okay, so if fighting our thoughts is a trap, what are we supposed to do? Just let the shopping list run wild? Because that just sounds like my normal state of being, not meditation. Laura: This is where the book's genius comes in. He proposes a radically simple approach he calls the E.A.S.Y. method. It's an acronym for Embrace, Accept, Surrender, and Yield. Sophia: Embrace, Accept, Surrender, Yield. That sounds... well, easy. What does it actually mean in practice? Laura: It means you stop fighting. You sit down, comfortably—and he stresses this, you should be as comfortable as you are when you're binge-watching your favorite show, back supported and everything. And you just allow whatever happens to happen. If a thought comes, you embrace it. If you hear a car alarm, you accept it. If you feel an itch, you surrender to it and scratch it. You yield to the entire experience without judgment. Sophia: Wait, you can scratch an itch? I thought that was illegal in meditation. I thought you were supposed to stoically observe the itch until it becomes one with the universe. Laura: That's the monk stereotype he wants to dismantle! He says that kind of rigidity creates physical tension, which creates mental tension. The goal is to do less to accomplish more. And here's the biggest mind-shift: the true value of meditation is not what happens during the twenty minutes you're sitting, but how it changes how you show up in your life afterward. Sophia: That’s a huge distinction. But how does just sitting there and letting my thoughts roam lead to... change? How does it make me less reactive when my boss sends a passive-aggressive email? Laura: Because you're training your nervous system to de-excite. He shares this incredible story about a twelve-year-old boy named Johnny who had severe ADHD. His mother brought him to a meditation training as a last resort. During the first session, Johnny couldn't sit still. He was physically jolting and jumping in his chair. Sophia: Oh man, that sounds stressful for everyone. Laura: You'd think. But the teacher gave him this radical piece of advice. He told him, "Don't fight it. In fact, I want you to treat the jolting as perfect practice. If you're not jumping around, you're not doing it right." He gave Johnny permission to fully embrace his restlessness. Sophia: Wow. What happened? Laura: Johnny went home and practiced that way. He let himself jolt and move. By the final group session, he came back and sat for the entire meditation without moving a single inch. His mother was in tears. By stopping the resistance, by embracing the chaos, his body released the pent-up stress and found stillness on its own. He didn't conquer his ADHD; he surrendered to it, and in doing so, he found peace. Sophia: That gives me chills. That completely reframes the goal. The goal isn't stillness; the goal is surrender. Laura: Exactly. And that surrender builds a kind of real-world armor. There's another story about an artist in her sixties named Jennifer. She was a consistent meditator. One day, she's walking to her sculpture class, carrying heavy supplies, and this biker comes racing down the sidewalk and yells at her, "Out of my way, you fat bitch!" Sophia: Oh, that's horrible. I would have been replaying that in my head for a week, at least. Laura: That's what she expected, too. But she describes this moment of surprise. She was shocked by the comment, but she noticed that her body didn't have that usual fight-or-flight surge of adrenaline and anger. She just... observed it. She was able to process it calmly and even found a positive spin, thinking of it as a weird wake-up call to stay healthy. Her meditation practice had made her adaptable. She didn't control the world, but she could control her reaction to it. Sophia: That’s the superpower, isn't it? It’s not about having a blank mind on a cushion. It’s about not letting a random jerk on a bike ruin your day. Laura: That's the entire point of the book. The bliss isn't some mystical state you achieve in silence. The bliss is the resilience you carry with you into the messy, unpredictable, and sometimes rude, real world. He argues that a busy, rocky, or even uncomfortable meditation is often a sign of progress. It's your body purging old, stored-up stress.

Sophia: It feels like the whole premise is giving yourself permission to be imperfect, which is the opposite of what most self-help teaches. Laura: It is. The struggle we feel in meditation isn't a sign of personal failure. It's the friction of a lifetime of "doing more" and "trying harder" hitting a practice that requires the exact opposite: "doing less." We've been conditioned to believe that effort equals results, but in the inner world, effort creates resistance. Sophia: So the real "bliss" isn't a feeling, it's a skill. The skill of adaptability. Laura: Precisely. The true measure of a "good" meditation isn't a quiet mind, but a resilient life. It's noticing that you didn't snap at your partner, that you slept a little better, that you handled a stressful meeting with a bit more grace. That's the data that matters. Sophia: You know, that makes me think of his redefinition of good and bad meditation. He says the only bad meditation is the one you skip. Laura: That's it. That one sentence is so liberating. Every time you sit, you're moving the needle forward, even if it feels like you're wrestling a polar bear the whole time. Sophia: I feel like I can actually do this now. The pressure is off. Laura: And that's the perfect place to start. If there's one takeaway for our listeners, it's this: next time you think about meditating, forget the rules. Just find a comfortable chair with back support—like you're about to binge-watch a show—set a timer for ten or fifteen minutes, close your eyes, and just be. Let the thoughts come. Let the itches happen. Just allow. Sophia: I love that. And I'm genuinely curious to hear from our listeners about their own meditation struggles and successes. Does this change how you think about the practice? Share your stories with the Aibrary community. It feels like we could all use a little group therapy on this one. Laura: Absolutely. The world doesn't necessarily need more perfect meditators. It just needs more people who are a little bit easier on themselves. Sophia: And on each other. Laura: This is Aibrary, signing off.