Hey there {{ first_name }}, 

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There’s one habit in my life that I attribute as the source for so much of my growth, transformation, and the things I’ve built. I’ve been wanting to write more about it, but wasn’t sure exactly how without coming across as too ‘woo-woo’. But here goes my first real crack at it, in this Letter – would love to hear if any of this resonated.

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tl;dr – I didn’t realise how much meditation was changing my life until I stopped doing it.

After giving birth to our baby girl, I totally fell off my daily meditation practice. If you’re also a mum, you might be able to relate to the relentless chaos of those early postpartum months – any semblance of old routines from your past life upended, and replaced with the baby’s clock (which is primarily communicated with zero advance notice in the form of wailing and screeching from said baby).

And through falling off my meditation habit, it became clear that my daily meditation practice is a keystone habit. A keystone habit is one habit that makes every other thing in your life just work better. If I spend just 10 minutes in the morning on the cushion, my day is experienced differently. It clarifies the lens of my awareness. It creates spaciousness and perspective. It reminds me of our interconnectedness and opens my heart.

But if I don’t meditate, then the day progresses as a blur. I don’t really taste my food, or notice the simple beauty of a small flower in the pavement, or remember that my thoughts are not truth, and my thoughts are not ‘me’.

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My meditation journey actually started with yoga around a decade ago, via a Yoga with Adriene YouTube video. Towards the end of following my first yoga video class with her, after 15 minutes of breathing and moving through cat-cows and downward facing dogs and finding what felt good, she cued me to bend my arms into ‘chaturanga’ pose, similar to a half push-up position, and whisper to myself – “I am strong”. Fat teardrops started falling directly from my eyes onto the mat below my face as I blinked. I watched the pretty splash patterns rippling out from each droplet as they landed. And I felt a mental relief, a compassion I’d never experienced before.

I thought I was signing up for a gentle form of exercise, but I soon discovered yoga is much more than ‘just exercise’. Yoga is a deep spiritual practice, and the ‘asana’ (aka the physical poses) comprise just one of eight ‘limbs’ of a yoga practice. And the other limbs of yoga don’t involve any of the usual poses that most people in the West would recognise. It seems that in the West, the asana have often ended up highlighted as the most important (or only) part, when in reality, in classical yoga, asana were a way to help prepare the body and mind for deep meditation and insight.

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Once I discovered that – oh, meditation and mindfulness is a thing! – I started using meditation apps like Headspace in 2018, and I developed a daily streak of several hundred days. I felt calmer and more relaxed with my daily mindfulness meditation. But I started to notice a developing feeling that there was something deeper here that I wanted to explore.

I came across the Waking Up app in 2020. I started with the Introductory Course, meditating for 10-20 minutes daily and devouring Sam Harris’ Theory sessions which opened up my mind. And here I finally began to understand the ‘deeper’ part I was looking for.

Meditation is not simply a way to feel calmer, or less stressed, or less anxious, and not even just a way to feel happier. There is an ancient, transcendental goal of meditation, resulting in more freedom, awareness, compassion and insight into our complete interconnectedness.

For the last 6 years since discovering Waking Up, the Daily Meditations have been a core part of my spiritual practice and the Theory sessions contributed to my thinking around what it means to live a life well lived. Waking Up is the best guided meditation and theory app I’ve ever come across to help you live well, combining both ancient and modern philosophies and practices. And in what feels like a full-circle moment (and a partnership that couldn’t be more aligned, as I could talk endlessly about how Waking Up has changed my life) – they are very kindly sponsoring today’s Letter. If you’d like to try out the Waking Up app, click here to get 14 days completely free. Even just 10 minutes a day is enough to start, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

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In the years since then, I’ve gone on a number of meditation retreats, including a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat, and practised multiple styles of meditation. The first time I did a metta bhavana (loving-kindness) meditation – which is where you cultivate a feeling of loving-kindness and compassion toward yourself and all beings – I also suddenly started crying, as I realised I so rarely offered myself the love and kindness I would wish for others. And opening up my heart with compassion towards all beings brought more warmth and connection into every relationship and every interaction I have.

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I once went to a yoga class in London with a well-known yoga teacher. He would start and end every class with a meditation. In his class, there were a lot of advanced yoga practitioners who could do advanced poses and handstand variations with ease. And he said in one of his classes: “I give more credit to someone who has a daily meditation practice than someone who can hold a handstand. It’s more important.” And I would agree.

Meditation took me from often feeling socially anxious, self-loathing, and disconnected – to feeling comfortable in my own skin, loving myself (and everything) more, and being more accepting of things as they are – not as I wish them to be.

And I genuinely believe that if everyone on Earth started this regular consistent practice, the world would be a better place. I believe it would create more wisdom, compassion, and joy. More freedom from suffering. More insight, awareness, equanimity. Seeing yourself reflected in every being, every moment, every thing, every experience.

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It’s my sincere hope that this Letter might be your invitation. You don’t need a retreat, a perfect morning routine, or a quiet mind. Perhaps just ten minutes, and a willingness to begin again.

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Lots of Love,

Izzy 💜