Bernard O'Shea: I started meditating and it has changed my life for the better
Bernard O'Shea. Picture: Moya Nolan
I thought I knew what meditation was. I thought I didn’t need to do it. I thought that after 42 years on the planet I was breathing fine. But I never thought in a thousand years that 16 seconds of my day could make me a happier, better and calmer person.
The day after my 41st birthday, I was driving home from the supermarket. It was during the first Covid crisis and there was an eerie feeling everywhere. Nobody was talking. Nobody was looking at each other. It felt inhuman. The basic instinct to say hello or pick an item off the top shelf for someone were now a health risk.
As I was driving home. I turned the radio on and heard a familiar voice talking about meditation. I had worked with Dermot Whelan on a comedy show called for six years and now - here he was - on national radio talking to his co-host Dave about how meditation can help with anxiety during the lockdown.
As I listened to him, my first reaction was to find it hilarious. I remembered him being a funny host of a comedy show, not a serious meditation expert. He spoke very passionately about the virtues of breathing and taking time out for yourself.
It was the first time I’d heard anything about him being ‘mindful’ and was half expecting a joke at the end of his speech. However, the more he spoke, the more I could hear that he had fully converted to what I saw then as the cult of mindfulness.
That night, I Googled him. It's odd Googling someone you know fairly well and I was genuinely shocked to see that he had become a master of meditation. To give my reaction some context, it would be like your older brother, who’d once farted in your face and gave you wet willies, becoming a Tibetan monk.
I eventually stumbled upon his website and for most of March and April, every now and then, I’d click on it, even though I never did anything more about it or even tried his suggested meditations. It just felt too weird. Eventually, I asked if we could meet up.
I met him on a beautiful summer’s day in central Dublin. After the four months of the first lockdown, it was good to meet someone who didn’t ask me for a snack or tell me that the telly was paused. He hadn’t changed a bit since I’d worked with him. He was affable and had a weird knack of always calming me down.
After a bit of chit–chat along the lines of, ‘How are you coping with the most bizarre human event in the last sixty years?’ he asked me, "So, why do you want to learn about meditation?"
I didn’t hold back. "I would just love it if I could calm my brain down. I feel that my anxiety is through the roof I’m terrified to say or do anything and I don’t know why also everything and I mean everything is bugging me". I listed them:
"We never have small spoons in the house. Are the kids eating them? We have three food brushes and eight novelty vegetable peelers, but no small spoons - ever"
"Every single time I have got to use an ATM, it’s out of order. I’m beginning to think that a complex-particle joke is being played on me"
"It drives me mental that when you ask for a bag in a shop, they just fling it at you. Surely it would be quicker to just help me pack it?"
"Nobody in the security queue in the airport is EVER READY, even though they’ve been told constantly to take out electronics, remove belts etc"
"Why can’t waiters and waitresses bring down the card machine with them when you get the bill and not separately. Why are two journeys necessary?"
"Why is that every single dog that I pet is shedding?"
"Why is that when I really really, really need Google Maps, it doesn’t work, yet it will randomly tell me that it will take 33 minutes to get to work on a Saturday"
"Why do launderettes demand that you separate your colours before you drop off a bag of washing? That’s the primary reason why I’m paying a launderette: to wash my clothes because I don’t want to do them"
"Why is it every time I go through a drive-through fast-food place, my order is always wrong and then I have to wait in the car park for it?"
"OK," Dermot said. "Close your eyes and take a breath in for four seconds. Feel how the breath is going into your nose, down your throat and into your belly. Now, hold it for four seconds. Now breathe it out for four seconds. How do you feel?"
Initially, I couldn’t answer him. It honestly felt as if it was the first time in my life that I’d actually breathed. I felt, dare I say it, after 16 seconds… relaxed! I wanted to do it again.
"I feel really good," I said. I had never considered that my belly could hold that much air or how quickly I was breathing before.
"Well done - you just meditated," Dermot said.
"What?"
His answer was genuinely passionate "Meditation … It’s not what people think. They have this perception of meditation that it’s all hippies and incense. A simple breathing technique like that is meditation.”
Nearly a year on from that day I’m still breathing in for four seconds, holding it for four seconds and breathing out. This simple little breathing technique has changed my life. I say that with utter confidence and honesty.
So before you go and think (like me) that meditation is all about all hippies and incense, try this simple little technique because it's a gateway into discovering longer meditations and for me clarified what a lot of mindfulness is about. It will also stop you from having a near break down when you can’t find any small spoons in your house.
