5 Star Wellbeing Podcast

Neil McKinlay - Meditation Myth Busting and More

December 12, 2022 Season 3 Episode 57
5 Star Wellbeing Podcast
Neil McKinlay - Meditation Myth Busting and More
Show Notes Transcript
Neil McKinlay is a meditation teacher and mentor. In this lovely interview he melts down a number of myths about meditation, breaking it open as a practise for everyone, with many benefits that find their way into everyday life.

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Music by Ian Hildebrand

Arwen Bardsley:

Okay, welcome, everybody. Welcome back to another episode and delighted today to have another wonderful guest for you. I've got Neil McKinlay, who is a meditation teacher and mentor. Neil has spent all of his adult life more than 25 years, but we won't give away your exact age, Neil, immersed in the practice of meditation. He's now a highly experienced meditation teacher and mentor conducting events of more than 100 meditators both online and in person. He currently teaches from Victoria BC in Canada, just to define that, because I'm in Victoria, Australia.

Neil McKinlay:

Yeah. Wow.

Arwen Bardsley:

So Neil, I'd like to just start with, you know, a bit of background about you, I love for people to understand kind of how you get you got to be doing what you're doing now, what was what was the path in however much detail you want to give us, but it's just interesting to find out how people discover their path?

Neil McKinlay:

Well, I think there's two good ways to respond to that. And before I do that, you know, thank you for having me here. It's a real pleasure, real delight. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. And thank you to everyone who is listening. So how did I find my path? I think there's two ways to respond to both of which are interesting and informative. One is, how did I come to meditation? And then, you know, another one would be how did I get to a point, the point where I'm doing what I'm actually doing specifically right now, and that's a little bit more involved a little bit more detail. So let's go back to you know, how did I start to meditate. And I was a competitive swimmer, when I was a child and a young adult. And at the risk of dating myself yet again, that puts me in the late 70s, early 80s. And it was a really interesting time to be involved with competitive athletics. What we now, you know, conventionally or commonly, we'll call sports psychology, was beginning to edge its way in to the mainstream at that point in time, and the coaching staff that I worked with, in that that period was really open to that kind of influence. And so we did all this stuff that you know, now might seem really tame. And you know, every day, we did all this weird stuff, we did goal setting, and we did visualization, and we did progressive relaxation. And we did subliminal messaging, which maybe is still a little bit odd that one. And as part of that suite of tools that were introduced, we were away at a swim meet. In Vancouver, one weekend, and a bunch of us were staying in a conference room in a hotel with the assistant coach and the assistant coach on the Saturday night, I vividly remember it was a rainy, dark, Saturday night in Vancouver, British Columbia. On Saturday night, he taught us how to meditate, you know, we rolled up our sleeping bags, and we gathered all around. And he taught us how to do a basic, Mantra based meditation practice. And I don't remember what he said, I don't remember how everyone else reacted, but I do remember, there was something about it that was compelling to me, it was like, Oh, this is something, you know, I wasn't able to define it. But it was something and that something was really interesting. It was a draw to me. And it kept me doing the practice for a period of years, you know, in a very rudimentary, I don't really know what I'm doing way it kept me engaging the practice. So that is how I found my way in to meditation was really through the doorway that sports psychology of the time opened up.

Arwen Bardsley:

Great!

Neil McKinlay:

So that's, you know, how did I get into meditation? And then how am I doing what I'm doing now? Again, that's a little bit more involved. But after a few years of of making my way through muddling my way through meditation practice, more or less on my own, I started to give what I was doing some formal structure. And I started to study and practice in a series of two successive communities, both of which were rooted in Tibetan Buddhism, both of which gave me opportunities to engage formal curriculum and to do long retreats. And around about 2016 My relationship with the second of these communities really started to unravel. I started to feel uncomfortable with the way the teacher, the leader. was treating students especially close senior students like myself, it became apparent to me that in spite of what I believed, in spite of what I was told, in spite of what I as a senior person in that community told others that what was driving the situation was not the teachings and not the practices was not the development and the well being of students. But it was the self centered impulses of the leader himself. And the extent he was willing to go to assert these, to my I created an environment characterized by manipulation by disempowerment by disrespect. By way of an example, he was a master of what I call the bait and switch, saying, we're going to do one thing, promising one thing, and then switching it out with something else and expecting us all to silently go along as if nothing had happened. Which, you know, in isolation, I don't think sounds like much. But when the dynamic repeats over a year, a period of years and plans and schedules and lives are affected and up ended, all by an authority figure that one trusts who doesn't seem overly concerned with the consequences of his actions. The effect is really crazy making it what happened to me is it distorted my relationship with my own inner knowing my own sense of integrity, and of what's going on here and now. And by 2019, that distortion got so severe that I was just extremely compromised, both mentally and physically. And I had to leave. And in 2000, early 2020, February of 2020, exactly, I made this difficult, unnecessary choice to leave, which to the question you're raising that opened up a path of recovering, recovering and healing for me, and discovery and exploration that continues to this day that has actually opened up meditation, my understanding of meditation in my presentation of meditation in a whole new way.

Arwen Bardsley:

So were you so is that when you started teaching, though,

Neil McKinlay:

I started teaching around about 2005. After I was a swim coach, or after I, my swimming career ended, I popped out of the water onto the pool deck, and I started coaching and I coached for I think, about 20 years. And that ended quite suddenly. And I was sitting at the kitchen table one day with my head in my hands, literally my head in my hands and saying, like, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? And my wife walked by, she just walked by, I don't even know if she stopped. I just can remember her walking by and she said, Well, you're trained in meditation, why don't you teach people how to meditate? It was kind of like, oh, so around about 2005 2006, I started to teach.

Arwen Bardsley:

Okay, so yeah, so of course, it's been a long time. But so when you left that community, what, so it was that kind of, you know, the real structure for your life? And then, you know, so you basically decided to leave and then everything was different,

Neil McKinlay:

very much. So I mean, it was a structure for my life, it was a structure for my livelihood, because I was teaching in that context. And that context was probably responsible for about 60 or 70% of my annual income. It was a structure socially, it was a structure spiritually, financially. I mean, it was a structure that I had, on a couple of, you know, kind of turning point occasions made conscious decision to step into in a really deep way. And so, when I made that choice, again, a difficult but necessary choice to leave. There was this sense of leaving all of that behind?

Arwen Bardsley:

Yeah. And are you do you still practice Buddhism?

Neil McKinlay:

I do. Yeah, very much. So you know, the work that I do is still grounded in the Buddhist teachings. I try to use very ordinary everyday language. So I don't often talk about egolessness or emptiness or anything like that. But the grounding is certainly there in that tradition.

Arwen Bardsley:

Yeah, good. Yeah, I'm glad you didn't feel like you know, you had to even give up your your faith as it were.

Neil McKinlay:

Well, that was one of the difficult things about the whole situation is I think, you know, to use your words, giving up that faith of walking away from the teachings and walking away from the practice practices. It was tempting and I know many of my you know, former peers have understandably done that because You know that those were the teachings and practices within that provided the the context within which this dysfunctional relationship took took shape. And for whatever reason, and it really kind of goes back to that, you know, night in Vancouver sitting on a sleeping bag and meditating for the first time, you know, I felt drawn to the practice in a way I couldn't and still can't articulate. And it's the same thing here, you know, once I left that community, you know, while there was a tremendous sense of relief, that leaving, the loss was phenomenal. I had no idea what to do. And much to my surprise, because I can't explain the why of it. I turned to what was familiar, I turned to meditation practice.

Arwen Bardsley:

Yeah. And so that would have been right at the beginning of the pandemic, as well, he made that decision. And then did that kind of open up that online teaching method?

Neil McKinlay:

Very much, very much. So, you know, when I left the community, so we're talking February 2020, when I left, that, that community, it was a survival thing, you know, I needed to get out for my own sanity and survival. So I wasn't really thinking about livelihood, although obviously, you know, there's a big, big impact there. When COVID hit, you know, this neck of the woods, and I think it was late March that our lock downs, our first series of lockdown started. So when COVID hit this neck of the woods in late March, and the remaining 30, or 40%, of my livelihood, vanished. That's when the Financial piece kind of clicked. And, you know, I was like, Well, what am I going to do? And I would already been teaching online to a certain extent, and I broadened that and started to offer, you know, community practice that's now evolved into what is called the online gatherings.

Arwen Bardsley:

So can you tell us a bit about that, because I'm kind of fascinated by this idea of, you know, more than 100 people online meditating together, like I get that, you know, I can see in my mind's eye, you know, and feel like what it would feel like in person, obviously, because I've done probably not with more than 100 people, but I've certainly done that. But online, just tell us a bit about that.

Neil McKinlay:

Well, it's actually a really wonderful format. And the online gatherings are currently smaller than the 100 plus, which is something that comes from my past at this point. But there's a group of we meet, there's the option of meeting three times a week, we meet on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, Pacific Time. And probably at any one gathering, you might see between four and a dozen or 14 people there. And what's it like to actually practice in that way, it's become a really intimate and affecting context, environment in within which we sit together. We used to joke about it initially, but we get to actually sit with people in their lives in some little corner of their lives. And we actually become familiar with people in a way that we don't become familiar when we're in person, not that one's better or worse than the other. But we get to see people's backgrounds, we get to see people's homes, we get to see how those change and evolve over time, whether it's, you know, there's a different set of books behind me or whether the location has shifted a little bit. And you know, this again, this may sound like not much, it may sound like a very kind of small thing. But it's actually deeply affecting had been deeply affecting over the months and years that we've been coming together because in a couple of ways, one, that familiarity, I feel like it begins to ease its way into ourselves. And so there's a cellular familiarity with one another in an ordinary everyday here's a corner of my bedroom, kind of way. The other way that I think it's really affecting is the ordinary and everydayness of it it really brings the teachings and the practices down to that level. And in my experience, that's where the teachings and practices are most potent when we perforate any notion that they might be transcendent or divine or separate from the stuff of our everyday life and begin and to apply them to or see their relevance in, you know, going to the grocery store or going to the mall, getting up and going to make dinner and all that kind of stuff. And so the ordinary everydayness of the online context, and the fact that we keep meeting, you know, week after week after week, it has a familiarity, that's wonderful. And it has a kind of grounding quality that I feel is, you know, if, in my experience, if we're going to bring meditation more fully into our lives, which I think is really the intention of the practice, it's not intended to be kept under a bell jar. If we're going to bring meditation more fully into our lives, I think it's important to really bridge the sometimes easy to assume gap between those two. And the online context, actually is a really potent tool in that.

Arwen Bardsley:

That is, yeah, really good point. I'm so glad I asked you that question. So I think I better get from you, Neil, what your definition of meditation is?

Neil McKinlay:

Yeah, so I guess I'm gonna answer that in two ways. One is, you know, every form of meditation that I know, and I don't know, every form of meditation, we're just talking about every form of meditation that I know, shares, a central dynamic, and the central dynamic involves taking our wandering attention, or normally wandering attention, and asking it to rest somewhere. And, again, every form of meditation that I'm familiar with shares that dynamic, take our wandering attention, ask it to rest somewhere, where the practices vary is where we're asked to rest that attention. You know, some practices we'll be asked to rest our attention on a mantra, some practices we'll be asked to rest our attention on an image, some practices we'll be asked to rest our attention on a candle, for instance, the style of practice that I teach, which is embodied meditation, we rest our attention, we turn toward and settle into the immediacy of our embodied life. So we turn our attention toward our embodied experience, that would be a general and specific definition of meditation.

Arwen Bardsley:

And can you talk a bit more about this embodied experience for people who, like me, I'm not quite sure what you mean, when you say that?

Neil McKinlay:

Yeah. So I used to just say we turn our attention toward the body. Okay, and then that, you know, that's great, okay. So what you're doing is you're taking your attention, and you're putting your attention somewhere in the body, so your breathing or your shoulder or your toe, something like that. Okay, I understand that. I used to say that. And one of the things that became apparent after time was that that language was actually too limiting. It really reinforced the notion of body as a separate isolated entity, which it really isn't, I mean, just on the level of, of breathing, you know, we're constantly taking breath in through the pores of our entire body. And so I started to experiment with different kinds of language. And I came to or I've landed on using this term embodied experience, which is an umbrella term. And roughly speaking, that means we're turning our attention toward an inclusive experience of embodiment an experience that is in is inclusive of our body, our personal body, which most of us associate with the term embodiment. It's also inclusive of what you might call the relational body of the sense perceptions, what the sense perceptions are, and what they know, the light in the room, the temperature in the room that the garbage truck that keeps beeping outside my window, as we're talking here. And then it's also inclusive of the body of the Earth, or the body of the world of which we are a part, you know, this sense of open, steady, still dynamic suchness. And so, we're turning our attention toward the fullness of that and we may focus on say, the breath in the lower belly. But there's always a sense of okay, this is a focus with in a more inclusive understanding of embodiment. An understanding that is inclusive of at least these three layers of body.

Arwen Bardsley:

Yep. Okay, beautiful. And talk to us about you know like, it is a practice you have to you have to keep doing it, basically, don't you? Yeah. Can you just talk a bit about that? And you know, people the question that all, you know, people always ask is, Well, how long should I do it for? And how often should I do it? Which, you know, the answer I realize is how long is a piece of string? But can you just give us your thoughts around that?

Neil McKinlay:

Yeah, and you know, I'm pretty much of the piece of string School of thinking. And my grade three teacher, Mrs. MacGibbon. I remember, she was asking us to write, I don't know, a paragraph, an essay was probably a paragraph, it was grade three. And I remember I went up, and I said, you know, how long does this need to be? And she said, as long as a piece of string, and I puzzled over that for years, I mean, how long is a piece of string? But I used to be very, more prescriptive, you know, and so I would say, Well, an hour a day, every day, for the rest of your life, which was the instruction that I received, however, many years ago, and there was this interesting thing that happened, you know, so this was an instruction I used to offer in some of the first classes I offered in person here in Victoria. And, you know, we would, it would be an eight week series, that would be eight classes, and around about six, or class six or seven, I'd start to talk about practicing at home. And you know, everyone's mostly polite by that point, you know, the people who are there the people who really want to be and are curious about continuing. And so everyone listened to me and nodded. But I could feel that as soon as I said that everyone kind of got up and left the room. Right? You know, like, sorry. And so I experimented, like, what if I say, 45 minutes? What if I say 30 minutes? What if I say 20 minutes. And what I noticed is, while there was a sense of fewer people, psychically getting up and leaving, there, were still people getting up and leaving the room energetically like, okay, the expert has said that meditation must be this way. And I can't do that, or I'm not inspired in that to do that. So I guess it's not for me. And after a few years of going through that, you know, I'm a little bit slow on the uptake, I guess. But after a few years of going through that, I started to really flip the equation. And rather than having meditation, or the tradition, or the expert define what an appropriate practice is, I started to explore and experiment with well, what if our lives what if our the realities and the inspiration of our everyday lives determined how much we practice, you know, embodied meditation is about trusting our lives as they are? So what we actually trust into that, as we craft a practice? And so I, when I'm asked that question, I really encourage people to look at the realities of your life, you know, sometimes, there's just not a lot of time available. Sometimes there's much more. And then look at the level of your inspiration, some of us are really drawn to practice 30 40 50 minutes a day, others of us are not. And then based upon the dance between those two, come to an agreement for yourself about what meditation practice is going to look like for you in terms of duration and frequency. So rather than again, putting the expert first, let's put our life first and at that, and I really think this is this isn't it sound is actually a really, really big point. Rather than putting the expert first, let's put our life first. And at that point, the expert becomes a support for what our lives are. So rather than me say, well Arwen you should practice an hour a day, every day for the rest of your life, you come to me and say, Well, I think I can do like 10 minutes a day, three days a week. What might that look like? Then? You know, we can talk and craft something that works for you based on that?

Arwen Bardsley:

Yeah, yeah. Great. So if I said that, what would you say?

Neil McKinlay:

10 minutes a day, three days a week, I would say, you know, so the practice that I teach, has, can have a lying down component and a sitting up component. And when you're looking at 10 minutes, that's probably about the minimum for putting both of these two together for having the time if you're going under 10 minutes, I'd encourage people to either wholly lay down or just sit up. So we'd begin to look at a practice where you're doing about half lying down and half sitting up, roughly speaking. And, you know, I'd encourage you to take the time lying down to just develop a sense of presence, a sense of hereness a sense of I'm in this room. It's warm, it's cold, there's noise, I'm starting to settle. And once there was a sufficient sense or notable sense of presence, I'd encourage you to come up into an upright position, work with posture. And we could talk that through a little bit. And then begin the practice of turning your attention toward your embodied life, this personal body, this relational body, this earth body, and starting to settle in to that. That would be the rough guideline.

Arwen Bardsley:

And so why do you do the lying down and sitting up?

Neil McKinlay:

The lying down is really great for slowing down. It's really easy in my experience, to bring the speed and momentum of our everyday lives into our meditation practice, right? So like, Okay, I'm done work, I've picked up the groceries, I put away the dishes, I'm going to sit down and meditate. I'm sitting down to meditating present, I'm putting my attention towards my embodied experience following the breath in the belly, because I need that anchor today, here I am meditating, okay, I'm done, I'm gonna go make dinner, then I'm going to pick up the you know, and so the lying down because it is so relaxing. And restorative, is really conducive to just slowing down. And being quiet, and beginning to let this sense of presence that's built in to who we are bubble to the surface. And that presence then becomes the context within which we do the sitting up. And so you could say, well, why even sit up, like, why not just continue laying down which, of course you could do, you could continue lying down, the thing that's advantageous about sitting up is we're beginning to cultivate, you know, the kind of turning toward the kind of settling the kind of relationship with our own inner being, that meditation offers us we're beginning to cultivate it in an upright way, meaning it has that immediate sense of connection with our everyday life. You know, it's kind of like a a way station between lying down and getting up and going to do the dishes. And so that that sitting up is at the relaxation, or the lying down is advantageous from the point of view of relaxation, slowing down presence, the sitting up is really advantageous because it helps us connect the practice, the qualities that we reconnect with, through the practice, with the stuff of our everyday life.

Arwen Bardsley:

Yeah, I really like that I've never, you know, experienced, you know, doing both in one session. So I think that's really great explanation. Thank you. And with sitting up what, what guidelines do you give people about that?

Neil McKinlay:

I think that if I had to give one guideline, a single guideline, I would, I'm probably going to diverge from my assertion that I'm going to do a single guideline here, but I would say, ensure that you're sitting up in such a way that your knees are lower than your hip crease. What that does is it lets your pelvis tilt forward. And then lets the pelvic floor, touch the whatever you're sitting on, whether you're sitting on a bench, whether you're sitting on the floor, whether you're sitting on a chair, it lets your pelvic floor ground with the earth. And then this becomes, you know, kind of like that one of the keystones, of our whole meditation practice and the whole way of living that we're developing here, that sense of grounded connection with the earth underneath. And so that would be kind of the main, the first thing I would say, you know, if people came into a room with me and said, Okay, tell me about sitting. Let's talk about sitting in a chair, sitting in a chair and meditating. The first thing I would talk about, it's like, okay, let's adjust the height of this chair. And you can do it with blankets, you can do it with yoga blocks, you can do it if you have an up and down e chair like I do right now you can do it with that led to just the height of the chair so that your knees are lower than your hip crease so that your pelvic floor is or so that your pelvis is tilting naturally forward and your pelvic floor is rooted beginning to root in the earth.

Arwen Bardsley:

Yeah, so for most people sitting cross legged on the floor, just straight on the floor. That would not be the case. Yeah, yeah. So but maybe if you lift your So your pelvis up again, on a cushion or a stool, then yeah.

Neil McKinlay:

And I mean, once again, let's we're coming back to that notion of you were quietly coming back to this here, but I want to reaffirm it, we're coming back to that notion of placing our lives and our realities at the forefront and asking the tradition and the expert to kind of support us as we do that. And, you know, the reality is some people are quite comfortable sitting cross legged, and other people are not. And so, you know, you can sit cross legged on the floor, you can sit cross legged on some props, you can kneel on a bench, you can sit in a chair. All of these are completely appropriate ways to sit and meditate, and the one that's best is the one that's most appropriate to you.

Arwen Bardsley:

Yeah, and I always remember another meditation teacher saying, you know, you've really got to be comfortable, because if you're not comfortable, then you know, your, your focus is going to constantly be drawn to that discomfort and not on this other thing that that, you know, you're trying to focus on as meditation.

Neil McKinlay:

Yeah, I remember the very first time I did a long retreat, there was a group retreat. And I sort of glommed on to one of the people who was sitting up front leading us, and in my mind, somehow decided that that's the way a meditator should sit. And so I spent the bulk of a month trying to emulate them. And I spent the bulk of a month being completely miserable, not meditating, because it just didn't work for my body. And I was so uncomfortable that the only thing I was focusing on was discomfort. And so yeah, I think that's a really important point, you know, we need to be reasonably be reasonably comfortable, we need to be sitting in a way that actually works for the realities of our embodied lives for the realities of our body.

Arwen Bardsley:

Yeah, and everybody's body is different. So

Neil McKinlay:

everybody's body is different. I remember doing a class. And again, it was one of these early classes, it was eight weeks long, and there was someone in the class, they sat right in front of me. And the first week, they just couldn't stop moving. And week 2 3 4 5 6, that was the same thing. But they started to bring props in addition to what we had available to try and mitigate this. And in week seven, they showed up and they had so many props, they had blankets, and they had bolsters, and they had wedges, and they had foamies, and they had rolled up T bat, tea bags, tea towels. And I was like what is going on here. And again, they're sitting right in front of me. So I got a bird's eye view of this. And after about 10 minutes of fussing around with all this, for the first time in like six or eight weeks. They were still Yeah, and it was so beautiful and so affecting. I mean, the stillness was beautiful unto itself. The other thing that was so striking for me, was the certainty I had that no one in the universe had ever quite sat in that way. And it was just a real lesson for me. It really taught me a lot.

Arwen Bardsley:

Yeah, absolutely. I'm doing yin yoga teacher training at the moment. And that is just such an eye opener in terms of how everybody's body is different. There's so much skeletal variation and sitting cross legged for some people. Yeah, as you said, it's fine. But for many people, it is very uncomfortable.

Neil McKinlay:

Yes, yes.

Arwen Bardsley:

So are there any other myths about meditation that you'd like to bust?

Neil McKinlay:

I love myth busting with meditation. You know, the first one is that we need to have an empty mind. I can't tell you the number of times, you know, people have told me they've said something in class or some other context. They've said, Well, you know, you said that meditation needs to have an empty mind. And I just can't do that. So I guess meditation is not for me. And what is interesting is the the depth and pervasiveness of this myth, because I guarantee you I've never actually said that, not once, because it is not necessary that we have an empty mind. We work with whatever is going on for us in this moment, and sometimes our mind will be relatively empty. And sometimes our mind will be chattering away like, you know, a chipmunk. And one of these is more pleasant than the other. I will grant you that. But from the point of view of meditation practice, one of these is not necessarily better than the other. What we're doing is we're develop hoping our capacity to turn our attention toward our embodied experience to settle in and reconnect with some basic qualities in our human being. So it's not really about the thoughts. It's about loosening our grip on the thoughts, certainly, and then letting our attention turn elsewhere. While the thoughts are just allowed to do whatever the thoughts are going to do, you know, they'll chatter away for a while they'll dissipate, they'll change, you know, that's the nature of that particular creature. Yeah. So Myth number one. Absolutely. Myth number one, is it's not necessary to have an empty mind. Myth number two, is those thoughts that romant remain, we don't have to get rid of them. You know, again, what we're doing with the practice of meditation is we're loosening our grip on those thoughts. And then letting our attention turn elsewhere. And that's an interesting description. And I think it's easy to miss this in the description. But it implies that the difficulties we get in to with thoughts is not really the thoughts or the thinking themselves, it's our gripping. It's our tendency to grip onto them. And so we're loosening that grip, and turning our attention. And then just as I said, letting thoughts do their own thing, letting them have the life that they want and need to have, whilst we begin to attend to the immediacy of our embodied lives.

Arwen Bardsley:

Because we've got to honor the fact that our brain is designed to think,

Neil McKinlay:

yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, that's a great a great way of putting it, I often put it, you know, if we're going to get into an argument with our thinking mind, we're going to lose, so let's just not do it. Oh, another way of putting it as the way you put it, let you know, just honor the fact that that's what our mind does. And it's like, well, thank you very much for doing that. I'm going to turn my attention here for the moment

Arwen Bardsley:

for as long as I can, until you come back

Neil McKinlay:

for as long as I can.

Arwen Bardsley:

I can Okay, any other myths?

Neil McKinlay:

I think we've touched upon, you know, some others that I'm probably helpful to make explicit one is that, you know, meditation doesn't need to look a particular way. How it's how it's going to be experienced for each of us is going to be different. Another myth that I think is worth pointing out regarding meditation is that meditation actually doesn't relax us, which often shocks people because you come to a class, and that's one of the first thing people encounter when we do our first meditation session together, you know, it's like, Oh, I feel so relaxed. So meditation doesn't relax us. What meditation does is meditation reconnects us with a basic meaning inherent, innate, fundamental sense of well being and ease that exists within us. There is a sense of well being and ease that exists within us that is not conditioned by, are we having a good day? Or are we having a bad day do we wear glasses or contacts is our hair long or short? What meditation does is it turns out, helps us turn our attention and settle in and begin to connect with, among other things, that sense of well being and ease. And it seems like maybe a small item to highlight, but I think it's such an important item to highlight. Because, in one view, we're somewhat disempowered. You know, we kind of have to use this practice called meditation to create something that's not there. Ease and relaxation. In another view, it's very empowering and affirming of who we are as human beings. It's saying, okay, slow down, turn your attention, settle in, and who you fundamentally are, is a sense of ease. Well, being relaxation, of course, we're still going to have those chattering thoughts and the dishes are still going to be dirty, and we're going to stub our toes and bang our knees and all the rest of it. Within that, there is this sense of well being and ease among other things that, you know, we can access at any time. And I think that's a really, really important point about meditation. So an important myth to use your words bust is that sense that meditation relaxes us. No. Meditation puts us in touch with a fundamental sense of ease and well being and relaxation.

Arwen Bardsley:

And so what other, I mean, that is a big benefit. But are there other benefits that you feel that people take into their everyday embodied lives from having a meditation practice?

Neil McKinlay:

Yeah, I mean, I think we could talk about that in a lot of different ways. I mean, there is a growing body of scientific research that's talking about, you know, the effects on our blood pressure, the effects on our neurological functioning, you know, the effect on, you know, cardiac health and well being. And I think these are all really, really important, valuable benefits. One of the ones that has been coming up for me a lot, and it's been coming up within online gatherings, this teaching online teaching contexts that we've talked about. It's been coming up in my own life is meditate, in addition to connecting us with this fundamental sense of ease, and well being meditation actually connects us with other qualities that are innate in us as well. And so let's go back to the beginning of this interview, when we talked about how I became involved in meditation, and then how I got to where I am right now. And I talked about this difficult and dysfunctional relationship that I was part of that I left. And, you know, when I left, as we talked about, the sense of relief was enormous. And the sense of lostness was phenomenal. I just literally didn't know what to do, I didn't have a clue. And for reasons I do not comprehend, I turned towards the familiarity of meditation practice. And so I started to settle into turn toward and settle into what was happening for me that lostness, I started to turn toward not change, not get rid of not transform, but turn toward it. And as I settled into this more and more, there was this experience of knowing that showed up again, and again, that often spoke directly to what was happening for me, in my life, often posts spoke directly to that sense of lostness. And this suggested a phase of meditation that I had never really consciously recognized before one in which I let the wisdom or the knowing or the intelligence that arises out of this settling, this basic intelligence is just waiting to be connected with, I let this wisdom that arises out of settling into the stuff of my life, begin to guide and direct me through my life. And I started doing that it's the silver lining of having no clue of what else to do is, I started to actually trust that so if I was tired, I would rest. If I was lonely, I'd reach out, if I was stuck, I would reach out to my I would engage my trauma therapist and do a little bit of work there. And what happened through this process is I started to heal this deeply damaged relationship with my own inner wisdom, and discover that the stuff of my immediate embodied life, even when it's as difficult as the calamitous end of a 20 year relationship, the stuff of my immediate embodied life, actually has something to say about the direction and purpose of my life. And that, to me, has proven over the last couple of years, invaluable, utterly invaluable. And I think it's something many of us, ask ourselves, you know, well, how do I find my direction? And how do I find my purpose? And I think there's many, many appropriate, helpful answers to this. And one answer that I would offer is, that's something that meditation actually can do. For us. That's something that meditation actually offers us is a tool through which we develop a deeper relationship with the stuff of our embodied lives, and with the intelligence and the wisdom and the knowing and the guidance and the direction that is an innate within that inherent within that waiting for us to just connect and follow.

Arwen Bardsley:

We are so disconnected from it, though, aren't we, in our modern lives?

Neil McKinlay:

very disconnected. You know, I think it's the silver lining of you know, what I went through, I would never wish on anybody. I'll be clear. I would never wish on anybody it was and it continues to be an extremely difficult experience. However, there's a silver lining to it. When, with my life being so upended and so, disintegrated by that experience, with myself feeling so lost, it put me in a place where I had little other to do than trust it. Because the so much of the known and familiar had just been swept aside. And so the silver lining of this calamitous experience is, you know, it helped me perforate I love that work. It helped me perforate some of the vitual ways that I normally just dismiss or diminish or distort. So that, you know, there's been a gift in the difficulty and the calamity as well.

Arwen Bardsley:

Yeah, beautiful.

Neil McKinlay:

Can I go back, Arwen? Sorry to interrupt you, can I go back? Okay, myth number five. I think we're myth number five, I think this is something I really like to get in here is I no longer believe that meditation is the solitary activity that I once thought it was. And I said that one of the ways I kind of worked my way through, I am working my way through the difficulties that I've been that I've endured is the practice of meditation. The other piece that's absolutely essential in this is community. A lot of the meditation that I've done the last two, two and a half years has been in community, it's been with others with the end of that difficult relationship, and with the arrival of COVID, as we've talked about, all my livelihood vanished. So I started doing things online, which become the online gathering community now. And in doing so, I got actually to see the brilliant, the articulate the vulnerable and adaptive ways that others were engaging meditation, certainly, but also meeting the challenges and the difficulties of their lives. What this did for me is again, and again, it reminded me or it affirmed for me the existence of this basic wisdom, this basic knowing this basic intelligence. Some days, I could not see it, in my own experience in my own life, I could not believe it in my own experience and my own life. And then I'd sit down in the online gatherings, and I would see it manifest in living color in front of me. And it that affirmation was, was and continues to be utterly essential. It reminds me again, and again and again, is yes, there's something basic in us, that is brilliant, and radiant, and clear, and tender and responsive. There's something in us that is fundamentally intelligent, fundamentally, knowing, and there's something in us that can actually help us find our way forward in our lives in a way that's aligned with the reality of this embodied life. And I couldn't, I could put post it notes all over our home. And I wouldn't be able to remember it in the same way that I do in a one hour gap meeting of the online gatherings. I leave those meetings. And I'm like, oh, yeah, basic nature, which is, you know, one of the ways that tradition talks about what we're talking about here, oh, yeah, basic nature. It's real. It's there, I can connect with it. This is one of the points of meditation practice, I can let it begin to flow, or guide me into the stuff of my everyday lives.

Arwen Bardsley:

And so do you kind of recommend that people do some meditation in community rather than just on their own?

Neil McKinlay:

That's an interesting question. I actually never have, although I would think at this point, I would say if people have the opportunity, and one of the great things about the growing, familiarity with online technology is more of us have more and more of that opportunity. You know, if people have that opportunity, I definitely recommend people take advantage of it. Because it's been transformative for me and I see it as being transformative with those that I work with.

Arwen Bardsley:

So tell us about your I mean, I know you've you've told us how it kind of operates. But you know if people want to join you in your online community, or I think you've got more than one Don't you what what what can they do?

Neil McKinlay:

Well, the the great clearing house for you know what I'm doing is definitely my website. And that is Neil mckinlay.com and I am a rare McKinlay that hasn't L-a-y at the end of my name, not an L-E-Y? And, you know, take a look at the website, you know, because what I offer on the whole is somewhat broad. There's a lot of different offerings there that you can take a look at and familiarize with, there's a newsletter, which is a really great way to familiarize over time with what's being offered. So if you're so inclined, you know, sign up for the newsletter. It's got upcoming events and teachings and special offers. And it always reminds us when it shows up every month, oh, yes, meditation practice. Well, it's true. I mean, I ran, I can't tell you the number of times I've run into people on the street here in Victoria. And, you know, they say, oh, you know, you just put out a newsletter I really enjoyed. I'm really glad I got that. And I said, Oh, well, did you read the blog? Did you like the clip that I included? They said, Well, no, I actually never even opened it. And I said, Well, what do you like, why do you appreciate it? And they would say, Well, every month it shows up, and it reminds me, oh, yeah, meditation. And I used to be a bit chuffed at this, like, come on newsletters are a lot of work, and there's a lot in there. Yeah. And then I realized back to this notion of let's put the expert second and our lives first, if that's what people are getting out of it. That's awesome. That once a month, there's that sense of Oh, meditation, I'm going to give this a shot. And so that would be you know, my initial suggestion is just go to the website, take a look around. Take a look at my website, or my my newsletter, if you're so inclined. Not to pile it on. But if someone's really feeling like, Wow, I love the sound of this online gatherings. Send me an email, let me know that you've listened to this podcast. And I can send you a one week free trial to the online gathering so people can go and give it a trial that way, but the starting point is definitely the the website, Neilmckinlay.com.

Arwen Bardsley:

And so if people want to send you an email, they can do that through the website.

Neil McKinlay:

Yes. There's a contact there too.

Arwen Bardsley:

Yeah. Okay. All right. So yeah, do you cuz I realized at the start, I said Neil McKinlay, but do you just pronounced at McKinley?

Neil McKinlay:

I pronounced it McKinley and I smiled with tremendous pleasure when you said McKinlay.

Arwen Bardsley:

I normally check with people before I start recording about pronunciation, but I just thought I just had it. Okay, so yeah, so that's great. Because I was gonna say, is there any particular you know, programs or anything you want to tell people about, but it sounds like it's all on your website. And if they sign up for the newsletter, in particular, then they'll get some some hot tips on special offers and what you're doing so you run these regular things, and then you'll do sort of one off workshoppy kind of things as well, and that sort of stuff. Is that right?

Neil McKinlay:

Yeah, I do do some in person stuff here in Victoria, British Columbia. But most of my work is now online, the main pieces, the online gatherings, of course, but I also do semi regular, you know, monthly mini retreats, where on a Sunday morning here in the Pacific Northwest, we do a you know, three hours of practice together. And there's there are other events that do come up less regularly, but they do recur. So there's a lot going on.

Arwen Bardsley:

Yeah. All right. Great. Well, I have really enjoyed our chat, Neil, it's been great and absolutely love all your insights into meditation. And I hope that it helps some people to feel you know, some freedom in the fact that they that they can do this because I absolutely believe that it's something that it's a practice that everybody should in some way, shape or form have their life and you've made it you know, really nice that people can understand they don't have to be doing an hour a day, every day by any means. So yeah, that's really great. I'm really grateful for your for your time today.

Neil McKinlay:

Yeah, well, it's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure. And thank you to everyone who's listening for the opportunity as well.

Arwen Bardsley:

Thanks, Neil.