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How meditation helps me in my life – #022

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Podcast Guest: Marius Vetrici

In this episode of the #PressForward podcast we talk with Marius Vetrici.

It’s a fascinating discussion from my point of view as it tackles a subject that not all that familiar with… meditation.

Before that though we chat about Marius’ background working in the technology space and how he’s been all around the houses when it comes to programming languages.

So Marius is very keen on meditation and has been using it in his life for many years.

We talk about how he discovered it and what benefits he feels that it brings to his life. It can all be summed up in one word… equanimity. The ability to have a greater perspective when things are not going so well, but also when things are!

We then get into a chat about how you actually perform the meditations that he does. What you concentrate upon, what sensations it encourages.

There’s also a little time spent discussing how you might get started on your own journey of meditation. You don’t need to possess anything, and you could get started immediately. That said, Marius does recommend that those who are serious about meditation try to get on a seven or ten day retreat, as these extended exposures to a meditative environment reaps rewards in the long run.

Very interesting chat, and I hope that you enjoy listening to it!

Interviewed by Nathan Wrigley.

We hope you enjoy the show, please do subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. We’re always looking for feedback, if you have any thoughts or comments, please do reach out.

And remember… Together we can #PressForward

Podcast Details

Nathan Wrigley: [00:00:22] Welcome to Episode 22 of the press forward podcast. I’m Nathan Wrigley and I’d like to thank you for joining us again. And if this is your first time with us, well, I hope that you liked it and that you find it useful. If you want to make listening to this podcast of regular thing you can subscribe to us on your favorite podcast. This can be done by going to wpn up dot org forward slash podcast – feed. Today we’re going to be talking to marry us for treat Chi about how meditation helps him in his life. But before that a few bits of housekeeping. The press forward podcast is created by WP and up. We’re a non-profit working in the word, press space to help you your colleagues. In fact anyone the work is just beginning but it’s already demonstrating that it’s much needed. For example, WP and UP have provided roughly two-and-a-half thousand hours of companionship and mentorship we have over 3.5 thousand members. How volunteers have donated over 5,000 hours and there have been six thousand event attendees. We’d love to get you involved and involvement could mean a whole variety of things. Maybe you could help us out financially. If so, you could go to WP n op dot-org /give or maybe you’d like to get involved with wpn up. If so, then please visit WP an OP dot org forward slash contact all look for the Social Links in the websites footer. Perhaps you just like to explore the content that we’re creating and if that’s the case then there’s a Blog at WP and up dot-org /blog. It’s always getting fresh content and it’s a great place to go for a quick read. We’ve also got a rather interesting project on over at head to dot-org. This is a three thousand kilometer bike ride being undertaken by members of the wp and up Community next year. The ride will start in Berlin and it will end in Portugal more specifically. It runs between the venues of the 2019 and 2020 wordcamp Europe. Please go and check it out and see if you can become involved with this exciting project. In fact, if you go to WP n op dot-org forward slash blog, you’ll find a few posts about the project. The press forward podcast is brought to you today by Green Geeks. Green Geeks offers an awesome managed web hosting platform that’s built for Speed security and scalability whilst being environmentally friendly. Enjoy a better web hosting experience for your WordPress website backed by 24/7 expert support and we thank green Geeks for helping us to put on the press forward podcast. Today we hear from Maria’s for Vetrici. He’s a WordPress agency owner and developer working out of Romania. He’s on the podcast today to talk about his journey with meditation. It’s a quick but deep dive into the subject. We talked about the history of meditation. The ways that Mariah sees it as a benefit in his life as well as more practical topics such as what people are actually doing whilst, they meditate and how you might get yourself started should your interest be peaked Marius has been meditating for many years, but I thought it best to start out by getting a little bit of his background. So I asked Marius to introduce himself. Marius Vetrici: [00:04:18] So hello everybody. My name is Marius Vetrici a WordPress developer at heart running WP Riders agency. It’s an eight people agency live in Romania and in Romania in Bucharest. And we work with companies who want to develop WordPress plugins we do these kind of complex WordPress stuff. I’m married I have two very kids eight and six years old. And in my free time I enjoy going for a hike with my family in the mountains or just riding a bicycle or meditating or reading playing ping-pong Nathan Wrigley: [00:05:05] So Marius has been working with WordPress to create complex projects with it. I wonder just how long he’s been using it. Marius Vetrici: [00:05:15] Well, I have blogging on WordPress back in 2008. I was writing my first blog entrepreneurship that was in in Romanian. And about five years ago. I actually started developing using Wordpress. I started taking my first freelancing WordPress jobs and then one year later. I scaled up and built My agency now ever since we are handling more and more projects. Nathan Wrigley: [00:05:48] If you’re anything like me you might have had an interest in technology from an early age and WordPress is just the latest in a long line of tools that you’ve used to get your work done. I asked Marius if he’d been using technology for a long time, too. Marius Vetrici: [00:06:06] Oh you made me thinking I got me thinking first touch with technology was in 1988. I had the chance to program a percussion computer. It was a computer that was replacing a drummer in a band. So I was playing in a yeah, I was playing in a band. I was eight years old and I was the drummer but there were no drums and I was programming this this percussion computer. That was essentially generating those drums sounds yeah and fast forward five years later. I was playing around with basic and Sinclair computers. And yeah, and then assembler language and then turbo Pascal and C++ and stuff like this, but later in 1999 when I join University in Bucharest. I have started playing with Java and.net and later with C sharp, and I don’t know probably I’ve been working with more than 10 different programming languages so far. Nathan Wrigley: [00:07:19] Marius mentioned that he’s from Romania, which if I’m honest I don’t know a great deal about so I wanted to know more about the technological landscape in Romania. Are his clients mainly domestic or does his agency work with International clients too. Marius Vetrici: [00:07:39] Ninety-nine percent of our work comes from International clients from North America and from Western Europe like UK and other countries. However all the members of my team are from Romania, they are in Romania and the landscape in the technological landscape in Romania. It’s pretty amazing. It dates back to 1950s, 1960s when we had some really good math professors and really good math school and later a couple of years later thinking in the 80s. We had the first professors in cybernetics and programming and because of that nowadays Romania is very technology oriented. They say we have one of the fastest and cheapest internet in the world, by the way. Now, I’m at my home and I have a optical fiber which costs me like eight Euros per month or so So yeah, all of this has contributed to an amazing development and there are tons of talented developers here in this part of the world. Nathan Wrigley: [00:08:54] We move the conversation on to get to the heart of what we’re talking about. Today. Marius is Journey with meditation at this point. I think I should make it clear that I’m not all that familiar with meditation what you do what benefits it brings? So I had to start out by asking about the basics such as what form of meditation does Marius pursue. Marius Vetrici: [00:09:22] That’s very good question. Yeah, I have started to meditate seven years ago I think meditation nowadays. It’s some kind of misused and abused word because meditation needs thousands of years year old activity, but there are thousands of way to meditate not hundreds not tens thousands Essentially to meditate means to concentrat your own minds into one single point and to keep it there. You could meditate by observing your breath by observing your bodily Sensations. You can listen to One sound. You can repeat a mantra where words or you can imagine a shape of something or someone and so on and so on you can listen to the gong. There are myriad’s of way to meditate. Now the meditation that I found I think I tried a couple of styles of meditation styles and the one that I found. Very useful in terms of return on investment in my day-to-day life. It’s called Vipasana or Vispana meditation and Vipasana, it’s a very old Words which means to see things as they really are. It’s a word in Pali language. It’s a dead language. They don’t speak it anymore. But essentially Vipasana it’s a way to train your mind to observe. The reality as it is free of delusion free of. Things that you crave until you lose your mind and you basically you react impulsively on free of version as in free of repulsion Fields head hatred and so So essentially to practice in order to learn to properly practice According to the school that I have been learning this by the way, there are at least three or five ways to practice Vipasana and yeah, it’s all there are thousands of and variations. So school that I have been following is the school of teacher called Goenka and the website is dhamma.org. It’s d h a m m a. org and essentially what this teacher has has done. He has taken out of the Vipasana out of all the religious ceremonies and religious rights and especially Vipasana it’s a pre-Buddhist Meditation technique that teaches you how teaches you the science of mind and the matter. How your mind influences your body your body is formed of matter particles and how your body would influence your mind essentially teaches you to be equanimous to have that quality of the Mind called Equanimity Equanimity is it’s a balance of your mind. being one is equanimous when one is not reacting on autopilot. To the vicissitudes of life to the challenges of life. You are very aware. You’re not a vegetable. You are super aware. You see exactly the things that are are under your nose You observe the reality as it is and then you act courageously and always always you do that with with a with a background with a fulcrum ethics and very healthy values towards all beings around you. This is very important the ethical part. Nathan Wrigley: [00:13:11] I suppose that you don’t just randomly find yourself meditating one day you need to go out and search for it. Perhaps you feel like you’d like to try something new. Maybe you’ve heard stories from others about it. Or it might be that you’re facing a crisis and a searching for some solace. What was Marius searching for when he found meditation? Marius Vetrici: [00:13:37] I’ve been always searching for something. some people look for made it Tool or a technique or for help when they have a challenge in their life, but other person’s will just look we’ll look at meditation as a way to develop oneself and to evolve thousands years olds great philosophers say know thyself meditation is an excellent way to know yourself at the body level and to understand much better. What’s happening inside of your body. How are you reacting to the things that happen around you? So yeah. I started meditating seven or eight years ago I was having a pretty good life balanced Life. Our first kid was just born. I was already married for like three years and I kept meditating for about one year, but then second kid was born and he certain Medical. Problem that would prevent him to sleep. Well, so during the first two years of his life. He was waking up for 10 times per night. So 2 years 10 times every night. So this came in as a huge challenge on our family on my life and on myself. And to make things even worse during that period I was transitioning between businesses. I was closing down a ten-year-old software business and I was getting trained in conflict mediation helping other people fix they issues their communication problems. I wasn’t able to make a business out of the way to make a living out of it next after like eight months of conflict mediation. I started freelancing and that’s how I got into WordPress freelancing. So all of this all of these changes, of have created an environment of uncertainty. We have been living with my family out of our own savings, which of course they are limited. And coupled extreme exhaustion because of not being able to properly created a huge pressure really challenging period of my life with my wife so throughout that period having meditation as a tool would say looking back I would say was a life savior. Marriage savior because. Keeping the practice on a daily basis. It was like a psychological disregarding what would happen during that day and during that night and the next morning. I would take some time to sit and meditate and again in the evening to sit and meditate so. and making a comparison here, if you work hard in your garden during the evening, you feel like having a shower. So similarly meditation is like a psychological shower, which would help me. Let’s say or things that I went through. Nathan Wrigley: [00:17:02] I wanted to ask more questions about what meditation feels like is the purpose of meditating to allow you to experience something for the duration of the meditation. So say you do 10 minutes a day. Other benefits only to be felt during those 10 minutes or do they extend out further into the day the week your life? Marius Vetrici: [00:17:29] Yeah, yeah indeed. There are a couple of things happening out there. I was meditating more than that. I was meditating one hour in the evening one hour in the morning and although this might sound like where on Earth the take this time for meditating hour of meditation would literally replace one hour sleep. would literally sleep less. I just didn’t didn’t feel like sleeping more. And the other our I was probably taking partly from my personal time partly from work partly from being more productive at work and. Obviously from from my family nowadays, I’m meditating less I meditating probably around one hour per day, back to your question about looking for certain state It depends it really depends on the meditation school that you’re following. Some school would pursue and would tell you that meditation is blissful and it’s that stay that you are training your mind to get into whenever there’s a and unpleasant reality around someone is shouting at you. Some is a abusing using you and then you switch that switch on and Bang you’re so blissful. This is certainly one I’m not sure it really works in reality in the case of the meditation. I’m practicing Vipasana. If you remember Vipasana of means to see things as they really are so things are not always very positive around us. You know things happen in life. So if you train your mind during meditation to look for Blissful States, you will train your mind. To look for those Blissful States in your day-to-day life, which means you will probably put more misery into your life rather than taking some misery out of it because you cannot control life. So what actually Vipasana would teach you is. By starting to observe your breath you just focus on your breath inside the inside of your nostrils and you learn that the impermanence of your breath instead of training your mind that there is a pleasant stay that you need to search for you train your mind to observe the things that are there either Pleasant or unpleasant and to deal with them to face them in a balanced manner. this is a much more practical way to live. It’s an art. They would even call it the Art of Living to train your mind to observe things as they happen in your body and then to observe I don’t know to observe things around you maybe you see an ice cream, but you know, this is not healthy for you. Then you just feel that Sensations those Sensations, you know mouth and You observe them and you know, those will come and go those are transitory or maybe. I don’t know taxi drivers. Someone would just snag your taxi you call the cab and someone just snagged it. Of course there will be many Pleasant Sensations unpleasant Sensations in your body. And what would say most of the people would do they would probably. Say something nice to see they would shout they would at least think something bad of the other person now, this is the moment when meditation could kick in and help you you would observe. That’s primary impulse that manifest itself as a bodily sensation and while observing it you will be aware of it. And then instead of the body driving you you will start driving your body. It’s like you you are in a car which is a very speedy car and you are on a highway and who’s driving home. Is it the truck are driving you or you’re the driver? In the driver’s seat. So the same applies to the situation. I have described you will not look at the other person snagging your cab, but you will observe the situation you will see what can be done in that situation and you will do the right thing in that moment. You will have the right speech at the right tone. You of course, you will refrain yourself from from being aggressive and from I don’t know doing things that you would certainly regret later on. So it’s about training your mind to be balanced in all aspects of your life. Nathan Wrigley: [00:22:06] Marius described what he sees as the benefits of meditation achieving balance perspective equanimity. now I wanted to know about the mechanics of. A passerby might see Mary a sitting in a relaxed position but beyond that there’s not really a lot to witness. It’s all going on in Maurices head. So how is meditation done? What are you doing during that time? Marius Vetrici: [00:22:39] I will describe my particular experience to practicing the Vipasana. So according to this school as taught by SN Goenka in order to properly learn Vipasana you need to take a 10-day course and during those ten days The first three days you will observe your breath natural breath without changing it. So you sit with your eyes closed and you keep your attention your awareness inside of your nostrils and your upper lip and you just feel the breath coming in coming out. There will be millions of myriad’s of thoughts coming through head popping in but then you just gently bring back your attention to the breath. Why breath because breath it’s a connection breath is tightly connected to your diaphragm and the breath is both a very conscious as well as unconscious act. One can consciously start breathing in a certain way. But then if you go through your day, you just forget to breathe and then the breath is unconscious. So we use breath in Vipasana because it connects subconscious mind. With a conscious mind, so by observing the breath its quality the breath could be shallow. It could be deep. It could be fast. It could be slow. It could go through my it could be warm. It could be maybe cold. It would go from one nostril. It could be 3 it could go through the other nostril so. By merely observing the breath you’re observing the reality of your own body within the body of your own framework and the effect of observing your breath is that you sharpen your mind quite a lot. Imagine you’re doing this for three long days around 11 hours per day, of course with some breaks and once you finish those three days you move on to the second part. Which is the actual Vipasana meditation, the first part is called anapana meditation is very simple. You can start practicing at home just sit and observe your breath as it comes as it goes natural bear breath, pure breath now in order to learn Vipasana you really have to take this 10-day course. So during the next seven days out of those 10 days you start observing the sensations that appear in your body when I say a sensation is literally physical sensations. And again, you see it with your eyes closed, but because of the first three days you start feeling a ton of sensations or you’re on your body when I say sensation, I mean it. Be sensation of warmth or coldness. It could be a sensation of itching of punching of throbbing or of itching anything is a sensation, even though the touch of her clothes on your body. It is a sensation. We’re not looking for anything supernatural well again looking for the real stuff the real thing that is there and that you are experiencing right now, and then you observe those sensati ons placing your attention on the top of your head then on your face, then on the back of your face and then on your scalp to the right side and on the left side of the head and then you observe your your throat and then your chest and so on. So basically this is called a body scanning. It’s when you say scanning is like you are observing the sensations in all the parts of your body. You don’t have to miss any part. Now the key when you are observing these sensations the key here is to remain equanimous. And what is the definition here of remaining equanimous? Well, every time you log observe a sensation there will be three things that you will notice as you practice. The first thing that you will notice is impermanence. Or as they call it in in Pali it’s anicha, which is constantly changing. So any sensation bit Pleasant or unpleasant maybe it could be a sensation of pain because of you set too long and you feel like moving. That’s okay. You can move you can change your posture but observe that sensation of pain or of. Maybe you have a pleasant sensation because you think you’re thinking about partying were a nice dish that you’re craving for. So the the key of being equanimous here. Is observe sensation as it is without manifesting neither craving for it and nor a version so it’s without seeing all this is very pleasant. I want more of it and of course without seeing this is so painful. I hate it. I hate this. I hate that. I want to get rid of this. I want to get rid of that. So doing this for. Those 10 days you’re training your mind to observe the reality of your own body as it is and you also training your mind to observe the sensations that to observe this essential quality of the sensations, which is impermanence. What is impermanence a sensation will come and go. If you scan your body one time, you’ll see there are certain Sensations. Next time you will see different Sensations and so on and so on. So you’re basically training your mind to get to get used to the phenomenon of change within your framework of your body. So that’s essentially the experience that the teaches you the impermanence. And then in the real life, you’re getting more used to the change around and you’re getting more used to the change and unexpected things happening here and there and you just know of that will come and go. Nathan Wrigley: [00:28:13] Although sitting still can be very nice. It’s hard to imagine sitting and breathing for such long periods. I know that the goal is not to expect this to be easy. In fact, I’m sure that achieving this for seven days is very challenging which made me wonder if it was common to become frustrated and feel that you were failing at meditation. Marius Vetrici: [00:28:39] Now you see that’s a great question because I personally went through this many times and what you’re calling a frustration. It’s an emotion that has an underlying sensation but your mind because it’s not yet trained. It just doesn’t feel it. So what I’m doing is I’m observing the sensations of my body I’m always looking to see what is beyond this frustration. And what a surprisingly notice is. this feeling of frustration. It just comes and goes it is impermanent. And this is a huge learning. It is a crucial learning to understand that everything will come and go be it won’t stay and of course not all the styles are for everybody. I’m not saying this is the right path with that is the right path. Probably that’s why there are thousands of way to meditate. The reason I like this style of meditation is because it feels very positive results in my own life. I’ve went through thousands hundreds of thousands changes in my I would say my character traits by merely. Becoming aware that hey I was doing this for years. So suddenly I have a choice about it. And that is that is really powerful when it comes to knowing they don’t they self knowing oneself. And there’s this one more thing that I would like to add about sensations. What is the sensation? I told you a sensation I’ve mentioned a real thing that you are experiencing. It’s a bodily thing that you’re experiencing but essentially every sensation. It’s a biochemical reaction. So essentially we are training your train your mind to feel the underlying biochemical reactions that happen in your body. At the physical level, but you perceive them as a sensations. Nathan Wrigley: [00:30:41] That led me to think about the opposite outcome. What if you were to become very passionate about meditation you achieve great results and it’s exactly what you’d hoped for might it be possible to meditate too much to in a sense become addicted because it’s so pleasurable. Marius Vetrici: [00:31:04] Well, it is certainly that the right word use you can get at times a pleasant sensations again with a pleasant sensations just like with the unpleasant ones the key here is to observe. What is beyond that pleasurable sensation and if you’ll keep practicing certainly see that that sensation will come and go. whenever and that’s part of the journey that part of the learning whenever you are clinging to a pleasant sensation you’re not control you you don’t have the ability to control that sensation. Essentially. It’s just a bodily process. It’s a biochemical reaction. But because you your mind to create four more to one for more and you’re becoming addicted to that. there will come a time very soon when you will crave for more pleasant Sensations and because he won’t get them then unpleasant sensations will kick in and very soon your pleasant sensations will be replaced with unpleasant sensations. So again, we are talking about them in it’s like an ocean. It’s like an ocean that’s content in it has waves in all the directions and it comes. Goes and comes and go in the key. He is to sit there and to to observe the ocean and to remain equinumerous. Nathan Wrigley: [00:32:27] Concentrating upon your breath or whatever else you’re focusing on is quite an isolated activity. You can do all of this by yourself whenever you like. There seems to be quite a lot of self-discovery working it out as you go for yourself Marius mentioned that you can go on Retreats, but is it possible or better to just figure it all out on your own? Marius Vetrici: [00:32:54] When it comes to the basics of meditation, you can start observing your breath at home. If you want to learn the Vipasana which is far beyond observing your breath. You would rather have to take a 10-day course. It’s not a seven days a ten day course and no for the sake of clarity and mentioning this I think it’s the best investment you can make in yourself and in your life and there the meditation is guided there literally audio and video records that would guide you and there are assistant teachers that would answer your questions about meditation and you will you will be taught meditation technique step-by-step. That’s like thousands of years old and it has brought benefits to many many people. Nathan Wrigley: [00:33:51] My exposure to learning new skills is that I start from a point of ignorance and with hard work and dedication. I get better at it. I could not ride a bike, but I got on and after many Falls I learned how to do it. I started with an empty glass and filled up with experience and practice. Until I became better. This all seems quite different. It seems like Marius is saying that it’s already in us that the glass is not empty at the start. It’s just that most of us don’t look for it. Marius Vetrici: [00:34:33] When we are born those who have kids more than one they certainly know. How different can be those two kids one can be very very quiet and peaceful and he would observe all the rules and the other one would be just the I’m saying this because I don’t really think we are born as empty cups. I think we are coming with some pre-installed software. I don’t know. Where does it come Why is there but those initial character traits those preferences? let’s rely on genetics. I think it’s simpler. Let’s say we are in born with some genetic traits and they would make us prefer one thing or or another similarly. When you approach meditation. You can be more or less ready to approach it. You can be nearer or father on this path. However, if someone is determined to learn to meditate. It just doesn’t matter. Where are you on this path? It’s about It’s about persistence. It’s about grit. It’s about that curiosity to see what is behind this unbearable. Whatever feeling situation if you had if you are curious enough to keep going to just keep going and keep going and keep going. Course by being aware keeping oneself aware and making sure you’re working on the right path. You were certainly learn learn new things. Nathan Wrigley: [00:36:12] This is going to be hard to express but I’ll give it a go. Human history goes back a long way many thousands of years ago people roamed the Earth and live their lives which were very different to our own overtime discoveries were made which were added to the Human Experience and each subsequent generation built upon the shoulders of their ancestors first. We were cold. So we sheltered in caves then fire was discovered and heat became portable. Walls and roofs later surrounded the fire. And now we have complex Plumbing networks, you get the idea humans evolved and the ideas change, but the meditation that Marius pursues was first practice many years ago many of the ideas and Technologies from that era have been dropped and replaced but not this. How did it survive? Marius Vetrici: [00:37:15] More than 2,000 so years ago, so according facts as I have read them as as I know them. was this guy called Prince Siddhartha Gautama, which he was a prince she said why is all of this suffering in the world. So he just went on this journey of fighting with the sources of suffering so. That’s how he kept on going and going and he discovered the vipassana meditation by the way, some some people call this guy the oldest psychologist of the world because he was working with the mind and with the matter but later so he was teaching this rapacity technique meditation, later even during his life and after local religious and cults they have taken the the meditation and they have basically invented the Buddhism. Where does this word Buddhist come from? It comes from Buddha Buddha means. Literally enlightened nothing more or less So he invented this this technique he discovered it is not invented. He’s discovered within the frame of his body. He described it. He started teaching it and then some people around him started to create a religion it as I understood him never intended to create a religion neither. Anyway, I’m not going to. Go into religious stuff now, but as I’ve heard neither Jesus nor Buddha, they didn’t want to create a religion. They were they have discovered something and they they wanted to share it with the world now because of various influences and political stuff and the religions of those some people decided to make a religion out of this. So that’s why I’m calling it a pre Buddhist thing. this guy Gautama the Buddha Gautama the enlightened one he to. Don’t have as many people as possible to benefit to have the benefits of this technique he basically send out a couple of hundred of disciples around the world to just teach the technique. Nobody has to bow to him. Nobody has to manage mention his name or anything like that. So throughout the next two thousand years. many branches of Buddhism that sprang up and appeared but in Burma in the now Myanmar or Burma. There was a lineage of monks that they preserved the technique In a way that would be less. Let’s say less Buddhist and more just into technique the last 60 years this Burmese guy who by the way the meantime, he passed away. the teacher Goenka. He basically to teach them the Pisano technique the pre-buddhist style just the technique without you having to respect or follow any kind of rituals war or presets or anything like that. So the the technique he was teaching its Universal. It doesn’t depend on any religion because breath it’s a very Universal thing. Breath, it’s not Catholic or Protestant or Orthodox or or Hindus or Muslims or anything like that? It’s just a breath and similarly your bodily sensation of creating an inversion. It’s similarly, it’s Universal. So what what this teacher has done Goenka he has created the first meditation certain center in this tradition and this tradition this school of Vipasana it’s amongst the other things that it respects is it’s the purity It’s what they call the purity of purpose. It’s basically they are giving out this teaching for free without expecting anything. Absolutely anything in return. There is no minimum recommended donation or anything like that. And during the last 60 or 70 years there have been more than 120 centers all around the world. And as far as I know there are three centers the United Kingdom in teaching people thousands of people although every year to meditate the Vipasana and this centers. They don’t charge. Anything you get free teaching you get free food and you get free accommodation and that is because they. Basically, they are following the purity of purpose. getting out is not conditioned by anything else the purpose. It’s pure of any conditioning the center’s are ran by volunteers and the way it works. And this is one thing that. of attracted me to eat I go to take a course. My course has been paid for by a previous meditator, but how. you finish when you finish a course your own course, it’s free. You don’t have to pay anything for it. But in case you think this meditation will will will bring benefit to someone else you can leave donation of any sum nobody will ever ask you for this one for that amount and you are basically paying for the next person that will come in and believe it or not. There are about 130 centers all over the world. The oldest European Center is in UK is called it has been working like that for more than 50 years in Europe alone. But there’s there are centers all over the world in Germany, Austria Italy Switzerland Spain. You name it in Scandinavian countries, of course in Asia Africa and the Americas. So yeah, this is about history so somehow. They were some forces that throughout the history. They have invented the religion on top of this technique. Somehow there were some guys that kept this this technique any other religious belief or dogma and it just keeps going. Nathan Wrigley: [00:43:59] So perhaps your interest has been piqued perhaps you want to know more about meditation. What’s the best way to start? Marius Vetrici: [00:44:12] If you are attracted to meditation then just go for it. Disregarding the style you can grab an app and start using it or you can go to a local Meditation Center. Just try it for yourself and see if it works for you. If you want to try Vipasana, Vipasana meditation, you can go to the website that I mentioned. Maybe we can have a link at the bottom of the podcast. Yeah, and there is a section called mini annapanna meditation and there is a short. Like 10 – 15 minutes recording with some instructions and that I think would be the best place to start it some 10-15 minutes efforts. You can do it at your home in your home’s comfort at your own pace and you just listen to those instructions you follow them and you can get a taste of it. Nathan Wrigley: [00:45:05] What an interesting conversation such a lot of ground covered but doubtless so many stones still left unturned before we parted. I asked Marius if there was anything that he wanted to add. That we’d missed out. Marius Vetrici: [00:45:22] What can I say life will constantly change? Even though we think we have the recipe we have the solution there will come a day when the recipe will need to be rewritten and by constantly learning and looking for tools and mentors and teachers around us and by getting better and better by developing ourselves. think we can we can have a pretty good journey. And of course never forget about the others that come behind they they maybe they need your guidance. and you can eventually shed some light and then help someone just the way you’ve been helped yourself in those aspects of your life. So just keep going. Yeah keep walking keep going and don’t forget to smile and always look for a solution. And by the way someone I really respect said to me once that from every situation so from from every seemingly. From every situation that seems to have no no solution. No exit. There are at least three exits at least three solutions. So just keep looking for them. Nathan Wrigley: [00:46:39] One of the purposes of the press forward podcast is to lift the lid on topics that don’t get talked about enough to allow people to share their stories. So that others might listen and by listening they may gain an understanding that they’re not alone. There are other people out there who have faced the same situations that you’re facing. They have found a way through and can offer support to you on your journey. Maybe that person is already in your life, but they might not be and that’s what wpn up is here for to connect you with the support that you need. The press forward podcast is brought to you today by Green Geeks. 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