Yum Cha
Yum Cha Chats: Carta's 5 easy steps to get started with meditation
Mindfulness is an essential part of the rave
A good party can really help us heal — letting go of inhibitions and throwing every morsel of pent up body energy into a kinetic and starry dynamo-mode creates a sense of elation, maybe even enlightenment for some. It's powerful enough to completely alter one's emotional balance for a few hours.
But like everything in life, a good session on the floor needs some balancing out; every moment of exertion needs a dose of replenishment.
The best source you could hear some advice from should come from a person who ritually immerses themselves in hectic routines that revolve around the dance floor — like Carta, one of China's more popular and busiest touring DJs, who started a career in dance music at the age of 14. Carta's solution to countering the mind and body stress that often needs to be endured as a touring DJ or routine raver, is meditation.
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He also understands how it's not an easy thing to get into for many. The thought of sitting still and listening to your own mind might seem daunting for some, but that's what your mind needs from you — it needs decompression and disconnection from all the stimulation you've been feeding it. It needs a moment to breathe in peace.
With most of Asia now revelling once again on the dance floor, we want to remind you to party with mindfullness, Carta has graciously prepared a basic, easy to follow 5 step guide to put you at ease about a practice that always keep your mind at ease.
Follow Carta's 5 easy steps to get started with meditation.
There is no one way of meditating. No rules, no laws. Most people tend to think that you have to sit up straight and listen to OM music, but that is most definitely not the only way. Infact, anything works because it is about reaching a certain frequency in the mind rather than physical boundaries. So whatever floats your boat, however you are most comfortable and easiest to get into that zone, then that would be your way to go.
When most asked about how it feels to meditate or reach that state of mind, I usually go back to them with the question of what are they most passionate about doing and how do they feel in that moment because, for me, only when you are truly passionate about what you are currently doing then you can be fully in that moment. It’s that feeling I get when I’m playing in front of a massive and amazing crowd that brings me to the same energy and state of mind when I meditate. It is that simple and that’s why I could meditate for hours on a daily basis.
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It is very easy to get started. Most people focus too much on the idea of having no thoughts, which will create a sort of force in preventing you from getting there. It’s completely ok to have thoughts popping into your mind as that is how we are designed but the key here is not to dive into those thoughts when they do appear, don’t question the thought itself or question the source of this thought. Rather just read it simply as a title of a book you browsed passed but you do not open this book and start reading. With whatever thought comes in, you simply just view it as a thought itself because you are just an observer, that is all.
As I mentioned in the last tip, this is an interesting concept because most would assume when you meditate you should have absolute zero thoughts because that’s what you have been told. So what ends up happening with most people when they try to go into their meditative state, they focus so much on the idea itself or having zero thoughts that, in reality, the idea of having no thought becomes a problem in itself. That is still a form of control that needs to be taught how to let go.
I would argue the definition of let go is in fact that you let your mind run on an autopilot mode, which anything at any point in time during your meditation could come in but you don’t wander away with that thought. Generally speaking, none of the whatever comes into your mind would make sense, which is ok. It’s as if your mind is a radio station and you are starting to go on this search of different stations to tune into.
As the listener, it could feel random but the moment you try to select a certain channel or tune into every thought that comes into your mind, and you start to try to solve it and understand it as a equation, the autopilot mode gets switched off and you go back to taking the driver's seat yourself. So first, you have to understand that random thoughts come in and out all the time that are completely normal and the definition of let go is to let go of judgement/thought/comment in any way and rather simply view it as something passing by.
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Mentality is everything. Just like the law of relativity, everything is relative to each other. There is no definite truth. Theoretically speaking, everything is merely an opinion of some sorts, which has been agreed upon by a singular unit or a group. To meditate is to dive within the mind, which is the thing that is and will be creating every scenario in your life, the ups and the downs, the totality of your own reality. To be able to understand your true self and nature through meditation can help you better understand life as a whole. If you don’t know yourself, then how can you live a fulfilling life as you wish to?
