49 Meditation 101 with Benjamin F. Asher, MD

The InForm Fitness Podcast

“There are three pillars to living a healthy and balanced life. Exercise - Nutrition - Rest & Recovery” - Adam Zickerman
Board-certified Head and Neck Surgeon and Transcendental Meditation Instructor Dr. Benjamin Asher join Adam Zickerman and Mike Rogers to discuss the value of rest and recovery through mindfulness and meditation.
http://benjaminashermd.com
Mindfulness Resources:
Learn to meditate with our free basics pack, a 10-day beginner’s course that guides you through the essentials of meditation and mindfulness. It’ll give you a solid foundation to build your practice on.
www.headspace.com/headspace-meditation-app
Dr. Richard Brown Breathing Workshops- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpr89Z1r6Lo
http://www.breath-body-mind.com

Adam Zickerman - Power of 10: The Once-A-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution http://bit.ly/ThePowerofTen
For a FREE 20-Minute strength training full-body workout and to find an Inform Fitness location nearest you, please visit http://bit.ly/Podcast_FreeWorkout

49 Meditation 101 with Benjamin F. Asher, MD Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

meditation, people, asher, mantra, meditation practice, doctor, tm, practice, inform, feel, transcendental meditation, blood pressure, energy, fitness, mdma, totally, body, meditate, creating, stress

SPEAKERS

Dr. Asher, Tim Edwards, Mike, Adam

Dr. Asher 00:06

There is a large body of research out there looking at all aspects of the way meditation affects the physiology, what it does to the brainwaves how brainwaves become more coherent, how blood pressure goes down, heart rate goes down, blood pressure goes down. And this is actually across all types of meditation for you to do. TM or mindfulness based practice. There are studies that look at meditation in attention deficit disorder, and showing that it improves that. And then there are all kinds of quality of life studies showing that people who meditate tend to be happier, live longer lives, and just feel more connected to themselves.

Tim Edwards 00:50

This is episode number 49 of the inform fitness podcast. What's up inform nation I'm Tim Edwards with the inbound podcasting network and a client of inform fitness. Can you believe we are knocking on the door of 50 total episodes for this podcast? Wow, thank you very much for your continued support of this show and our sponsors. Now, over the past year and a half or so, Adam Zckerman the founder of inform fitness and Mike Rogers, the general manager of the inform fitness location there in Manhattan, along with a wide array of guests have discussed in great length the importance of building muscle in a safe manner, so that you can live the kind of life you want to live. We also have talked in great length, about the value of adopting a nutritional plan that supports the building of that muscle and burning fat to Supercharge Your Metabolism. Well, today, we will be drilling down into component or pillar number three, to live a healthy and balanced life, rest and recovery. As you well know your body needs to recoup and heal following your 20 to 30 minute high intensity workout at inform fitness. Well your mind also deserves an opportunity to be rejuvenated through proper sleep and mindfulness. So today, we are welcoming Dr. Benjamin Asher, who is based out of New York City, and is a board certified head and neck surgeon and a transcendental meditation instructor, Dr. Asher will be providing us with an easy to understand conversation regarding mindfulness and meditation, he will break down the value of meditation, the various meditation methods and how to get started on a path of rest, recovery and mindfulness.

Adam 02:33

Okay, welcome to the program, we have a really good show today we have with us, Dr. Benjamin Asher, he's a holistic, ear nose and throat doctor. But he's also a client of inform fitness. And we've known Mike and I have known him for many years as a client. And we've had many, many discussions about very interesting things. He's a fascinating man, and a great doctor, he, obviously a Western trained doctor, a medical doctor in United States in New York, but he's also a holistic, he also looks at the problems in modern medicine. And he deals with them. And he approaches medicine from both Eastern philosophy and modern Western philosophy, to really find the right balance to help the patient because there's a lot of problems in modern medicine, as we know, it's really a business, it's run like a business, sometimes the business goals of a medical practice, are not exactly congruent with the goals of the patient. And Dr. Asher is well aware of that. And he's dealt with in his practice. He's also a meditation expert. And that's kind of why he's here with us today to talk about meditation. And it's nice to hear about meditation from a medically trained doctor, because it's, it's unusual. So a lot of medically trained doctors, they poopoo Eastern medicine. And, you know, that's not cool either. But on the other hand, there's all these gurus out there that don't know anything about medicine. And they're acting as doctors and pushing just the Eastern philosophy. And that's also can be dangerous. A lot of people, for example, I know have go through these holistic treatments when diagnosed with stage four metastatic cancer. And they think that getting IVs of vitamin C and B 12. And meditating is going to cure them of their metastatic cancer. And that's not necessarily the right thing, either. So without further ado, let's bring on Dr. Asher, welcome to the show, Dr. Asher.

Dr. Asher 04:21

Hi, Adam, thank you very much for having me. Hi, Mike, I appreciate you folks participating in this conversation, which I think it's a really important topic for people and it's a very fundamental basis for overall well being.

Adam 04:35

Alright, so let me ask a question first. How did you become interested in meditation and stress reduction? Being a medically Western trained doctor?

Dr. Asher 04:44

Well, I actually started meditating way before I went to medical school. And my interest in going to medical school actually was I thought at the time that I felt so strongly about meditation practice that I felt that if I could be a doctor, I could get more people into interested in having a meditation practice. So I started actually doing meditation when I was 16 years old. And once I started college, I started doing Transcendental Meditation and I became a teacher of Transcendental Meditation. And after that, I've been doing all types of meditation practices and have studied many forms. And so when I people talk to me about meditation, I don't just tell them to do one type. I try to figure out what kind of meditation works best for different types of people and what they seem to like,

Adam 05:34

well, that's interesting. Yeah, I do. I do know, there are lots of different types of meditation. And that's, it's interesting that you help somebody given that personality and whatever, whatever, whatever else makes them up, in your opinion, will decide what meditation is set them up with. But before we get into the different types of meditation, I ...