SKANEATELES, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) — In our stressful world, many people are turning to the ancient practice of meditation. In fact, mediation is the fastest-growing health trend in America, according to Mindful.org.
In this week’s Conversation, NewsChannel 9’s Carrie Lazarus spoke to a mediation teacher who grew up in Central New York, and has been teaching this powerful tool for 40 years.
John Osborne is a certified Meditation Teacher who went from managing people’s money to helping manage their minds.
“The meditation came before managing money. You know I learned to meditate early in life my first year in college. Everything changed after I learned to meditate; better relationships, my grades went up, so I took a year off after college and went to Europe for six months and learned to teach meditation,” said Osborne.
Osborne says meditation was really the bedrock for everything in his life, so much so that after many years of meditating himself, he wanted to teach others how to do it as well.
“There is a place inside everyone which is always peaceful always calm. I’m sure everyone who’s listening has had moments when they’re dropped into that place looking at a beautiful sunset, a moment of connection and love with another person, and you spend the rest of your life looking for a way to get back there,” said Osborne.
In order to not think with a “monkey mind” with thoughts buzzing all around, Osborne suggests diving down just a little deeper in your mind in order to stop that.
“The monkey mind, as annoying as that can be, it’s just on the surface. It’s like the waves on the lake or the ocean and as soon as you dive down a little bit, everything calms down,” said Osborne. “The people who complain the most about monkey mind, they’re some of my best students really because as soon as they get beyond the monkey mind they’re like, oh I could have been doing this my whole life.”
Additionally, there are many known health benefits to meditating.
“It lowers the blood pressure, helps people sleep better, takes away the stress and it connects you to that calm place.”
Osborne has taught mediation to people most in need including Veterans and healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“They discovered that first of all, they slept better because a lot of them couldn’t sleep because of tremendous fatigue. They started to reconnect with the reason they wanted to become doctors and nurses and they rediscovered that helping instinct. They’d lost that and they started to find it,” said Osborne.
Osborne says he’s his own best advertisement for meditation and he hopes that he can share his knowledge for the rest of his life.
To learn more, you can email John at john.osborne@gmail.com.
