The Blue Sky Meditation Protocol

You may be thinking...

Oh, meditation... That's like thinking about not thinking, right? I already tried meditation, I suck at meditation! I just get irritated with myself for thinking when I shouldn't be thinking.

Well, you probably haven't had success with meditation yet because your mind needs to warm up, your mind needs some foreplay to meditate. The Blue Sky Protocol is a process that will lubricate your mind like it's in a candlelit, jacuzzi filled with KY jelly with a Barry White album playing in the background.The Blue Sky Protocol will give your mind the foreplay it needs.

You've probably heard of the myriad benefits of meditation elsewhere; antiaging, memory, neuroplasticity, stress management, and "being present" in social interactions. But what are the immediate, day-to-day benefits? If you are going to devote 10-20 minutes a day to a mindfulness practice you probably want to know what you can expect to get out of it in the short term...

Transitioning to a social mood

If you are like me, you have a job or work that fills your day with hardcore, logical-faculty demanding tasks. You probably work with computers. However, you want to have an active social life after work, to enjoy the life you are working so damn hard for! A lot of times you intend to go out and do some fun social thing after work, but by the time you get home at the end of the day, you are in such a non-social mood; going out and getting into a social mood just seems like so much work that you say, Fuck it; I'm just going to stay in tonight! Netflix.

Let's say you do find yourself in a social environment after hours of soul-destroying work, there is just a big hump to transitioning into a social mode, isn't there? The first couple of conversations you have are awkward, your jokes and witty remarks are a little off, and maybe you run out of things to say in a conversation. Most people have NO other way of getting into a social mood other than just spending a couple of hours drinking (but you don't have to be one of them).

The good news is that meditation is effective at priming your mind to get in a social mood.

This makes such a difference for me that I will frequently show up a little late for social engagements and dates just because I insist on doing 15-20 minutes of meditation before going out (I'll explain later on in this article how I time my meditation.)I will come home from work, exhausted, and not in the mood to talk to anyone, but I'll make myself do my meditation, and I will feel about five hundred percent better. Then, following the principle that emotion follows motion, I will leave the house. Start walking, breathe the fresh air, and I'll reach whatever social event or just get into a social interaction sporadically. So 20-25 minutes previously, I was like this zombie borg drone with zero personality, and now sober, I'm being witty, articulate, playful, and taking social risks.

It's remarkable how permeable meditation makes your mood. You have to try it to believe it.

Mid-afternoon exhaustion

A lot of times in the mid-afternoon, I will find myself in the trough of decision fatigue. It's like my mind is a web browser with way too many tabs open; I start thinking slower, jumping unproductively from task to task, and even making bad decisions. However, if I do 10 minutes of meditation around 1 PM, It brings me incredible clarity about what I should spend the rest of my day doing, I will get right back into that focused zone I was in at 10:30 AM.

Relaxing before bed

I'm passionate about my work and at the same time, my work is technical, logic-demanding stuff, which is a recipe for insomnia; tossing and turning in bed for hours before falling asleep. I'd say that for the first 10 years of my business career, I have suffered from at least mild insomnia. For a year I self-medicated with alcohol, I went through a phase when I just could not fall asleep without a couple of drinks. But alcohol screws up sleep, a lot of times it will help you fall asleep but then it spikes your blood sugar and wakes you back up in the middle of the night.

A lot of people smoke marijuana or look at porn to relax before bed which is probably better than drinking alcohol but certainly have their own issues. In my obsessive exploration of the Nootropics and biohacking rabbit hole, I've found some even better tranquilizing agents like Ashwagandha, Phenibut, and red Kratom strains, that have the same effects as alcohol but with almost none of the negatives.However, the really good news is that whatever your vice is that puts you to sleep,15-20 minutes of meditation right before bed (or even in bed) will do pretty much the same thing. My sleep has never been better after long, demanding days.

Pleasure

Good meditation is like good sex in that if you are doing it right it should feel really good. The first time I finished doing meditation following the Blue Sky Protocol, I got up and thought to myself; Wow I feel great! It can be a pleasurable leisure activity like eating ice cream, sipping your favorite cocktail, smoking, or getting a massage - on some days meditation is the most pleasurable thing I do!

So other than all the other long-term benefits of meditation that you hear the gurus, CEOs, and celebrities talking about those are the four short-term benefits that you can expect within your first ten sessions of meditation.

The Blue Sky Protocol: 6 steps

1. Bodyweight - You start by just focusing on your body weight, feel where your body weight is concentrated on the chair or bed you are resting on.

2. Listening - Open monitoring of the sounds around you. Don't focus too intensely on a particular sound but just let the sounds pass through your mind. Be aware of them. You could even try to count the number of sounds you are hearing simultaneously.

3. Body scan - You are going to begin a body scan by asking what is the overall mood of your body. It could be tired, sore, restless, relaxed, or even excited. Then starting with the top of your head you want to scan down, part by part asking yourself if that part of your body feels tense or relaxed. You'll start at the top of your head and eventually reach your toes.

4. Counting breaths - You will begin to breathe deeply in and out, as you do, just focus on saying in your head:

InnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnOutttttttttttttttttttttttttttttVery slowly and you breathe profoundlyThen begin to count to 10InnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnOneeeeeeeeeeeeeInnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnTwooooooooooooo

You get the idea...Try to focus your mind just on the counting, occasionally another thought will pop up, but refocus your mind just on the counting and breathing.

5. Blue sky - After you reach ten breaths, imagine your mind as a big beautiful blue sky. Imagine yourself somewhere in nature just enjoying the sight of the tranquil blue sky. That's what you are doing here, just enjoying how beautiful your tranquil mind is. Occasionally a thought will pop up, at this point, it's important to be able to laugh at yourself...

How silly that I worry about that bill right now!How silly that I would compare m