Why I stopped meditating and replaced it with something much more powerful

I lost faith in formal meditation on a flight from Melbourne to Hong Kong. I was in a state of fully-fledged anxiety that had been present for the past three days and had no signs of it letting up. While I attempted to cure my anxiety with mindfulness, my meditation practice actually made me feel even more anxious.

It didn’t matter whether I tried to slow down my thoughts, or just sat with my thoughts and listened, or whether I attempted to be particularly present in the aeroplane listening to the sounds and seeing what was around me. Feeling the aliveness in my hands, advice which comes from one of the most respected mindfulness proponents in the world, Eckhart Tolle, simply sought to make me more aware of just how fast my heart was beating. Suffice to say, that after many hours of meditation and mindfulness, I was tired and frustrated.

“Laughter is true alignment” — Abraham Hicks.

It was then that the strangest thing happened. I watched a funny movie with the aim of simply distracting myself away from my racing heartbeat, sweaty palms and busy mind, but what I actually found was so much more — it was an antidote. Around twenty minutes of belly laughter at the movie Mamma Mia was enough to completely shift my state from highly negative…