Heavily Meditated: The Byron Bay Author You Need to Meet Today

By Jessica Humphries

We chat to author of the new Heavily Meditated about all things meditation and more. It got real.

Tell us about the journey that led you to where you are now

I’m originally from the United States, where I spent a good part of my childhood growing up on a ranch in Oregon. Grayback Mountain Ranch. Pretty magical place, and chock full of hippies. So at a young age, I had my first introduction into things like incense and organics, smudge sticks and sweat lodges, farmers markets and barter festivals. (My soccer team was literally called The Tie-Dyed Tigers. No joke.) Like most of my redheaded compatriots, I was spirited and feisty and forever being grounded for talking back. I was student body president and also started my first business at the ripe old age of 8 selling crafts at our local farmers market. So yeah, I was never short on achievement and motivation. But there is a flip side to that coin. Anxiety, worry and angst.

Yep, those were my bag. Even as a youngin; I was worrying well beyond my place in life.  

…Midway through my freshman year in college, my GPA was picture-perfect, my diet was calculated down to the square root of sweet F all and my body (and personality) had all but faded away. My family intervened and I withdrew from classes to seek help. Psychologists and psychiatrists and prescriptions helped bridge the gap, but one day I woke up and couldn’t tell how I felt. Through the fog of anti-depressants and mood regulators, I just couldn’t feel... anything.

I realised that in my case (and I get that this isn’t the case for everyone) that I had to decide to be happy. I had to wake up and fight for it every day by making decisions and choices that contributed to happiness. I didn’t know how to do this, I didn’t have the tools. At all. But I decided I’d just figure it out.

… I started meditating… over and over again. I’d grin and bear it through the meditation portion of my yoga classes, letting my mind skip between my grocery list, what to have for dinner, and “oh shit, Ommmmmmm.” At home, I’d vow to meditate. Every. Damn. Day. I’d light a stick of incense, close my eyes and listen to this-and-that guided meditation. I’d set a schedule, only to have my resolve fade away like a bad dye job on Day 5. I’d bail on my budding meditation practice, defeated, disempowered and a little irritated. It’s no wonder I couldn’t stick with it. I kept stopping because I wasn’t committed. And I wasn’t committed because I didn’t really   want  to meditate. I was terrified. Terrified of meditating? I know, sounds ridiculous. Like being afraid of a kitten. But on a fundamental, subconscious level, I was absolutely petrified of taking my foot off the gas and loosening my grip on the steering wheel. I was afraid that if I let my guard down and relaxed too much my life would basically fall to pieces…

Resistance stands in the way of your growth, your expansion, the actualisation of your full potential. And ultimately, you have to make a choice between believing the resistance or breaking through it and expanding into your potential. I chose my potential…Meditating helped me to slow my roll and calm down. And that sealed the deal for my body and mind to realign and get back on track. I said sayonara to the spin- cycles of stress and anxiety. I parted ways with perfectionism and that persistent, paralysing fear of failure…Like many chronic over-achievers, I still have to be super conscious of staying in the slow lane. (Daily conversation with self: “Put ya blinker on, woman, and get out of the passing lane. Go’on now.”) But I can tell you this. Come rain or shine, come sick or screaming babies, come airplanes and crossing datelines, come hospital stays or holidays, come pressing deadlines or alarm-clock fails, I show up and meditate. I’m a straight up meditation junkie. It’s a non- negotiable in my day. That doesn’t mean that my meditation practice looks exactly the same every single day. Because: life. But I show up, even it’s 3 minutes or 10 breaths.  

What have you gained from your meditation practice?

Meditation has helped me develop more compassion for myself and others, as well as a built-in attitude of gratitude. For me, that means less anger, less angst and less nail-biting. My mood is stable. My feathers don’t get ruffled very often and I rarely get my panties in a bunch. (Which is a lot more comfortable than the alternative.) At night, I sleep like a log. I totally didn’t see this one coming, but meditation also paved the way for a healed relationship with my body, exercise and food. Long gone are regimented routines, cycling through restrictive diets, or battling bingey behaviour. There’s no need for any of them. I eat and move intuitively now, and that keeps everything in a state of sustainable, holistic harmony and balance. Starting to get the picture about why I’m so obsessed with meditation? Yeah. It’s literally been life-changing…

How do you integrate the practices and philosophies of mindfulness/meditation into your daily life? 

In so many ways! How much time do you have?! Hah.

I think that fundamentally, you can’t have a meaningful meditation practice and not integrate the practices and philosophies into your daily life. My teacher Yogarupa Rod Stryker says that the measure of your meditation is the quality of your life. I really believe that. So if you have a practice that’s working for you, the inflow effect into your life is a given. And the effect is indiscriminate. A meaningful meditation practice changes the way you relate to business, relationships, parenting, wellbeing, creativity, food, travel, the environment, death… literally everything.

That being said, a few highlights. Being present and listening well are two things I always try to practice, but especially with my kids. Sharing the principles of mindfulness and meditation with the kids is probably the most fulfilling thing. Being able to introduce my children to meditation or breathing techniques to help them have a sense of agency in themselves is one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever experienced. They don’t always use the tools, but knowing that I’m offering them options on how to manage their state feels really good. Meditation has also made me less afraid. I always say that meditation helped me go from fear-of-failure to full potential.

As Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in her book Big Magic, “perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat, pretending to be elegant when actually it’s just terrified. Because underneath that shiny veneer, perfectionism is nothing more that a deep existential angst the says, again and again, “I am not good enough and I will never be good enough.” Meditation continues to help me in feeling like I’m good enough, just as I am. And when you believe that (or at least remind yourself of it regularly through meditation), you can be so much braver with your life and much more compassionate with yourself and others. Which, for me, means a life where I feel like I’m being of service, showing up as my best self, and using my gifts fully.

I also eat differently than I did before I was a meditator. Meditation helped me understand that what I’m eating is important, but so is how I am eating. Look, I’m a mama so I definitely still eat a few meals a week standing up at the kitchen counter, but I do try to sit and be with my meal whenever possible! When I sit down at the table, I like to put my feet flat on the floor and take big full belly breath to invite myself into presence. I also like to “bless my bowl” with a little gratitude ritual before eating. It’s so nice to infuse your food with a positive charge. But also, this action of relaxing the body and calming the nervous system can make digestion so much smoother, too.

What advice would you give to other busy bees who want more zen in their lives? 

Start where you are! Don’t put yourself under pressure to bust out a twice-daily 20 minute practice if that feels overwhelming and unachievable. Try something as simple as 7 minutes every morning. Small, regular victories are so much more empowering and powerful than sporadic wins. And remember that the benefits show up if you do. So done is always better than perfect. In terms of being busy and wanting to slow down and create a sense of calm, I have found it useful to look at the underlying resistance you might have to slowing down. Is there some part of you that is afraid to slow down? There’s usually a lot of gold there. For example, I was afraid if I slowed down, my whole life would fall apart. I was literally afraid to meditate! For me, that was a critical realisation.

What inspired you to write ‘heavily meditated’ and what did the writing process look like for you? 

I wanted to create what I wish existed when I set out into the world of meditation. It felt too hard to find all the information I needed - and at that time I wasn’t in a position to go on a retreat or drop a grand on training. I wanted a complete tool-kit with everything I needed to know to feel empowered to kick off a practice. So I’ve gathered up the best of what I’ve learned about meditation and put it together into a simple, practical, easy-to-use, and fun-to-read guide. Plus, I included access to five different audio guided meditations so that you literally have everything you need. And if you have a practice, the perspectives in the book might just deepen your commitment.

Writing the book happened pretty slowly. I started working on it about 4 years ago and have had two babies in the meantime! I also creative directed the design and photography, so that added to the time it took to have a finished product to share with the world. As far as the process, I used a Pomodoro timer, noise-cancelling headphones and binaural beats to write in 25 minute increments whenever I could. The way my life is right now, I just don’t have 8 hour stretches for writing so I took whatever chunks of time I could find and dug in. I had a somewhat unconventional journey to being a published author. Normally you send a proposal and a sample chapter to gauge interest, but in my case, the book was done, photographed and designed when I approached publishers. I planned on self-publishing the book but wasn’t happy with the print quality I was able to access as a self-pub author. On a whim, I sent the finished book (literally, a print ready file!) to a few of publishers and received three offers. It was really incredible. I’m so grateful to work with Hardie Grant as my publisher. It’s a dream coming true. I don’t think I realised that publishing a book was a lifelong dream until I held the first copy of the book in my hands. It was really emotional and in that moment, I realised that this was always my dream and part of my dharma.

For more about Caitlin and all things Heavily Meditated, head to www.caitlincady.com