"When I went to India, my method was psychedelics; when I got back, it was inside of me."
These are the words of United States spiritual teacher Ram Das.
I know what he means. Not about India and the psychedelics.
Meditation and mindfulness are the most powerful (and empowering) things I've learnt to change how I feel and interact with the world around me.
So often, for stress relief and to shift the way we feel, we turn to food, drugs, alcohol or things outside ourselves, when the proverbial power so often lies within.
We often (not always – there are important caveats here) take "external substances to do what the body can do anyway" as Deepak Chopra says.
Inevitably, after an initial immersion in something positive and new, those tenderly forming habits – such as meditating – become obscured as life speeds up and the pedal gets pushed to the mental.
Emails, social networking and news trawling become the rising and setting (blue-screen) sun to our days, and less healthy habits become the defaults for stress relief and winding down.
With this in mind, Jacqui Lewis from meditation centre The Broad Place has created a week-long mind cleanse.
"There's an obsession with body fitness … mind fitness isn't considered to be as important," Lewis aptly points out.
It should be as important, as research continues to show.
Mental hygiene is as important as physical hygiene for wellbeing.
Compassion suits our physical condition, whereas anger, fear and distrust are harmful to our well-being. Therefore, just...Posted by Dalai Lama on Thursday, November 6, 2014
Meditation can help change our brains and ease our pain; disconnecting from technology can help us reconnect with reality (and, as a handy aside, become more productive and even smarter); mindfulness can help our creativity, concentration and appreciation of our relationships.
And it doesn't have to be hard.
In a one-week mind cleanse, you don't have to sit and meditate, attempt a full digital detox, avoid obligations or run from the rat race.
Oh, and there's not a green smoothie, superfood or fasting day in sight.
Rather, for one week you introduce some simple practices to inject a little more joy, create a little more space and tap into our internal resources to re-energise ourselves.
It involves making time for a 15-minute mindfulness moment each day, challenging yourself to think more positively for the week and practising "joyriding", which, according to Lewis, is doing one small thing each day that gives you pleasure – simple things like making a cup of tea, gardening, walking the dog, dancing or jumping in the ocean.
If it sounds simple, that's the point.
"High Grade Living doesn't mean striving and pushing for luxury or premium," Lewis writes in her mind cleanse e-book. "High Grade Living is approachable, achievable, manageable and not expensive. It is about letting the low grade fall away.
"High Grade Living is where we take each day at a time, and do a little more of what we love, of what makes us happy, and a little less of what doesn't serve you on the highest level."
Which all sounds fantastic and even achievable, yet I still fail the "cleanse" on day dot.
The other request of the cleanse is to have a power-down hour upon rising and before going to sleep at night.
This means, for one week, abstaining from all electronics (yes, phone included) for an hour at the start and end of each day.
"Taking a whole week of digital media is not viable for most people," Lewis explains. "But making sure we don't bookmark our day with social media, though, allows our bodies and minds to regenerate."
It's a nice idea, but with early starts – as I suspect is the situation for many others in a digital world – I am online from the moment I wake up.
"Most people check their mobiles whilst still in bed and their feet haven't even hit the ground," Lewis says, when I tell her I'm cheating. "When the first thing and the last thing we do, effectively bookmarking sleep with technology, it affects our quality of rest in a huge way. It stimulates the brain in ways that our nervous systems haven't evolved yet to cope with."
She's right. Our circadian rhythms are suffering from all the artificial stimulus and it becomes a struggle to switch off.
"When your eyes are exposed to light during the night, your brain is tricked into thinking it's time to wake up and reduces the production of melatonin, a hormone released by your pineal gland that causes sleepiness and lowers body temperature," explains a Vital Tips to Enhance Your Sleep e-book by Elevate health.
"Blue light emitted by electronic devices is especially troublesome because it mimics sunlight."
Lewis suggests trying 30 minutes, and switching the phone to flight mode for that period, if one hour is too much for the square-eyed among us.
I settle for an hour before bed and 15 minutes upon waking.
It's not much, but that's the point in a world where the solutions for living a healthier, happier existence tend to be big, expensive, external ('buy this and you will feel better') and often unsustainable.
Making changes little by little is more likely to make changes that last, just as the small changes we make with exercise and eating are often more effective.
It's not a perfect art, but the more we practise, the more the habit forms and the more able we are to anchor into ourselves, access the chest of internal resources and enjoy the sea of space inside.
Reclaiming our inner space little by little and learning that the power lies within, might just make the biggest difference of all.
