It may sound strange but it’s true! A French chef in Australia’s Blue Mountains motivates me to get back to meditation. I am not being facetious, but the spurring factor could be his scrumptious salmon baked in potters’ clay: it could also be the stunningly charming and quiet Lilianfels Hotel of the Orient Express Group of Hotels, where I stay and where Fabrice Boone is the executive chef. It is also all this peace of the Blue Mountains coupled with the fact that chef Boone derives his creativity from meditation. The talented chef goes to the Vipassana centre in the Blue Mountains, has been to Gaya in India, and meditates daily. That’s inspiration enough. I walk down the mountain trail and spontaneously sit under the vivid blue sky embroidered by the leafy trees and start doing what I used to do regularly. meditating. With my eyes closed, I first listen to the gentle sound of the breeze, the birds in the distance and then the sounds near me. Then I focus on my breath. Why is it so shallow? Keep observing it and slowly the tranquillity of the mountains enters my soul. I enter the silent spaces between my thoughts, the gap in which ego-based concerns disappear and the thinker, the process of thinking and the object of thought become one. Of course, when I first started meditating, almost 10 years ago, it was tough enough to sit still. But slowly I learnt to become an observer of my breath and to remain aware. Meditation is more than a relaxation technique. The ancient yogis, through the practice of meditation — whether it’s mindfulness meditation, primordial sound meditation using a mantra or the heart sutra meditation — created an internal reference point of spirit rather than ego. This may sound like abstract gobbledygook but when you read about the tangible benefits of meditation, you’re sure to become a convert. Dr N S Vahia, the grand old man of psychiatry, and his son Dr Vihang Vahia, eminent psychiatrist at Mumbai’s Breach Candy Hospital, submitted a research paper in the American Journal of Psychotherapy on the benefits of meditation. They found that ‘‘meditation is a debriefing mechanism to get over the inevitable daily anxieties that build up’’. It also improves skin tone, the pulse and heart rate. Dr Deepak Chopra points out that ‘‘meditation is an extremely effective way of increasing brain wave coherence and thus of healing the heart’’. Research by the Institute of Heartmath in California shows that meditative states of mind can help stabilise the heart’s electromagnetic field. Interestingly, an Israel-based research found that twice-daily meditation brought about an average 30-point drop in cholesterol levels. In other words, meditation literally transforms the chemistry of our bodies. How’s that for food for thought, inspired by some great Australian food?
