Meditation is much more than the perfect lotus pose - With Dermot Whelan
Dermot Whelan is a radio and TV presenter and a public speaker. He’s a certified master of wisdom and meditation teacher and a stand up comedian. He’s perhaps best known for co-presenting the hugely popular Dermot & Dave show on Today FM but he’s had a rich and varied career.
Dermot describes his career path as more of “a bizarre trail through a forest”. As a kid, he was interested in the media, but he was passionate about ancient Egypt and Greece, so he went to Trinity College Dublin to study archaeology at third level. He soon discovered archaeology wasn’t precisely as he imagined, and after graduating, he started working as an assistant director for TV and film. He drifted into radio in his late 20s when he discovered the creativity behind it. Stand up comedy came as a side to his radio job, but it soon evolved more than he expected. The stress and anxiety he felt before comedy shows turned into panic attacks. That was when he realized he needed to make a change and went towards a wellness path.
“To be honest, I just needed to find something that would help me manage stress better than a pint of Guinness. So meditation opened that door for me. And I found it was far healthier and way cheaper.”
The only stress management I had ever seen around me was alcohol, nicotine, or maybe sugar
Dermot spoke about the stress management examples he had seen as a kid in the adults surrounding him. As people weren’t particularly focused on mental health, the most common coping mechanisms were unhealthy ones. And that was what he picked up on himself.
As an adult, he found he had little resources to deal with the stress in his daily life, which is what many people face. He, therefore, decided to make his teaching and techniques as accessible and straightforward as possible.
He focuses on debunking the myths around meditation, which are among the main impediments people face when first starting on this path. At first glance, meditation seems more like an exclusive club where you need to put in a lot of work to be accepted. He often laughs at the classic lotus pose pictures he sees on Instagram as that is not what meditating looks like. “It’s way easier to take a few minutes of stillness on your favourite chair sitting up in bed or at your desk. We don’t have to suddenly become Instagram people to connect or get the benefits of meditation.”
One of the main stumbling blocks for people is time
The general perception of meditation is that it will take up a lot of time daily. People compare it to working out where they presume they would have to take at least one hour in the morning, buy an app and commit to exercising every day. The perfect counter-example is the 16 second meditation exercise. Most people will have 16 seconds a day they can dedicate to meditation.
This exercise is often just enough, but it is also a stepping stone, a way to entice curiosity about what else can be done through meditation. “And then you can start to discover the world of guided meditations, the different techniques that you can learn. Is it a bit like music? You can try little bits and see what resonates with you.”
How to incorporate meditation into your daily routine
Dermot talks about two principles he follows, that is RPM and RAW. RPM, or Rise, Pee, Meditate comes with the idea of building meditation into your morning routine. Because let’s face it, we are creatures of habit, and our mornings look the same most days. We tend to do things in the same order. We get up, we’ll have our shower, and we’ll make our cup of coffee. So if we can build something like a meditation practice, even if it is just 16 seconds, we can build it into that morning routine. If we can do that, we don’t even have to think about it, and by the time we open our laptop and have the first meeting we’ve already checked that little bit of self-care off the daily to-do list.
RAW, or Right After Work, is a way to end your working day and leave work-related thoughts behind when you dive into your home life. And you can do this by taking a few minutes, or even a few seconds, to introduce another meditation exercise. “I see it as a kind of a psychological shower, as you’re cleaning all the crap that you picked up throughout the day on a conscious or unconscious level.”
Dermot’s 2020 plans were impacted by COVID but he managed to turn things around quickly. At the beginning of the year, he was looking forward to presenting his new hybrid show that would combine his training, stand up comedy and meditation. His performances were cancelled so he decided to do the next best thing. He wrote a book.
The book is called “Mind Full”, and it is aimed at anyone who has ever felt like their life is full and overwhelming, like their brain is rammed full and there is no pressure relief valve at hand. Dermot paints the world of meditation in a funny way that is accessible to everyone.
Listen to the entire podcast here or you can watch the video of our conversation through this link.
Want to learn more about Dermot Whelan? Go to his website dermotwhelan.com to find all the details including some free guided meditations. Dermot’s book Mind Full is available from April 16th and is available for pre-order.
Competition Time
We've teamed up with The Fruit People to give you the chance of winning a delicious Fresh Fruit & Healthy Snack Pack delivered direct to your door. There’s a pack available for each episode of Season 3 of The Work Well Podcast and a new winner will be chosen each week.
The competition takes place on Instagram.
To enter, simply:
Follow @thefruitpeople and @workwellireland
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The weekly competition opens as soon as that week’s episode is released (episodes will be released every Wednesday for Season 3). The competition closes the following Monday at 10pm and one lucky winner will be announced at lunchtime on Tuesday (we'll be checking each step has been followed).
Best of luck!
Terms and Conditions
Competition is open to residents of ROI only.
This competition consists of 12 weekly giveaways.
One winner will be chosen at random from the comments each week.
You can enter each week and as often as you wish 😊
About Your Host
Brian Crooke is a wellbeing educator, speaker and adviser, empowering Irish organisations to promote and sustain wellbeing within their workplaces.
He is the founder of The Work Well Institute and the Workplace Wellbeing Ireland community and is Course Director of the Postgraduate Certificate in Workplace Wellness at Tangent, Trinity College Dublin. He is the host of The Work Well Podcast.
In his spare time, Brian is bringing free resistance training to every county and community in Ireland through his parkHIIT social enterprise.
If you have any suggestions for future topics you'd like to hear on the show, email Brian directly, brian@workwellpodcast.com
