Business Fit Magazine January 2020 Issue 1 | Page 6

Mindset & Emotion
How Mindfulness
Can Change
Your Life
Meditation Expert, David Behrens, tell Business
Fit readers how his learnings as a monk at a
young age, helped him to understand how
mindfulness can help you navigate your own
inner world to be present in life and shine.
David Behrens’ interest in the Eastern traditions
began when he was about 14 years old and his
older sister came home with a book on yoga:
When I peeked into her room saw she was doing
a shoulder stand, I thought, “Whoa, that looks
interesting!”
I did a lot of study and I think the beauty was that
the learning was always based on three factors.
One is that whatever you learn is already written,
say in an ancient scripture, it’s not that there’s
one teacher and he’s offering something that’s
never been offered before. If you study the lives
of the great masters, they will always go back to
the original scripture where it was written and
show that it’s always been there. So I would study
the scripture and then the second important
thing is you had to practice it. You had to try it on,
like a pair of clothes.
And the third thing is that you had to have
an experience. You had to feel that it was
supporting your life, it was making you happier.
It was creating more discipline and more well-
being. And it worked. It couldn’t be that it was just
this wonderful philosophy. You should really feel
that this is helping you. It’s making you feel more
complete inside or it’s making you feel more filled
with great energy. And at the same time, you
should be able to feel more purpose in your life.
Spiritual practices nourish you. They take care
of you. They cleanse you, and they build your
energy. And they sustain your energy, from
physical energy to actual spiritual energy, where
you feel dynamically full inside. And usually that
makes you want to dedicate yourself to helping
others.
Once I returned to the west, I worked with people
with mental health and addiction recovery. As a
monk you’re always reflecting to ensure that
whatever you’re doing, you’re completely present
with it and your heart is with it and it is serving you
in your overall growth. And that was something
I’ve always wanted. I wanted it to keep giving me
more knowledge and growth and maturity.
In my first year of college, there was a teacher who
was a pretty accomplished hatha yogi, who had
studied with Sivananda, and taught at Brooklyn
College and I loved it. And that kind of opened up
a door and I thought maybe one day I would go
to India. Once I found my way there, I was very
focused on practicing and, pretty quickly, there
was an opportunity to become a monk. Through my work with the NHS Recovery Colleges
for mental health, the London Charter Harley
Street Rehab Centre, and the Nelson Trust, which
is one of the main trusts for addiction, I found that
the formula that became the most interesting
was the combination of two factors, especially
with mental health and addiction. These are the
factor of awareness and the factor of being able
to guide your mind.
So I became a monk in my early twenties, it was a
lot of study, a lot of practice, and that was my life,
studying meditation, studying yoga, studying the
different philosophies, having a lot of wonderful
inner experiences where I really felt the power of
meditation. When you’re working with someone who is
mentally ill, their ability to be aware of their
own mind is really limited. Awareness means
you sense that you’re present, you’re here, and
you’re able to watch how the mind changes.
When you’re not healthy, the mind changes and
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Mindfulness
is about
being present
in life
it consumes you, it overwhelms you, and you
lose a sense of yourself. And I found that the
mindfulness especially allowed a person to get
that ability back.
The second biggest factor is being able to guide
one’s mind. During mental illness, the mind
gets in a loop or it gets in a hallucination or it
completely becomes unconscious and you can’t
come out of it or guide yourself back to daily
activities. And I found the simple practice of
mindfulness is so helpful: being present, guiding
your mind, bringing it to the breath, and finally
getting a little stillness, because being with such
an unstable mind is exhausting.
Meditation is a more classical practice, a time
set aside when I’m with myself. I’m focusing
inward and I’m going deeper and discovering
myself, whether it’s through mantra or through
being with the breath or witnessing the mind. I
found the same thing happened with addiction.
If you become addicted to a substance or a
particular behaviour, you lose the ability to be
aware and you lose the ability to guide your
mind. And that’s one of the keys in addiction,
building back guidance, which translates into
choice. I studied the science on that. If a person
becomes addicted to a substance, the prefrontal
cortex of the brain becomes weak and that’s
executive decision making. And it’s amazing that
you practice mindfulness and you gain back the
power of choice. So when cravings come or an
intense need for the drug, or you need to do
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