Meditation is something which I had known about for a while and had genuinely recognized its potential benefits. But somehow I just hadn’t been able to get around to consistent practice or even to decide which type of meditation was good for me. There’s mantra meditation, mindfulness, visualization, breath following and almost certainly many others I have never heard of! What I needed was something to get going with and I suspect there are many others who feel the same way.
The Alternative
Having avoided TM entirely because of its cost and the inconvenience of needing to travel to a centre to be taught, I decided to do a little more research to see what it was about and whether anyone had shared their experiences of TM online. Unsurprisingly, they had.
What became clear to me was that there wasn’t a great deal to the practice at all.
However, I also felt that to get the most out of what’s basically a simple mantra-based meditation, I needed a little guidance and some clear instructions. I’m sure you could find a book in order to do the same, but what I came across and would like to share with you is Natural Stress Relief (NSR).
A Close Relative
NSR was actually founded by a couple of people who were formerly associated with TM – one a former TM practitioner and one a former TM teacher. The basics of the practice are in fact as far as I can tell, very similar (although to be clear I have never been taught TM). It’s mantra based and you do it twice a day for ~ 20 minutes.
There are three big differences though.
- You aren’t given a special personal mantra. Their research points towards a single non-personal syllable being just as effective.
- You don’t have to travel to sessions to be taught how to do this.
- The fee is $25 instead of $1,500 for TM (although the TM fee does vary depending on your country of residence I believe).
There’s a great deal of information on the NSR and NSR USA websites (no awards for aesthetics, but it is a non-profit organization).
https://www.natural-stress-relief.com/
https://www.nsrusa.org/home.php
My Experience So Far
I’ve been doing this for 4 months now. I’ve been pretty good about making sure I do it every day although I’ve definitely missed sessions here and there. But that’s the great thing about this – I feel enough of a difference to come back to it each time I do lapse.
Has my world become amazing overnight? No. Am I calmer? Yes. I’m also able to let go of things much more easily – a beneficial skill for any trader I’m sure you’ll agree. I’ve also seen an increased ability to focus on challenging tasks.
When I meditate, I don’t always think that I’m getting it right. I know that my mind often wanders and in fact that demonstrates just how busy my mind can be. Simultaneously annoying and intriguing is the frequent occurrence of ideas coming to me when I know I should be meditating. This is the “bubbling up” of ideas other meditators speak of, I’m sure. But other times I feel an inner peace and serenity which urges me to seek more.
NSR at its most very basic level does seem to alleviate stress, but it can go far beyond that. By removing stress, you can free your mind from its psychological shackles and you will start to see what you are truly capable of. Be it NSR, TM or any other form of meditation, I urge you to start your practice ASAP!
Thank you for your beautiful article on Natural Stress Relief (NSR), which I discovered by accident three years after you wrote it.
I am so glad that you shared your experiences, for we live in challenging and stressful times and your experience is relevant to everyone.
As the head of the USA branch of the NSR Project, I marvel at the accuracy and helpfulness of your article, and hope that people will discover it, hidden as it is on a trading software website.
We have been quietly offering NSR instruction to the public since 2003, and have several thousand happy clients. Unfortunately, we do not have the dramatic publicity of celebrity endorsements or national news coverage that would make NSR a household word, allowing us to begin to reach our audience, which is the entire population of the world.
But, step by step we are approaching that threshold of major publicity that can bring a peaceful and happy transformation to individuals and society.
And your article is right at the forefront of this transformation.
Thank you.
David Spector
Volunteer President,
Natural Stress Relief/USA
Hi David – I’m so glad that you found my post on NSR accurate! I can report back that I have kept up with my practise most days since I first wrote about NSR and without a shadow of doubt, I am better for it and so are those around me. My experience is that it does not eliminate the stresses in life, but helps you to remain far more balanced and able to more swiftly recenter when faced with inevitable challenges.
I hope that this post will contribute to making NSR more widely publicised, even if by just a small amount. For any traders reading this, it should be clear just how useful NSR has the potential to be when Ray Dalio, credits meditation as the single most important factor in his success.
i learned TM in the late eighties. Love it and still do it. I’d love to recommend it to anyone interested in improving their life. But I can’t. The TM organization has progressively adopted very off-setting policies, questionable mystical claims, and outrageous fee
increases over the years. Eventually I came upon Natural Stress Relief Meditation, tried it myself (to see if I could recommend it to others). I’m glad to say that I can fully recommend NSR meditation and I do whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Hi Lee – it’s great to hear from someone who’s experienced both. What I would say is that you really don’t need to spend a fortune to learn to meditate and there are many that would benefit immensely from the practice who won’t or simply can’t spend the money on an expensive technique to learn.
Have you kept up with your practice and if so how is it going? I learned NSR recently and am just beginning on my journey. I have been been meditating for years but have found new clarity in the explanations David Spector has given with effortless meditation.
Hi Billy. I have kept it up although probably not as much as I should have. NSR is very simple although like anything, takes practice.