A Mellow Memoir
We get asked a lot, “How’d you get into meditation?” Sweat’s Meditation Director and the Founder of the Mellow Elephant, Billy Rosenbeck, answers the question.
Truth be told, I’m not even sure where the idea of meditation came from in the first place: I’m descended from a long line of repressed Irish-Catholic bog farmers and spud throwers, and have a paternal grandfather – famed for being the only non-Irishman my maternal great-grandfather would ever let marry one of his daughters – who is likely rolling in his grave knowing the sheer amount of time I spend barefoot in public.
I did not grow up around yogis or monks, I had no influences or role models who might push me towards practice, and in fact, when I first met a peer group with whom I’d be partnered for two years during a particularly intensive meditation teacher training, I joked to the other five participants that my circle of friends who meditated just increased by 500%.
Of course, it was an exaggeration.
…but, also, not really.
The long and short of it is this: happiness came very easily to me for a very long time – roughly a quarter-century or so – then, however slowly, it stopped being as easy, at times, even growing difficult, which was unusual and disconcerting.
It was amid these circumstances that I began meditating for no logical reason beyond that I thought it might work, despite not knowing why I thought that.
My first meditation teacher, Andy Kelley, the Boston Buddha, says, “No one comes to meditation because everything is going great and they have tons of extra time on their hands,” which was the truth of my case: feeling at a loss for options to return to what I would consider a genuinely sunny disposition, I downloaded the Headspace app and began practice in the confines of my small apartment on the second floor of Rich Hall on the Wilbraham & Monson Academy campus.
Morning after morning, I sat cross legged in my easy chair before school, soon transitioning to the floor in an effort to avoid falling back to sleep, and after a few days, I admitted to my dad that I was “giving this meditation thing a try,” but that I “didn’t want it to change me as a person.”
A year-and-a-half later, he was driving me to JFK for a flight to Kathmandu, so I could sit in silence for ten days at Dhamma Shringa Vipassana Center in the foothills of the Himalayas, which was admittedly a pretty hard left turn from the original plan.
It wasn’t a straight line from dormpartment to Nepal, however, and my first effort to establish a daily practice eventually fell off, despite a few months of initial success where the aforementioned sunny disposition re-emerged. Maybe it was complacency, but I like to blame this step back on one particular midsummer morning when I opened my eyes after a sit to find a live bat resting on my foot; from there, the habit atrophied, as such things tend to do after one finds a live bat resting on their foot.
But while I can’t remember the day I first ever meditated, I can pinpoint the moment practice stuck down to the date: Monday, October 2nd, 2017.
I woke up in neutral-to-above-average spirits that morning, got in my car, turned on the radio, and was greeted by news from the night before that a gunman had opened fire into a crowd of 22,000 at a music festival in Las Vegas from an adjacent hotel window.
And I thought, Wow, this world is a f*cked up place.
Then, midmorning, it was reported that Tom Petty was in critical care, and amid the drudgery and sadness still lingering inside of me, I spent the day in between classes sitting on my porch listening to “Alright for Now” and “It’ll All Work Out.”
Petty died by the evening, and I thought, Really, Today?
From there, whatever gnawing feeling I had that was telling me that I needed to do things different than the way I was doing them became an untenable shout, and the next morning, I recommitted to meditation practice. I haven’t missed more than a day or two in a row since.
Of course, at the time, it was entirely personal, and despite the commitment I had made to the practice, I never thought I’d really tell anyone I meditated.
Then, a few months later, I was in front of a crowd of several hundred people, telling everyone I mediated.
Fate is fickle in that way – it’s an oddity that sometimes taps you on the shoulder for reasons that seem unclear at the time – and that spring, a student in my class informed me that he was getting up at the next school assembly to talk about mental health, following the passing of a friend who died by suicide, as well as two young alumni that had recently died the same way.
This was not the type of student you’d expect to speak in front of the entire school, or even the entire class – some days, he wasn’t the type of student you’d expect to stay awake in class, actually – and feeling nervous for him (which proved to be unnecessary), I volunteered to get up by his side and present on the meditation app I was using as a resource.
When I left the podium and exited the building that day, the Head of the School – a former Army Ranger with a stoic, gravitational confidence and stories that redefine manhood – was waiting for me on the sidewalk.
And he said, “We need to bring this to campus.”
And I said, “Couldn’t agree more.”
And he said, “We need to get someone to teach this.”
And I said, “Couldn’t agree more.”
And he said, “It’s you, dummy. I want you to teach this.”
(At least that’s how I heard it.)
From there, it was meeting Andy, my first teacher training, the trip to Nepal, a lot of reading, starting to guide others, a pandemic, and a fateful day in the fall of 2020 when I re-emerged at Sweat after a lengthy hiatus, and Krystal kept me after class to ask if I wanted to teach meditation at the studio.
Then, I led a teacher training, took a teacher training, led another teaching training, took another teacher training, did more retreats, more reading, more practice, and eventually left my full-time job to attempt to make a living by telling a lot of people I meditate.
Naturally, the question gets asked a lot – “How’d you get into meditation?” – and there really is no easy answer, other than to say this was never, ever the plan.
Meditation was not for me, or people like me.
Luckily, I think that makes me pretty good at teaching people who meditation is not for, and from the first time I sat to whatever it is I’m doing now, it’s all been a bit like building the ship as you sail it. It continues to be that way, which is foolish engineering, sure, but it’s really the only way I know how to operate in this regard.
I don’t seem to be alone in this approach, and in Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse offers the quote I use more than any other: “Whither will this path yet lead me? This path is stupid, it goes in spirals, perhaps in circles, but whichever way it goes, I will follow it.”
So how’d I get into meditation? I just did the only thing that any of us can really do – follow the path, whichever way it goes.
I’ve just been fortunate enough that it’s led me here.
To practice in studio, join SWEAT’s guides at the times below, and look out for more meditation-specific events — including “Commit to the Sit” and “Mindful Athletes” — on the calendar in 2024.
MONDAY TO THURSDAY — 7:15 AM + 5:30 PM
FRIDAY — 7:15 AM
SATURDAY — 8:15 AM
SUNDAY — Monthly 6:00 PM Serenity Session with Fiona