Taking a Stand for Yourself

Nate Rifkin is someone whose book “The Standing Meditation: Excel in the Modern World using an Ancient Practice” I deeply resonated with. A kindred spirit and fellow Taoist enthusiast, his life trajectory and experiences in many ways mirror mine. 

I met with Nate recently at Denver’s Cherry Creek Mall recently, during a bit of a rough stretch in my own life. Practicing the standing meditation he advocates for in the book during my early morning cold showers helped to dissipate some of the stress I’d been experiencing. 

Tall with a calm countenance which might lead one to wonder whether he has a pulse, Nate was easy to spot outside of the Nordstrom’s eBar where we agreed to meet. An introvert by nature, we nevertheless had a delightful conversation over coffee and tea. 

The book does an exquisite job of chronicling Nate’s journey as a suicidal young adult who after dropping it of college, dedicated himself to a steady diet of self-help reading and practices along with pursuing his entrepreneurial dreams. Yet, his ambitious aims seemed to elude him. 

Over time, he spiraled into debt, used alcohol as a crutch, felt lonely, and hated himself for the person he had become. 

After enduring  a tough bankruptcy and a stint spinning signs on a street corner, Nate stumbled upon a new path. He quadrupled his income, wed the woman of his dreams, and discovered a rare sense of happiness and contentment.

He shared a bit about this period of his life in the very first stanza of the book, noting:

“I hated myself. I hated that I was alone. I hated how I became a loser drenched in so much debt that I was terrified I’d end up homeless. My thoughts were like a faceless darkness drilling pain deep into my mind. How could I escape this? Would I need to die? Ever felt like that? I did. Then I found daylight. I found a way to relieve my worst emotional pain. I freed myself from debt, built wealth, and fell in love with an amazing woman.”

The major catalyst behind his reemergence, says Nate, was in his discovery of an ancient form of meditation that circumvented the downward spiral he was experiencing, lifting him to new levels of success he never thought possible. Known as “The Standing Meditation” Nate immersed himself in a daily practice of standing in a certain position and using his mind in a certain way to open up key energy centers (known as meridians) in his body. 

This Standing Meditation offers committed practitioners a way to release and align muscular tension in your body in order to leverage natural energy systems into you and through you. It’s here where the book shows you a systematic guide for performing this sacred meditation as well as some of the spiritual traditions it is derived from. According to Nate, it can help you steer around tendencies of self-sabotage , self-doubt, and other behaviors that keep us trapped in our old selves. 

Here are my 7 favorite excerpts from the book 

“Remember, the Daoists believe everything has chi. You, me, the planet, animals, trees, etc. The Daoists thought of our bodies as batteries. Each end of our body is like the end of a battery. One end connects to the Earth and the other connects to Heaven.”

“Daoists don’t meditate to take a break from life, but to learn about life and themselves, and to grow their abilities. They use their intention, attention, imagination, and sensation to open themselves to the energy of Heaven and Earth. It’s tougher, but the rewards are greater.” 

“The Daoists cite how chi follows attention. When you pay attention to your thoughts, even by trying to silence them, you feed them chi. When you don’t feed thoughts with your attention, they don’t receive the chi they need and will disappear. Just as the pink elephant, once again, faded away…” 

“Calling them scientists seems like a paradox because Daoism is a spiritual practice, but the Daoists discovered spiritual truths through scientific experimentation. They understand that humans are most productive and balanced when operating creatively on a journey of self-discovery.” 

“One of your greatest and most neglected powers to achieve the health you want, the relationships you want, and the financial status you want is to create your own ideas and solutions, test them, and learn from the feedback. To do this, you must be rational, objective, open to learn from the results you measure, and you must get those measurable results through experiments you push yourself to undertake through your own commitment and creative energy (pardon me while I gasp and inhale after that mouthful of a sentence).”

“Absorbing information is a pit stop on the road of self-discovery. Most of the journey requires you to mesh together what you learn, and figure out what works best for you, without someone else confirming if you’re right or wrong, and with no guarantee of success. This journey is less about getting answers and more about asking better questions. Very few people can accept this, which is why self-help books won’t end a section with, ‘Ultimately, you need to figure out your life for yourself.’”

“When we get knocked off course, we have the chance to correct ourselves. We can change our energy, relax, and align ourselves, quiet the mind and make it an ally, harness our antifragile nature, simplify our lives, temper our emotions, seek solitude when we need it, practice patience, journey into self-discovery, let go of judgments, push ourselves, allow the energy to change us when the time is right, and empower ourselves with chaos. We can compare our challenges and setbacks to the trunks of these trees as part of our journey. We can even find that the key to do this, in the modern world, is with an ancient practice.”