Author of One-Moment Meditation,
now available in eight languages,
Martin Boroson combines a background in
psychology, business and Zen practice to
help individuals and organizations experience
the benefits of meditation quickly.
When researching and writing my book,
One-Moment Meditation,
I thought long and hard about whether
the first exercise should be
a ten-minute meditation or
a five-minute meditation or
a one-minute meditation.
I thought even more about
the difference between a minute and a moment.
And there is indeed a big difference.
Ultimately, I decided that the first exercise
should be an exercise that
takes one minute.
I call this the Basic Minute.
I chose to one minute because
“one” suggests simplicity and wholeness.
I also chose one minute because
a minute is short enough so
that everybody has one.
In other words, if I had started with
a 10-minute meditation or
5-minute meditation or
even a 2-minute meditation,
some people might think
they were too busy for it.
Seriously, many people do not think
they have five minutes to spare.
But everybody has time for a 1-minute meditation.
So there are no excuses.
Unfortunately, because we start with a minute,
some people refer to this whole meditation
training technique as “One Minute Meditation.”
This is upsetting to me because the minute is
really just the starting point.
The minute is like a moment with handles on it.
A minute meditation helps you carve out some time
-- in a nice formal way --
and that's a good place to get started."
Martin Boroson is emerging as an inventive new voice in the next generation of meditation teachers.
Author of One-Moment Meditation: Stillness for People on the Go, now published in eight languages, he has taught his radical new take on meditation in leadership seminars, hospitals, public workshops, and the media, as well as in busy urban train stations, a farmyard, and a cabaret.
In April 2010, for National Stress Awareness Month, Marty presented a thirty-day series on Oprah.com called “Transform Stress in 30-Days with One-Moment Meditation.”
For the Federation of Organic Milk Groups, Marty revised and presented the “Take-a-Mooment™” radio campaign, consisting of interviews for nineteen BBC stations in which Marty got the radio hosts (and their audiences) to moo with him for stress relief.
In Ireland, Marty created “The National Moment of Stillness,” in which thousands of people stopped driving and stopped working to experience thirty seconds of total silence together, live on national radio. Said the host, Derek Mooney, on the following day, “The whole nation was enthralled.”
Marty has delivered training in meditation as a leadership skill at numerous conferences, and recently delivered training in One-Moment Meditation® to physicians at Kaiser Permanente, and to faculty and staff of the UC Davis Medical Center. As a faculty member of the Institute for Management Studies, he created the seminar Becoming a Next-Generation Leader. He consults to organizations on the applications of a meditative mind to leadership, decision-making, peak performance, and innovation.
Marty is an accredited member of the European Association of Psychotherapy, President of the Association for Holotropic Breathwork™ International, and a certified facilitator of Laughter Yoga.
Born and raised in New York, Marty had a first career as a teenage political activist and, at sixteen, became a Legislative Aide to the New York State Assembly. He then studied philosophy at Yale, and earned an MBA from the Yale School of Management. Finding the quantitative, linear techniques of business useful but limited, he then set out to learn other ways of knowing. He trained in transpersonal psychology, founded a theatre company in Ireland, and began formal study of Zen. He now brings together these diverse persepctives in his training and consulting to organizations.
He is also the author of Becoming Me, a modern creation story praised by scientists, psychologists, and leaders of many faiths. Now an animated short film, Becoming Me is being used in secular and religious schools to teach interfaith understanding, philosophy for children, and environmental awareness. Said Erwin Laszlo, Science Advisor to the Director General of UNESCO, “Becoming Me undoubtedly captures the emerging spirit of the 21st century.”
