The 5 Best Things About Guiding Meditations at Conferences by Dina Kaplan
Guiding a meditation at the SEO Week conference in New York City last week.
It’s brilliant for conference organizers to integrate meditation into conferences — it relaxes the attendees’ minds, making them more present during talks and more open to connecting during breaks. It also brings a calm, joyful energy to the conference, so everyone feels uplifted and energized, even if they’re not quite sure why!
I learned this while leading 12 mindfulness meditations during an amazing SEO Week last week, hosted by the extraordinary Mike King, Founder and CEO of iPullRank. By the second day of the conference, people were rushing up to me during breaks, saying how grateful they were for these moments of mindfulness throughout the day and also inviting me to come to their companies to lead meditations for their teams!
I guided 3 meditations a day 4 days in a row to keep conference attendees relaxed and open to the great information the speakers presented at SEO Week!
So fresh from leading 3 meditations a day for 4 days in a row last week — here are the 5 best things about leading meditations at conferences!
1. Meeting the incredible people who host, run and manage these events.
This was the first year of SEO Week, and I was 100% blown away by the charisma, kindness and talent of Mike King, who not only created this event but also RAPPED during the closing party with Busta Rhymes (!!), MC’d much of the conference AND was kind and gracious to me and every single person involved with the event. It was stunning to watch him in action — and also to see how professional and organized the lead event producer Charlene Ditch and her entire team was. Jacob and Erin from Edge Media Studios were also incredible on A/V, and it was inspiring to see how smoothly this event ran despite four days straight of speakers, breaks, meditations :), a rocking late-night party and more.
2. Enjoying the thrill of being part of a live production.
It’s exciting to be part of a live event, and I loved getting texts from my production contact — essentially saying 20 minutes to stage time, 10 minutes to stage time — and then heading to the production area to be handed a live microphone, having someone set up a chair on stage, seeing the countdown on a huge clock tick down the seconds for each meditation, and knowing I am playing a part in making this production flow smoothly and beautifully.
3. Understanding the impact of the meditations on each person in the room.
With this event, no one had signed up for meditation :) - and I loved the challenge of bringing people over to the world of mindfulness. Beginning the second day of the conference, I could FEEL people settling into the meditations and even heading back to the conference from breaks to enjoy the mindfulness sessions. Beginning day 2, people approached me during each break to thank me for the meditations — including people on Mike’s team, from Marriott HQ and other large companies. I had people ask me how to start or sustain their own practice and many others say they hadn’t really understood meditation before but now really experienced the benefits and wanted to continue practicing.
4. Hearing accolades from the team.
When I joined the closing party (did I mention Busta Rhymes? He was amazing!!), I was thrilled when Mike shared from stage, “the meditation lady is here!” and everyone around me smiled while dancing :). When Charlene said she wanted to bring me in her suitcase to all of her events, I was beaming. It felt incredible to be part of this event, truly awesome to be appreciated — and also profound that meditation has become mainstream enough that it was welcomed and appreciated at a tech-focused event.
5. INCREDIBLE photos and videos.
I made friends with the A/V team, and they ended up sending me 6 of the 12 meditations I led, professionally filmed and edited. I’m excited to receive the professional photos too. I’ll add more to this blog shortly but quickly wanted to say - thank you for the incredible, fun, awesome experience of leading meditations for this amazing event!
The awesome Mike King with Charlene Ditch to his left and the awesome Charlene Kate production team on stage during SEO Week.