Red Fang’s Aaron Beam Talks Importance of Meditation
Red Fang vocalist and bassist Aaron Beam recently joined The MetalSucks Podcast to discuss the band’s new album, Arrows, as well as a variety of other topics related to the band and his personal life.
Beam has spoken in the past about the importance of meditation in his life, and he was happy to go deeper on the subject in our chat. Explaining when he first got into meditation and the role it plays for him, he said:
“Yeah, [I’ve been meditating] since about 2013-ish. [That’s] when I kind of started dabbling. I go in and out of how attentive I am to it. It’s easiest right at the beginning, when you’re first starting. It’s easiest to focus on it, but it takes a little bit more work to get back into it. I’m probably the worst example ’cause I mostly do it when I’m feeling kind of anxious. When I’m feeling calm, it’s fine, I don’t really do it, which, you should do it all the time.
Asked whether caffeine interferes with his ability to meditate effectively, he answered:
“I drink a lot of coffee. I started cutting down a little bit especially this last year. Because of the pandemic I was working my old job, which is in the stop motion movie industry, and there’s lots and lots of meetings and being on Zoom all day long every day, so… lots of coffee. So the answer is I always would meditate in the morning before I get up. I kind of break the rule a little bit; they say to be sitting in a chair upright and straight. But I just do it laying down cause I’m lazy.
On the benefits meditation has brought him:
“I think there’s a few people [for whom] their brains and their brain chemistry or their wiring means they’re just not good candidates for it, but I think most people can at least get something out of it even if it’s not a lifelong thing they end up doing forever, but just kind of taking a moment to look inside a little bit more. And one of the things that, oddly, I found — you’ll hear this report probably pretty regularly — that even when I would spend half an hour meditating, I found out that I was more productive on the days I spent extra time meditating than if you feel like, ‘Well, I’m so busy, I don’t have time to do this.’ You find that you actually get more stuff done on the days you spend a little time doing it.”
You can listen to our full chat with Aaron right here or in the embed below. Arrows is out now and available here.
