I recently started meditating in earnest, and I’m getting the hang of it, so I thought I’d share what I’ve learned in case anyone is interested (or can offer tips!).
I had tried meditating for a long time without much success. When Sam Harris started talking about mindfulness meditation not too long ago, I realized that I’d generally been doing it wrong (‘thinking with my legs crossed’ as Harris describes it), although I also realized that some things I hadn’t thought of as meditation were actually a very good form of mindfulness meditation (more on that later). My job now has me travelling quite a while by train each day, and I’ve finally started to put into practice some of what I’ve learned, and I think I’m already seeing positive results.
I don’t approach meditation in a religious or even a spiritual sense. The literature is pretty good on the practice to support certain causal claims about it that don’t rely on anything more than neuroscience. I think of meditation as a kind of brain training, a sort of flexing of specific mental muscles to make other mental work easier. The metaphor is apt: neurons that are used frequently make more and stronger connections, and the networks that they are part of start to play a larger role in the workings of the brain. Mindfulness meditation exercises networks involved in self-perception, attention, and executive control, and so the expected benefits (and those observed in long-term practitioners) are improved concentration and attention, and better self-awareness, self-control, and emotional regulation.
There are two kinds of meditation involved: one that exercises various skills related to attention, the other with self-awareness and executive control.
In one form of meditation, I sit still and comfortably and close my eyes. It’s not necessary to be sitting, nor to close my eyes, but as I’m still a beginner these things make it much easier. I focus my attention on my breathing, the sensations in my nose, throat, lungs, and chest related to breathing. The focus on breathing is a somewhat arbitrary choice; the point is to pick some part of oneself and intentionally focus on it at length. I’ve realized that many practices of traditional martial arts which require focus on various aspects of body posture serve the same purpose: forms and standing poses that focus on holding the body in just such a way similarly require intentional direction of the attention towards minor aspects of sensation, and that’s the goal.
As I focus on the breath, my mind wanders, and when I notice that it has, I return to the breath. The product of this practice is to 1) attempting to remain focused, 2) notice when attention has flagged, and 3) return to the subject of attention. This improves control over attention, improves awareness of attention, and increases attention span.
The other kind of meditation is similar, but should come only after some practice with the attentional form. In this form, again I sit and close my eyes, but this time I try to focus on all experiences at once. The metaphor I use here is one from vision: one can look at the center of ones visual field, or one can use what I’ve heard called “splatter-vision”, not attending to anyone thing but seeing the whole visual field at once. I do a kind of splatter-vision-of-mind, and try to see the whole experience of a moment at once. Often this means floating between feelings, e.g. the bottoms of my feet and the sounds of the train and the thoughts of the work of the day ahead etc. The goal is to notice all the thoughts and feelings and sensations, to be aware of everything going on in the moment.
The reason this should come after practice with the attentional form is that this is just a different attentional activity: attending to the experience of consciousness, and doing so intentionally and mindfully. Like with the breath meditation, the mind will wander, will latch on to thoughts or sensations, and one must have the attentional awareness and control to return to the exercise of just noticing.
As I say, I am a beginner with these types of meditation, and I imagine that there are other forms of meditation worth doing, though as I understand it these are the forms that have been shown to be effective in controlled studies. I feel like I’m seeing results (my attention to my work has improved significantly, but I was starting from the low bar of severe ADD). I intend to continue, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in better controlling ones thoughts and feelings.