let's meditate
we've got the goals down. just not the means to do it.
meditation seems elusive. it’s meant to be. “i can’t sit down and pause thinking” is the epithet for being human. humans can rarely detach from thoughts. those sanyasins, the indian ascetics, who showed us the way did not have a desk job, mortgages, or situationships. they austerely submitted themselves to liberation from karma. yet the advertisement sounds the chimeric samadhi is well within reach.
the popular mistake
the duration of thought-free moments isn’t the metric. the metric is how many times a rising thought was cut off to bring attention back to breath. eastern wisdom is made popular in the west in a rather well-intentioned guise of positive affirmations and word-salad. the placebo effect this creates might hold us back from pursuing deeper benefits. we quit before trying enough.
immersing oneself in long stretches of thoughtless state is unnatural and unlikely to happen for the average journeyman. the mind has about 30-50 thoughts in any given minute. the very experience of our sentient life is just the brain processing information.
let’s meditate
let’s say you sat down and anchored your focus to the breath. but before the 3rd thought-free breath you’re inadvertently floating in the next thought. worse yet, you only realize it several breaths later. congrats, your brain is working as normal! are you able to relieve and acknowledge that thought, come back to yourself for at least a few more seconds? this is meditating. that’s it! welp, there comes the next thought. you know what to do. yes, we’re still meditating.
this process of relinquishing thoughts and anchoring your attention to breath over time tames the wandering mind.
we learn to detach.
a few hacks for beginners
exteroceptive meditation
pay attention to the sounds around you. switch focus between sounds that are far away (vehicles, birds etc) and sounds that are close (wall cracking, ac etc). then slowly switch to bodily sensations: the sound of breath, sensation of hot or cold air on skin, breathing rhythm etc. this is the point where we bring focus inward.
mantras
a simple humming as you exhale or chanting aum, (as in aaaaaauuumm - instead of the more famous om) can bring the wandering mind under control1. it doesn’t have to be maintained throughout meditation.
exhale - the most powerful tool
sighing - the release of air knots from our chest through a heavy outpour of breath - is the quickest and most effective way to signal the sympathetic nervous system to relax. when we sigh with sound it can have a slightly better effect on calming us.
secondly, several conscious breath control techniques we use in meditation are driven from exhale. for example, slowing down our breath into a long deep relaxed pattern is easier (as in effortless) to do if we begin by trying to exhale every drop of air inside of us to the extend of almost pulling the belly button to the spine. the inhale automatically plays along. this pattern signals the parasympathetic nervous system that we are safe and relaxed.
breath holding
breath holding is a documented benefit of meditation in the early scriptures of yoga. increased lung capacity is a survival mechanism2, but breathless moments in meditation brings us utmost clarity and concentration. important to note, breath holding is a survival mechanism so it will trigger your sympathetic nervous system which controls the flight-or-fight responses in us (increased heart rate, heightened alertness etc. instead of relaxation). pranayama techniques like kapalabhati can help us hold breath for a few minutes with practice.
why’s breath the anchor?
both thought and breath are involuntary. but only one of these (ie thought) hijacks our focus, sometimes to the extent of exacerbating it and producing anxiety. the other (ie breath) simply creates a feedback loop for calm vs storm in our nervous system. regulate the breath, which signals the nervous system, and the storm is sublimated into calm.
a lifestyle, not pill-popping
it’s more than likely that if you practice, you will figure out what works for you and improvise. the one caveat for the western consumer - as with all ancient indian wisdom - is that yoga and meditation are to be seen as practices, not as “tylenol”. ie, on a stressful day you may not be able to sit down and anchor to your inner self. thoughts run wild! your nervous system is giving the appropriate stress response here. rest assured, the very occurrence of a stressful day, either in frequency or intensity, is what a regular practice saves us from.
avoid long sanskrit mantras if you don’t speak a language from the indian subcontinent as the additional neural network cycles to process the meaning of it is not worth the effort. besides anyone speaking a germanic language won’t get the rhoticity to speak sanskrit. we all know the intrepid yoga teacher in america that won’t hesitate to say ardhahanumanasana.
the bajau tribe in the indonesian archepelago is known for holding their breath upto 10 minutes under water. they survived by hunting fish and hence a combination of natural selection and genetic mutation helped them do more of it by developing a larger spleen.