survival and scarcity, our existential problems have been solved. i live in america and watch with awe how we are oblivious to the day-to-day conveniences of living in the most prosperous civilization to ever exist anywhere on earth. yet we all imagine up problems out of thin air and made therapy a basic necessity like air, water, or food.
human mind ruminating itself into misery is not an industrialized post-scarcity problem. mind has always been an information processing machine. it thinks! the misery of thinking leads to stress which leads to anxiety. meditation, the classic solution originally documented as just “yoga”, is inaccessible to most people likely because we are all told to follow the raw ascetic version of it discovered at the height of vedic culture thousands of years ago.1
how should the modern human use meditation?
i will borrow from silicon valley’s greatest philosopher naval ravikant. stress comes from not knowing the right answer or the right cause. it is often a contradiction between two options you’re given with. anxiety comes from piling up of stressful contradictions so much so that it’s overwhelming and unrecognizable.
the only way to organically resolve these is to deeply know yourself. understand the ways you think. when you know how your mind works, how uniquely different it is from others, you understand your response patterns to situations. this introspective insight gives you more control over your mindstuff. metacognition is not easy. some people experience it under the influence of psychedelics. but you can train yourself to self-examine2 through meditation.
meditation doesn’t need to be the hour-long practice of sitting in quietness trying to erase thoughts. there is data now showing that the very effort of traditional meditation makes some people triggered or anxious. observe your thoughts without being ritualistic. understand your judgements, the calculations, the openness, the opaqueness, all of it. sitting down in quietness is a great way to do this. but we don’t need to begin by pursuing thoughtlessness for the benefits of insightful meditation.
we aren’t sanyasins who austerely submitted ourselves to ascetic lives. we won’t reach the chimeric samadhi. what we do is pay taxes and buy groceries. what we need is better ways to do just that.
thought-freedom as the goal
ancient hindu scriptures mention almost-supernatural states of trance as the goal of meditation - transcendental states of nirvana, samadhi, kaivalya and so on. these states describe a thoughtless bliss, because thoughtlessness translates to absence of worry. human suffering largely exists only in thoughts except for palpable physical damages. this is what yoga and meditation is trying to solve.
think of the mind as a clear lake but often muddled with dry leaves from the vegetation around it. what if there was a regular process to sweep the falling leaves out of the lake’s surface, making it look clear again?
the states of trance in scriptures aren’t meant for the average journeyman. it requires surrender. the epic mahabharata mentions how pandavas went on an ascetic journey leaving their kingdom behind to attain samadhi. we, the mere mortals, can’t leave our kingdoms behind in search of trance. but we can clean up the lake that is our mind.
where to put my mind in meditation?
there might be (or might not be!) a point in meditative practice where self-examination leads to self-absorption. a sense of calmness in being aware of your consciousness. lingering in that state naturally resists thought loops without effort. it would be good to know what we mean by “thoughts”.
thoughts can be things of past: the people, communications, and events. thoughts can be imaginations of the future: stories intertwined with past experiences. both of these thought patterns have the deceiving sleight to run in loops taking us away with it. however, not thinking about these is also a thought. it requires brain to think to not think about memories or imaginations. but some thoughts wouldn’t necessarily take you completely away from conscious awareness. for example, your bodily sensations, your breath, a sound within the body, the sound of a crackling wall, or perhaps even the sound of birds or cars. the goal is to not latch these sensory perceptions onto a loop of past-future ruminations. the states of trance in scriptures are accomplished at the next level when sensory perceptions are also removed from our attention.
every time we cut off a rising thought to bring attention back to let’s say, breath, we are getting closer to making our lives better. perhaps even to a state of trance. this is where pranayama comes into play.
pranayama
the quickest way known to man to enjoy stillness of the mind, to linger in self absorption, is through pranayama techniques. bhastrika, kapalabhati, and other variations can still our minds within seconds or minutes. the thoughtless bliss usually happens in a breathless state that occurs right after the pranayama technique. breathholding is not an attempt, but an effortless, extremely relaxed state where inhaling requires more energy than you’re willing to spend in that moment. you’re perfectly at homeostasis without breath. breath withholding or kumbhaka is a stated goal of meditation.
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.
non-negotiables
an empty stomach - but not hungry
distraction-free space - noise and lights are ok as long as they blend in
not too exhausted
a few hacks i have used
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 control. it doesn’t have to be maintained throughout meditation. i chant gayatri mantra, meditating or not but it doesn’t have to be a difficult sanskrit mantra. it can be a prayer or a poem that’s meaningful to you, that captivates you in devotion.
exhale as a 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 autonomous nervous system to relax. when we sigh with sound it may have a slightly better effect on calming us.
exhales longer than inhale can be calming for most people although my yoga teacher training taught me that not all people respond the same way.
breath holding
breath holding is a documented benefit of meditation in the early scriptures of yoga. increased lung capacity is a survival mechanism3, but breathless moments in meditation brings us utmost clarity and concentration. important to note, breath holding is a survival mechanism so it will trigger our 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 we practice, we will figure out what works for us and improvise. important to note that yoga and meditation are to be seen as practices, not as tylenol. ie, on a stressful day we may not be able to sit down and anchor to our inner self as if it would act like a pill. thoughts run wild! our 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.
yoga is simply meditation, no poses or movements, if you were to follow the original scriptures. it's documented in patanjali’s yoga sutra and other ancient scriptures as a deeply spiritual practice of sitting down and lingering in consciousness without interference from thought. the asanas evolved much later, in the last few hundred years, and most of what we do in yoga today was designed in the last 150 years, likely also influenced by scandinavian gymnastics style exercises introduced by british colonial rule in india.
patanjali’s yoga sutra states this as swadhyaya which means self-study or introspection. it is one of the niyamas (rules) of yogic practice. this also assumes you don’t have serious mental conditions. for example, people who suffer from psychosis, narcissism, or other personality disorders have no theory of mind. they love some people. and they hurt some other people. there’s no way for them to see through their own narcissistic shield. there are also gender differences. women are more neurotic than men. 1 in 5 women in america are prescribed SSRIs. note that yoga was invented by a bunch of dudes in india. we don’t know if they tested their theories on the other gender.
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.