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.

alternate methods: interoceptive vs exteroceptive

our attention can be anchored in two ways in general: by attending to external things like the sounds around us (exteroceptive) or by attending to things on or inside our body like skin sensations or breathing (interoceptive). for beginners, shifting between exteroceptive and interoceptive attention patterns, preferably using a single modality like sound (sounds from vehicles outside vs sound of breathing) is a great tool.

for example, as you sit down with closed eyes start paying attention to the sounds outside of your room - honking, a distant train, birds and so on. acknowledge the sounds but try not to stray into the thoughts they bring. if you stray, acknowledge it and bring auditory attention back to your surroundings.

now listen to the sounds within the building - the ac, water dripping, a crackling. slowly bring your attention to the sound of your own breathing. notice the white noise in your ears in the dead silence between breaths. continue to draw attention inward, either via breath or just by being present.

this technique, ideally used at the beginning of a session, quickly quietens the mind’s chatter using our senses (ears in this case). note that the beginning of a session can be challenging because we’re coming in with a ruckus of thoughts in our mind from the day we experienced.

alternate methods: aum, mantras

sound produced by our vocal cords in an audible but low energy rhythm is a natural tranquilizer. the best and the guiding example is sighing which is the quickest and most natural anti-stress response of our body. sighing relieves the tension building up inside of us. when done with sound, sighing works even better. during meditation, exhaling with a sigh brings us to a calmer, more focused state.

similarly, when we make aum sound as we exhale, it automatically makes our breathing rhythmically long, slow, and calm. aum chanting begins with a long aah sound with air flowing out the mouth (without forcing it out). it is followed by a shorter ooh sound while continuing to let the air out, and it ends with a mmm sound that lasts as long as the air in our lungs are fully emptied through the nose (note the switch from mouth to nose). relative to om, aum has not one but two vowels and allows better air passage. long, slow breaths in lockstep with aum combined with silent pauses after an exhale is very meditative¹.

one could also recite mantras. i do not know enough to say this, but my gut feeling is that if you don’t naturally speak a language influenced by sanskrit, the sound of you reciting sanskrit mantras may not necessarily evoke the meditative state it’s intended to evoke. it’s also facile if you do not understand what the mantra means. if you somehow memorized the meaning, it will still be a crass symbolic translation of words (as opposed to semantic understanding). this shouldn’t be a big deal, but your brain would have to spend more energy for that translation.

aum or om on the other hand can be chanted without being pedantic, almost like letting a sigh out.

exhale: the key component of breathing techniques

certain indian schools of thought ask that exhale be longer than inhale because it ejects toxins. exhale is the most potent tool in breathing techniques because it is what we use to shape overall breathing pattern.

• sighing is an exhale

• length and effect of aum is determined by the length and quality of exhale

• long, slow breathing pattern is induced by letting out the first long, slow exhale (one could try this with an inhale but compare it and see which works better - exhale does!)

advancing the skill: breath holding

they say it takes a little over 2 months to internalize a new skill. within a few weeks of practice you might start to discern between thought and consciousness. consciousness is simply what you “are” in the moment when there’s no thought distracting you. you are making yourself available to the awareness of stillness inside of you. brief periods of recognizing this difference (between thought and consciousness) is where it begins.

you might also begin to savor the relaxed state in those purely thoughtless moments. there might be a point of complete relaxation halfway through the practice, let’s say, after an exhale: the long, relaxed exhale empties the toxins. everything is calm. another breath of air is not immediately needed. in fact absorbing air might seem to require more energy than you’re willing to spend in that moment. in that headspace there’s no breath to focus but just your inner-self. you might wallow there a little longer. this is the sweetest point. breathless. thoughtless. just you.

holding breath has physical benefits like increased lung capacity in addition to guiding you to your still mind. scriptures on yoga mention breathholding as a goal of meditative practice. for instance kapalabhati, a variation of pranayama, involves rapid breathing which triggers our sympathetic nervous system. this part of nervous system handles flight or fight responses, makes us more alert, and helps us survive longer without oxygen - essentially helping us hold breath for up to several minutes!

connecting it all together: breath, thought, calmness

why is breath used as the anchor for controlling thoughts?

one could try and pause thought by, let’s say, pulsing their finger and sending focus to the finger. the nervous system is involved in initiating the pulsing at our volition, but the pulsing doesn’t produce a feedback loop in the nervous system like breathing does. this is because our peripheral nervous system uses breathing (among other less palpable actions like heartbeat) to maintain homeostasis and in turn determine how calm and safe we (should) feel.

for example, if we’re under attack or have to run away from a threat we need more energy to respond. so cells seek more oxygen to produce energy, heartbeat rises to supply that oxygen via blood, and breathing intensifies to absorb more oxygen. these involuntary actions are a feedback loop for fight, flight, or safety.

of all these involuntary actions, breathing is the only one we have some control over. it turns out nature left us with a loophole here that we can take advantage of. we can voluntarily regulate breath to contrive either alertness (fight or flight via rapid breath) or calmness (safety via soft breathing). focusing on breath, as opposed to focusing using a sensory organ like the eye, also expends very little energy. our visual cortex is an energy sink. it takes up more than 40% of brain’s real estate and energy expenditure.

both thought and breath are involuntary actions. but only one of these (ie thought) hijacks our focus, sometimes to the extent of exacerbating it and producing anxiety. the other simply creates a feedback loop for calm vs storm in our nervous system. regulate the breath, so 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.

1. this is not describing ujjayi breath which produces sound from constricted air passage and optionally vocal cords. i am describing normal breathing with normal sound from vocal cords.