I can't meditate

I can't meditate — I hear this a lot from new and seasoned yogis alike. Many of us expect to be able to sit down and somehow instantly quiet the mind. Well-intentioned yoga teachers can often be heard asking students "turn your attention inwards and begin to quiet your mind". Yet the mind is the very thing designed not to be quiet, it's job is to produce thought, to dream, to plan, to revel in problems. In fact it's a veritable problem factory, and as soon as you have solved one problem another comes right along to take it's place.

Meditation is not unlike learning a musical instrument. It requires practice as we develop a very specific set of skills. We don't expect to sit down in front of a piano and be able to play Rimski-Korsakov's maddening "Flight of the Bumblebee" or pick up a guitar and play "Classical Gas". Yet we expect to be able to sit and instantly somehow calm the mind — the problem factory.

Some 4 thousand years ago Pentanjali, (the James Brown of yoga) once described the mind as "a wild horse stung by a wasp ridden by a monkey" and further wrote the pivotal 2nd yoga sutra: citta vrtti nirodha. Loosely translated from Sanskrit means to restrain the movements of the mind. However, that requires a boat load of training, and trying to calm or quieten the mind only leads to further agitation.

Instead, what if we approached our mental activity more like the weather — like bright sunshine or clouds, rainstorms and blizzards all passing by. In this analogy the mind is the sky, the sky doesn't cling to specific weather conditions, nor try and get rid of the 'bad ones'. The sky just is. We're not trying to obtain certain mind states, especially that of tranquility. We're simply observing thoughts and feelings without judgement — without thinking they should be this way or that — kind of takes a load off doesn't it?

In his book "Ending the Pursuit of Happiness" Barry Magid argues that using meditation to make your life better or happier is a misunderstanding. The intent instead was to learn how to stop trying to fix things, to stop being preoccupied with trying to control your experience of the world, to give up trying to replace unpleasant thoughts and emotions with more pleasant ones.

However, after meditating for awhile, (about 20 mins each morning) it's difficult not to feel the wonderful life-changing effects of meditation — to have a rosier outlook, albeit not the point as Mr. Magid states. I can't help notice how my intense distractability and mood swings have been reduced, I notice that the things that are in my way are actually part of my way… lowering my caffeine and sugar intake may also be playing a part.

It's long been claimed by us Yogis that meditation and ancient breath-focused practices, such as pranayama, strengthen our ability to focus on tasks. Now, for the first time a new study by researchers in Dublin, Ireland explains the neurophysiological link between breathing and attention. To date, no studies had been carried-out showing a direct neurophysiological link between respiration and cognition.

Extract from Neuroscience News, August 2018
Meditation and Breathing Exercises Can Sharpen Your Mind

Trinity College Dublin researchers report controlled breathing, a key element of meditation, directly affects noradrenaline levels in the brain. The study suggests controlled breathing can enhance attention and improve overall brain health. Findings also show breath-focused meditation and yogic breathing practices have numerous known cognitive benefits, including increased ability to focus, decreased mind wandering, improved arousal levels, more positive emotions, decreased emotional reactivity, along with many others.

The research shows for the first time that breathing - a key element of meditation and mindfulness practices - directly affects the levels of a natural chemical messenger in the brain called noradrenaline. This chemical messenger is released when we are challenged, curious, exercised, focused or emotionally aroused, and, if produced at the right levels, helps the brain grow new connections, like a brain fertiliser. The way we breathe, in other words, directly affects the chemistry of our brains in a way that can enhance our attention and improve our brain health. The study, carried out by researchers at Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience and the Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity, found that participants who focused well while undertaking a task that demanded a lot of attention had greater synchronisation between their breathing patterns and their attention, than those who had poor focus. The authors believe that it may be possible to use breath-control practices to stabilise attention and boost brain health.

Michael Melnychuk, PhD and lead author of the study, explained: "Practitioners of yoga have claimed for some 2,500 years, that respiration influences the mind. In our study we looked for a neurophysiological link that could help explain these claims by measuring breathing, reaction time, and brain activity in a small area in the brainstem called the locus coeruleus, where noradrenaline is made. Noradrenaline is an all-purpose action system in the brain. When we are stressed we produce too much noradrenaline and we can't focus. When we feel sluggish, we produce too little and again, we can't focus. There is a sweet spot of noradrenaline in which our emotions, thinking and memory are much clearer."

Read the full article at: Neuroscience News

Namaste

By John Johnson, C-IAYT, with special thanks to NeuroscienceNews