Personal experience: How meditation helps different people to practice
From ancient spiritual practice, meditation has become a fashion trend. and the ground for promising research. Pop stars and actors talk about the experience of meditation in interviews, scientists see it as a panacea for stress and anxiety, and start-ups one by one create interactive applications for brain fitness and attention control. We tried to figure out how and why this is happening, and now we talked about meditation with seven people for whom this practice has become an important part of working on ourselves.
I have a rather unstable psyche and a sensitive nervous system, and dramatic mood swings have been characteristic of my entire life. I need daily meditation practice as medicine for people with chronic diseases.
I started practicing about six years ago. It came out quite by accident: I went to yoga for the company, and meditation took place there. I almost instantly felt that this is something that makes me feel better, and immediately decided to do it every day. Just somehow it became immediately clear - that’s what I need exactly that. I came home, found on YouTube the very meditation we did during the yoga class, downloaded it, extracted the soundtrack in mp3 and poured it into the player. Since then, she has been there, and I study every day for an average of 40 minutes.
This is a dynamic meditation from kundalini yoga for 10 minutes, which is a set of physical exercises. When the voice in the headphones says "breathe, now do not breathe, now wave your hands" and so on. It suits me because it's easier for me to turn off my head. No need to think, but you just need to do everything, and by the end of meditation, I calm down so much that I can sit in silence for another half an hour. At the very beginning of meditation, breathing exercises help me a lot: inhaling through one nostril for 8 counts, holding breath for 8 counts, exhaling through the second nostril for 8 counts, holding breath for 8 counts, inhaling again - and so as needed (I do twenty times ).
Of course, for all this it is better to set aside time at the beginning of the day, to plan your time differently. Now I need to somehow create this extra hour for myself in the morning — not getting up at ten, but at nine, or be ready to be an hour late and apologize. I always choose to be an hour late and apologize, but to do the exercises, and not vice versa, and so far I have never regretted it. I don’t really remember the scientific explanations of the effect of meditation, but I feel how a previously uncontrolled stream of consciousness stops for at least a few minutes. These exercises do something with the brain and the whole body, that everything comes into relative balance and you just feel better. For me, there is no mysticism in this - it is a physical process. Probably, medications give a similar effect, but pills are like doping, and exercise just repairs you, and the body gets used to working normally.
When I insert new cartridges into my printer, it offers to calibrate them. This is very similar to how exercises "calibrate" my head - I just come to a resource state.
For the first time I got to meditate completely by accident - five years ago my friend called me to some kind of zazen, said it was a cool thing and I had to try. At first we were told how to sit and breathe properly during meditation, what to do with our thoughts. Then they all sat on pillows facing the wall. After two half-hour sessions, I realized that next week I need to come here again. I hadn’t had any special spiritual or mystical searches before, I just quickly enough realized that I had encountered a very effective tool that can be associated with almost any sphere of life.
The place where I began to walk turned out to be the Buddhist center of the Zen tradition. It is believed that this is the line of transmission of the teachings on meditation, coming from Buddha Shakyamuni. This line existed in India, China, Japan, and now develops in Europe. The head of this school is a Buddhist monk Sando Kaysen, he lives in the south of France, his students open centers in different countries of Europe. From the side it reminds a bit of religion, but in fact there is nothing religious here - there is nothing to believe in and nothing to worship.
It’s not so easy to say about some results or effects: I have been practicing regularly for several years now and it’s hard to remember how it is different. I would not become attached to some short-term results: during or immediately after practice we may have a variety of conditions - pleasant or not. Sitting on a pillow facing the wall, we learn not to depend so much on them, and it is this skill that can later come in handy in life. We also learn to work with our attention, which is also useful in almost any business. We can better understand what we are doing, what we want, to be more efficient, to have more pleasure during our holidays. It becomes clearer how to help the people around us, we can avoid unnecessary conflicts.
In today's situation around meditation, I see some complexity: people have a lot of prejudices and fantasies about this, many think that this is necessarily connected with some kind of esoteric and something mysterious. But we are talking about very simple things: our body, our sensations, how our attention works, and how we could combine it.
Many in our country have a tendency to perceive the practice of meditation as something necessarily connected with overcoming oneself. It seems to people that, in order to become freer and happier, they must first suffer, but this is not at all the case. Deep meditation is based on a very careful attitude towards yourself; concentration should always work along with relaxation.
It seems to me that almost everyone can find some form of meditation that suits them. I would advise a little search and choose some tradition or method that is close to you, and begin to practice regularly. It’s good to find experienced practitioners whom you can trust and discuss some of your difficulties and subtleties of meditation. This may be a teacher, a trainer or a Buddhist monk - who likes what. It is good sometimes to practice in a group, it helps someone. Sometimes you can go to retreats, a kind of retreat for several days devoted to meditation. You should not expect any revelations from such events, but during their time you can learn to connect formal practice and our daily life.
For me, it all started in 2010, when I left office work, and my life has changed significantly. Very different people began to come to it, which helped me to look at the world from a new angle. One day my friend advised me to try qigong and meditation: the first is for the body, the second is for consciousness. After six months of practicing qigong, my figure became slimmer, and I realized that I was quite capable of correcting it. I really liked it because I had a small fad about the figure. Thanks to physical exertion, I also became much less sick.
As for meditation, everything was not so simple. In order to feel and understand this new state, it took me a while, the personal experience of my friends and the newest technologies. I started like this: 1-2 times a week I would sit down in the lotus position, close my eyes, turn on the mantra and try to meditate. As I explained, you need not think about anything. Later, I began to use some simple techniques, in particular, I began to monitor my breathing. Then one day during a meditation on the seashore, I had a feeling that I did not need to breathe. This is an amazing feeling. Of course, I continued to breathe, my heart continued to beat, but this happened as if by itself. Over time, I realized that it was not at all necessary to sit down in the lotus position or turn on the mantra in order to enter into a light meditative state.
In 2013, I was introduced to BCI, neurocomputer interface technology, and invited to work on the project. This technology provides a very simple and interesting way to understand what meditative practice is and how it affects the brain from a scientific point of view. The neurocomputer interface reads the activity of the brain, with the help of it a person can control electrical objects and computer programs. I got acquainted with this technology, when the NeuroSky neuro headset came into my hands - a device similar to a hoop or headphones, with a sensor on the forehead and earlobe that works on the principle of electroencephalogram. The gadget is designed for brain-fitness, that is, literally to train the brain. The same meditation, but with smart technologies. Brain fitness is based on the principle of neurofeedback, which is used to teach our brain to produce certain electromagnetic waves by deliberately changing our own activity. Conceptually, this works in a similar way to training muscles with the help of physical exertion.
The so-called fitness for the brain plays a key role in the development of a person and the maintenance of his cognitive abilities. Training new skills that meet the requirements of modernity requires concentration of attention, good memory, high speed of information processing and the ability to manage stress. If we develop and maintain these qualities, then it is possible to master new things and keep the brain in a healthy state for many years. The human brain is created for change and is waiting for change from us - tomorrow it will be ready to do what it doesn’t know today. At first after birth, our perception of the world is very primitive, cognitive abilities are almost absent. But learning new gradually changes the physical structure of the brain, contributes to the creation of billions of new neural connections that adapt us to the conditions of the surrounding world.
This process can continue until the end of life, we only need to stimulate it. Since childhood, it was very difficult for me to learn foreign languages, and I dreamed that someday I would learn at least one. Now I live in Santiago de Chile and communicate with people in English and Spanish, for me this is already a miracle. If the practice of qigong keeps my physical form, and meditation has harmonized my emotional state, then brain-fitness has seriously increased my cognitive abilities.
Meditation is the moment of maximum tranquility and concentration when everything is turned off: the environment, your body, desires. When you just sit and watch the game of your own mind: how different thoughts constantly arise in your head, and you just let them go, without any appreciation. Gradually clearing the mind of these jumping fleas is becoming easier. It is like a glass of muddy water: if you leave it alone, the sediment will collect at the bottom and the water will become clear. Well, then - to whom that: you can just stay in this state or start thinking about some question.
Millions of meditation techniques - from Eastern practices to embroidery by the fireplace or one of the methods of Marina Abramovich. In short, everything that calms the mind. My four-year-old son, for example, sometimes twirls a lock on a finger in the morning and drops out of reality. I can not imagine what he thinks about there, but quite often in this state you do not get ready for breakfast. Previously, it was called "stick", but now we are increasingly stuck in the gadgets, but not in our own mind.
In northern (Tibetan) Buddhism, which I try to practice, meditation is accompanied by tantric practices at the level of body, speech, and mind. This could mean, for example, a combination of the lotus posture (body), mantra (speech) and keeping certain images in the mind.
The deeper the meditation, the harder it is to prevent it. When I started many years ago, there were much less worries, neuroses and responsibilities, and it was easier to concentrate. And now something is constantly disturbing: phone, work, facebook. The huge flow of information takes more and more of our attention, and it becomes more difficult to shake it off. But this is like in the gym: the more regular the classes, the higher the motivation and the more obvious the result, and as soon as you start to fall out, the regime becomes shaken, and already neither pleasure nor beauty. As for the results, here the parallel with sports is still relevant: a trained body becomes more resilient, it is less sick and works better, the same happens with the mind.
For a start, I would advise you to choose the right "gym" - to find an interesting setting: it can be Tibetan mantras, Hindu incenses, seashore, silence, difficult yoga poses - anything, as long as it is psychologically comfortable. The mind is the most valuable thing that we have, and therefore it is a logical decision to engage in its development, especially since these useful skills and the state of the "conscious mind" are preserved for life.
In my youth I heard a lot about meditation, as it is practiced in Zen Buddhism. As I understand it, later it was formed in the so-called transcendental meditation. It was about the complete stop of internal dialogue, the achievement of "perfect silence" inside. All this should have led to supernatural results and ecstasy. After many attempts, it became clear to me that for me it was some kind of terrible mental deadlock, and it is completely incomprehensible why this causes such a massive delight.
Later I found other ways to aggravate all bodily experiences and increased concentration of attention, the ability to control and direct it. Being already guided by this experience, it was possible, in a completely sober state of mind, of course, not so sharply, but still consciously directing attention to one’s own bodily states and learning to control them. And if with a minimal effort one can get a serious share of control over the "gross" components of physicality (muscles, ligaments, bones, general tone of the support apparatus), then, probably, with more effort and diligence, with the help of training, one can achieve even finer control over the body.
It is important to indicate that meditation in this sense is not the same as contemplation, as Schopenhauer defines it, that is, observation, devoid of interest, complete “dissolution” of the observer in it. I think the “conscious direction of attention” will be a more precise definition.
In meditation, there is a next level, where attention is directed to itself, to attention and thought as such, as well as to the categories of time and space, as if these phenomena are considered "under a magnifying glass" of their own attention. Plunging farther and farther, you can get into the sphere of "pure spirit" and wander around these labyrinths for a long time. The case is quite serious and differs from the usual meditative exercises, something like climbing a porch near a house from climbing Everest.
I started practicing meditation a couple of years ago when I received an offer to work in New York and moved to live there. Responsible position in the fashion-company and many changes, of course, reflected in my psychological state. The fast and very rich lifestyle in the Big Apple did not leave a place or time for respite, and I felt an acute need for a moral reboot.
I started with meditation after hatha yoga. It is also known as the body scan technique, which helps relieve tension and fatigue. But two or three times a week was not enough, and I decided that, in order to truly find peace of mind, you should not only meditate more often, but, above all, learn to ignore stress. I started searching for new tools and techniques and, fortunately, discovered the Headspace application.
Headspace works as a personal trainer - it helps to train the mind and control the flow of thoughts and emotions. You can listen to Headspace on the go or download a suitable session and practice offline at any place convenient for you: between meetings, in a taxi, after your morning coffee or playing sports.
Meditation is a very personal experience, and for me my main guru is my body and mind. You just have to listen to them - and even a five-minute break alone with yourself will help you feel calmer and happier.
In principle, describing classes in meditation is just as futile, as well as explaining any other attempts to improve something in yourself - whether it is running, psychotherapy, or going to a massage. There is nothing supercomplex or super-attractive here, and meditation is also completely unserious: well, a person sits silently for a while and with a straight back, if something happens, it’s only in his head - what is there to brag about?
At least something about meditation, I began to understand, or, more precisely, to feel, having traveled to a 10-day vipassana. It was in the mountains two hundred kilometers from Madrid, although it could be anywhere - anyway, almost all the time you are sitting on the rug in the assembly hall. The rules of Vipassana are now known to everyone In short, it is something like an imitation of monastic life, with a vow of silence. Ten days should be silent and watch the breath, almost in the literal sense of the word contemplating your own navel. Rise at 4:30, lunch at 12:00, dinner at 17:00. Reading, writing, any gadgets are prohibited.
All this is necessary to switch attention from the outside world to yourself. И на практике это довольно болезненный процесс - и в смысле телесных ощущений, и в смысле того, что начинает происходить в голове. Собственно, примерно в этом медитация и заключается: это не столько способ расслабления (хотя многие думают о ней именно так), сколько попытка переключить внимание на себя, а в идеале - быть включённым постоянно. В общем, похоже на известную формулу Лири, только без последнего слагаемого: turn on и tune in - да, а drop out необязательно (и даже как-то глупо).
По большому счёту, способов это делать миллион, поводов - ещё больше. I will not pretend that I have achieved at least some progress in this, even in doing it every day. But in general, the idea that, for example, you can observe your own emotions from the outside, that you are not equal to them, is quite inspiring and can sometimes help a lot.
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