How Meditation Works
Meditation is a technique that relaxes the body quickly and calms the mind. It is remarkably simple to do. You sit down, you focus on the body and you restrain the impulse to follow your usual thoughts. That's all there is to it: physical stillness, focusing and thought-control. Focusing on the body causes it to relax, and the act of focusing settles the mind. To stay focused means you also have to refrain from following irrelevant thoughts, and this is more tricky. No-one manages their thoughts perfectly, but even partial success is very rewarding.
Meditation develops three abilities that we all possess to some degree — namely relaxation, focusing and self-awareness. We can all relax —we all fall asleep eventually. We can all pay attention to an activity or train of thought, or we couldn't achieve anything at all. And we all have some ability to observe and therefore control, our thoughts and emotional responses.
We usually take these abilities for granted. Meditation, however, develops them as conscious skills. This enables us to relax quickly whenever we want to; to focus on anything at all without succumbing to distractions, and to gain more control over our thoughts and emotions.
Another way to understand meditation is to look at what people actually do. Despite the apparent diversity of styles and purposes, most regular meditators do much the same thing. They typically do a 'sitting' for the optimal time of between ten and twenty-five minutes. During that time, their bodies relax (through inactivity, if nothing else); they calm their minds by focusing on something (usually the breath, the body or a mantra); and they try to resist following their thoughts as they usually would. They typically guide themselves with instructions such as 'Focus on the breath and let thoughts pass by.' Although they invariably lose focus and get distracted from time to time, they still feel more calm and clear-minded afterwards.
Meditation always involves mental control. It is not a blank or empty state. It is about focusing on one thing as well as you can despite the on-going background activity of the mind. This is what distinguishes it from relaxation exercises in which the mind is generally allowed to wander, and from sleep, in which you become unconscious. Meditation aims for a still, quiet, self-aware state of mind, but not oblivion.
People often fail at meditation because they don't really know what they are doing. In fact, there is no mystery about what it takes to learn a skill. We need to have clear goals, evaluate our progress, makes adjustments and consolidate our learning through repetition. To learn any skill needs a certain amount of self observation and meditation is no exception.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MEDITATE?
A meditation usually goes something like this. You sit or lie down, and you focus on the breath or the body in some way. You feel the breath rise. You feel the breath fall. This is what it means to focus. Sooner or later you are quite likely to wander off with some thought and lose your focus.
When you realise this, you don't get annoyed. If the thought is weak, you just refocus on the breath. If the thought is more demanding, you need to stop and evaluate it. You ask, what is this thought about and how important is it? Do I need to think about it right now? You can then consciously choose whether you stay with it or return to the breath. Thoughts are rarely as important as they pretend to be. Once you see a thought objectively, you can usually let it go immediately.
So you tick that thought off and return to the breath. It takes a few seconds to re-establish focus. After a while, you may find you've gone off with another thought. Once again, you stop that thought, tick it off and refocus. This pattern of focus, distraction and refocus is the normal rhythm of any meditation.
Fairly soon you find that something lovely is starting to happen. You find that focusing on the breath is quite pleasant. It is much better than chasing your thoughts as you normally would. Your body relaxes, the pleasure principle kicks in and you don't get so distracted.
This doesn't mean however, that all your incidental thoughts have vanished. They still appear, but they no longer distract you as much. You feel somewhat detached from them. You can't help but notice them, but you realise it is your choice whether you respond to them or not.
Most thoughts fade quickly if you don't engage them, but meditation is also about tolerating and not over-reacting to those that remain. We can still relax and be calm in the presence of pain, sadness or a nagging problem so long as we give it no more attention than it deserves. You can still focus primarily on the body and relax anyway.
FOCUSING
Meditation is all about inactivity and detachment. The body is still and you restrain the impulse to follow your usual thoughts. So how does doing virtually nothing produce such good results? How does it actually work?
Meditation is about learning to relax better, to focus better and to become more self aware. Of these three inter-related skills, focusing or paying attention, is by far the most important. It defines meditation and steers the whole process.
We can all focus to some degree. All day long we pay attention to one thing after another, but usually in a random, uncontrolled way. We focus on what we are doing, or on whatever thought wins out against the competing thoughts. This is our normal, reactive style of attention. It is usually quite shallow and easily distracted.
To deliberately focus is quite a different matter. We can define focus as 'selective attention'. It is when we choose to give priority to one thought or sensation at the expense of everything else we could be thinking about. We make it number 1 out of the options. We put it in the foreground of the mind, and put everything else in the background.
Focusing on a particular thought or sensation is quite different from just being aware of its presence. We can notice many things superficially in the blink of an eye, but focusing takes time. It takes 10 or 20 seconds to establish a thought or sensation firmly in the mind against the interference of the preceding thoughts. If we can sustain our attention for another half minute or so, we start to feel the benefits. Although focusing takes some effort at first, it soon becomes easier and very rewarding.
Focusing excludes weaker thoughts and disarms those that remain. To focus well on any one thing consumes the lion's share of our mental resources, and there is little left over for anything else. If we feed X, we automatically starve Y and Z. This is how focusing on the body weakens the grip of our habitual thoughts. It doesn't block them out. It just starves them of the attention they need to stay active. If you neglect any thought for 15 or 20 seconds, you will find it drops out of working memory.
Sustained attention has many benefits. Firstly, focusing acts like a spotlight. You notice far more detail in whatever you focus on, be it a thought, sensation, feeling or action. The brain has time to bring up the related memory files, which helps you know your object more accurately. This is the basis of what is called 'insight'.
Secondly, When you focus, time seems to slow down, as the mental busyness fades and you enter the slower rhythms of the non-verbal, sensory world. Thirdly you feel mentally in control. Focusing enables you to detach from your habitual thoughts, resist distractions and choose where to direct your attention. And fourthly, focusing has an unexpected side-effect. Because it streamlines the mind and stops it scattering, you find that you relax rapidly. In fact the fastest way to relax at any time is not to let the mind drift, but to focus.
Although focusing can enormously satisfying, it never stops being a discipline. It doesn't take much effort to drive a car, but you can't afford to take your hands off the steering wheel for long. Our ability to pay attention is always vulnerable, second-by-second, to internal and external distractions. We can't help but notice peripheral sounds, thoughts and emotion from time to time when we meditate. To focus means that we give high quality, continuous attention to the body, and low quality, as-required attention to everything else.
RELAXING
Focusing is the skill that defines meditation, but learning to relax quickly is equally important. In fact, focusing and relaxing are skills that support each other. Focusing in itself is relaxing, because it reduces mental scatter. We relax by focusing on the body, and the more we relax, the easier it is to focus. We can't focus at all well when the body is tense.
To relax at all we need to know what is making us tense. We can always blame external factors, but usually it is because we think too much. Anxious people typically have overactive, runaway minds that never seem to stop.
It is not surprising that thinking makes us tense. Thinking fires the body up for action. That is its purpose. When did you last have soothing, relaxing thoughts? Our thoughts are driven by emotions — typically worry, annoyance or desire — and they usually give priority to whatever is troubling us the most. These emotions stimulate the fight-or-flight response. They send signals to the adrenal glands saying 'More adrenalin, more cortisol! This matter is urgent and needs to be dealt with immediately!" Thinking always stimulates the body and mind, even if it happens to be 2.a.m. and you'd rather be asleep.
To relax at all, we need to calm down this constant mental activity. If you've ever tried to stop thinking, or tried to ignore thoughts or blank them out, you'll know that this doesn't work. Meditation uses another strategy: it starves the thoughts by focusing on something else.
Thoughts need fuel to stay active. Because the brain doesn't have enough glucose and oxygen to do everything at once, it prioritises the flow of blood to whatever we pay attention to. Meditation weakens our thought processes in general by focusing on another function of the mind. We shift from thinking mode to sensing mode.
Sensing means focusing on any of the sensations of the present — sight, sound, smell, taste or touch. Any of these would do. In fact, meditation usually focuses on the internal sensations of the body because this speeds relaxation through feedback mechanisms.
Focusing on the body shifts us from thinking, which is active, to sensing, which is passive. It shifts us from the concerns of the past and future into the relative simplicity of the present moment. It shifts our orientation from outer to inner, from activity towards stillness. It also shift us from our head to our body: from our verbal, narrative sense of self to our muscular-visceral sense of self. All this gives the body a chance to restore balance — to slow down, stop and rest.
We can easily override our need for balance if we want to. We stay awake long after we are tired. We eat more than we need to. We run on excitement and worry, and skimp on rest and repair time. We usually don't notice how far out of balance we are until poor sleep, anxiety and and a runaway mind ring the alarm bells.
Yet the body will always relax quickly if you give it half a chance. If you focus on your body for more than a few seconds, it automatically starts to loosen up. You don't need to force the process. The focusing alone is enough. Just to become aware of tensions and discomforts stimulates the body's natural tendency to return to balance.
It is easy to feel this happening. If you recognise that your shoulders are up around your ears, they tend to drop immediately. If you realise you're holding your breath, you automatically let the breath go. If you scan the body slowly, you can feel each place gradually relaxing under your gaze. It seems to happen just because you pay attention to it.
Although relaxation is a natural process, it is also a skill that we can learn to do more effectively. The way to relax rapidly is to get very familiar with this process in a direct, non-verbal way. By sensing the subtle tensions and imbalances that you usually wouldn't notice, you can speed the process along.
Relaxation is a sequence of subtle shifts in muscle tone, blood flow, pulse, breathing and mood. The body gradually feels soft, heavy, loose, warm, tingly and maybe a bit tired and sore as well. The mind slows down. It feels still: it's not trying to do anything. It feels quiet: it largely stops talking to itself; it feels centred in the body rather than cruising the universe, and it often flirts with sleep.
Meditators learn to recognise in detail how they feel when they're tense, how they feel when they're relaxed and the sliding scale in between. They also learn to notice their individual landmarks on the way. Over time, they build up a conscious body image of the state they are aiming for, and that memory guides their meditation. With a clear understanding of what relaxation is, they can achieve a degree of inner balance and mental stillness that is quite unlike sleep or any other activity.
AWARENESS
We can't underestimate the importance of focusing. Everything we do — from picking up a spoon to driving a car to raising a child — needs a certain amount of attention to be done well. Conversely, our failures are often due to scattered or insufficient attention.
Yet focusing can also be a kind of tunnel vision. It narrows the beam of attention. Even animals and children can focus intently on one thing but we can't call that meditation. Focusing is selective attention, but it needs to be supported by a larger mental function that scientists call 'supervisory attention.' We can call it self-observation, or present moment awareness, or mindfulness.
It is also called the observer mind, or the watcher. Some scientists call it meta-cognition or higher order consciousness. To be aware means that you are fully conscious of what you are doing as you are doing it. You know what you are thinking or feeling as it is happening. It is the opposite of operating on automatic pilot.
An Indian metaphor illustrates this dynamic between focusing and awareness. It describes the mind as being like two birds on a branch. One bird eats the fruit and the other bird just watches. One bird is active, but the other bird understands what is happening.
Present-moment awareness means we can see any thought, sensation, emotion or action objectively, as it happens, from the perspective of an observer. The gold standard of awareness, according to the Buddha, is that you can verbally describe what you are noticing. You can say to yourself: This is a thought about work. Or this is sadness or anxiety. Or this is a stomach ache.
Usually we respond immediately to any thought or sensation that we notice, but to be fully aware of it takes a little longer. The process goes like this.
Firstly, we stop the thought for long enough to identify it. Secondly we notice the associated emotion. We either like or dislike that thought to some degree. This is how we assess its importance. Thirdly, we notice our tendency either to engage with or withdraw from it. This puts us in a position to make a good choice about how to respond. This ability to stop and look before we act is what psychologists call emotional regulation or thought regulation.
Awareness tells us what is happening in the moment, and what is and what is not worth paying attention to. We can define awareness as the conscious perception and evaluation of any thought, sensation or emotion, prior to acting upon it. It tells us where to direct our attention profitably. Awareness, in other words, is purposeful. It helps the mind do what the mind does: the planning of goal-directed behaviour. This is a skill worth developing. It has applications way beyond the context of meditation.
We tend to think of meditation as a state of physical and mental stillness, sitting still and doing nothing. It is that, but it can also be much more. This traditional format is very limiting. People will try to relax to the edge of sleep but see little value in any less than that. They focus, but only for the purpose of relaxing. They become more aware but only for the purpose of protecting their stillness. There is no doubt that stillness is worthwhile and even essential, but meditation shouldn't stop here.
These three skills have enormous potential if we want to develop them. We can also learn to be relaxed in movement: to have a sense of balance and flow in whatever we do. We can learn to focus, not just on the body but on whatever demands our attention, in order to do it better. And we can develop our moment-to-moment awareness in order to see clearly what is happening, even in the most unmeditative situations, so we can make better decisions.
I should mention here that Buddhism and Yoga, with their emphasis on inaction and detachment, tend to see awareness differently. They idealise 'just watching' as the ultimate goal. They often say that the perfect mind is like a mirror, passive and impartial. They describe awareness as a state of pure, transcendental consciousness that sees things exactly as they are without any contamination from the observer. This serves their spiritual objectives, but I think it shows no understanding of how our minds actually work. No matter how clear and objective our awareness seems to be, it always remains persona and purposeful.
