How long can you sit and read a book? How long before you switch songs because you’re already bored? 10 minute YouTube video too long? Feeling restless all the time? Engaged in conversation with someone and notice they’re scrolling through their feed? We’re losing the capacity to focus and face powerful distractions everyday; there’s no way that can be good long-term — meditation offers some resistance to the madness.
Meditation has come a long way, from ancient Asian origins rooted in Buddhism and Hinduism to a now largely secular proliferation in Western countries. The alluring mindfulness practice, in particular, has become increasingly attractive for individuals seeking relief from bouts of stress or anxiety and a burgeoning wellness market has aided its reincarnation in apps and online classes. As with any learned skill, it demands a deeply rigorous study of theory and practice — it’s akin to golfing your whole life and still being exceptionally bad at it, unfortunately the same is true with meditation. Keeping this in mind I created a heuristic program in order to gain some insight into the practice.
My Meditation Program:
- Read Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh
- 5 days of 30 minute meditation
- 24hr fast
- Waking Up audiobook by Sam Harris
- Watch Dr. Robert Sapolsky on Stress
- Watch Daniel Goleman on Focus: The Secret to High Performance and Fulfilment
- Read https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/harvard-researchers-study-how-mindfulness-may-change-the-brain-in-depressed-patients/
This program consisted of me waking up each morning and meditating for 30 minutes. I would then listen to the audio version of Waking Up by Sam Harris and read through Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh. For the short span of a day I removed coffee and food and anticipated my caffeine-dependent brain shutting down before noon however a steady flow of green tea kept me functioning. After the short program I became even more interested in meditation as a way to navigate the trials of modern society and still practice often either alone or at meditation centres.
Here are 5 reasons for making your own meditation program.
1. It helps you be with you.
Sitting with myself for 30 minutes, 5 days in a row was a lot. It was something I had never done or ever wanted to do. I wondered if it would stultify my interest in meditation and had difficulty maintaining an undisturbed 30 minutes. During the sessions numerous thoughts ran across my mind and could range from joyous to judgmental; the latter being when my mind flipped through past experiences that I felt should’ve gone better.
As uncomfortable as this was I would always try to come back to my breath; not to say I ignored my self-rumination, I just acknowledged it and gently reminded myself that focusing on the negatives would be unproductive.
This process would have been a lot more difficult if I hadn’t read Being Peace by the Buddhist monk: Thich Nhat Hanh. Passages from his book would sometimes drift into my head and aid my concentration by calming any negative feelings.
“…without being peace, we cannot do anything for peace. If we are not peaceful, then we cannot contribute to the peace movement.” Being Peace, p. 82
2. Improved social interactions.
“Meditation is not to get out of society, to escape from society, but to prepare for a re-entry into society.” Being Peace, p. 51
Every person embodies a diverse background of complex experiences and being cognizant of such complexity can help elucidate meaningful interactions. When meditating, I tried hard not to think too much about my own experiences but did unfortunately find myself frequently analyzing my life. I knew this was probably disadvantageous but realized that the simple act of sitting quietly in a room and reflecting meant that already I was privy to substantial luxury. My thoughts were then focused on how good I have it and how much more appreciative I could be.
Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present and it seems that we interact best in society when we are committed to being completely engaged. After my 5 day trial I noticed social interactions became more important. I found myself reflecting more on what had been discussed with others and was intent on engaging in the conversation completely. Interactions no matter how brief were more meaningful, but I was also aware of my own bias so I aimed to at least be more present in social engagements.
3. Improved focus.
There’s already a lot of evidence on meditation’s benefits with regards to focusing and even if no such research existed this idea wouldn’t seem completely out of place. In fact, part of the reason I advocate for meditation sans app is because the app is yet another distraction — if we are able to sit completely still in silence without distraction then we have already gained so much.
Source: Columbia University
An important benefit of being able to focus is understanding how to manage emotions — this has growing implications not just for adults but for children who seem to be bombarded with focus deterrents daily. In the clip below psychologist Daniel Goleman explains how students living in an impoverished neighbourhood showed immediate improvements in behaviour after performing breathing exercises routinely before class.
4. Health benefits.
Dealing with constant anxiety is extremely stressful and can have negative long-term effects. An 8-week long Harvard study in 2013 demonstrated that participants with chronic anxiety were much more likely to score better (less anxious) on three different anxiety tests after completing a mindfulness based program.
The study compared the differences between mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) and stress management education (SME) for 93 individuals. In total there were 48 MBSR participants and 41 SME participants. The highlighted text below explains the results.
Unable to understand what all this science-talk means? Same here, but after some Googling I discovered that a p-value less than .05 means in this case that the mindfulness training was beneficial and had a less than 5% probability of not affecting anxiety levels. Here’s a more scientific explanation of the p-value:
Source: https://www.simplypsychology.org/p-value.html
The null hypothesis in this study states that any changes in anxiety levels were due to chance and not mindfulness training. Knowing this, the below graph from the study clearly shows positive results for MBSR.
After completing mindfulness based training (dark grey) the participants scored lower on all three anxiety tests (meaning less anxiety). This evidence clearly shows that mindfulness training helped reduce stress and anxiety in participants. Having such clear scientific data for something as simple as sitting silently in a room will always be surprising since I assume most people, if shown these stats, will still belabour the point that they don’t need meditation and don’t have time for it. It does however remain to be seen how our health will be impacted by chronic stress and anxiety long-term but as we careen towards a world of global pandemics and climate disasters, the implementation of meditation programs into schools and workplaces seems more relevant than ever.
Here the brilliant neuroendocrinologist Dr. Robert Sapolsky explains how our stress response gets constantly over-used in modern society.
5. It beats the apps.
My hesitation with apps as meditation tools comes from many unproductive attempts at using them. I tried both Headspace and Waking Up for guided meditation but felt I had put little effort in — everything was done for me. The educational segments on meditation did help maintain my interest but I didn’t want to rely on wifi or a fully charged phone in order to meditate. Being in solitude isn’t fun and this would all too easily allow me to put off a session if my phone was offering something more exciting.
In an era where distractions are everywhere it now seems like a privilege to have a thoughtful moment and not be subjected to external excitement. In our losing war against distractions it feels good to take back an unadulterated moment of reflection. If you want to experience an overall better quality of life then I highly recommend reading Being Peace and dedicating time each week to meditation.
Quote from Being Peace: In the name of ideologies and doctrines, people kill and are killed. If you have a gun, you can shoot one, two, three, five people; but if you have an ideology and stick to it, thinking it is the absolute truth, you can kill millions. This mindfulness training includes the admonition not to kill in its deepest sense. Humankind suffers very much from attachment to views. “If you don’t follow this teaching, I will cut off your head.” In the name of the truth, we kill each other. -Thich Nhat Hanh