the value of mindfulness meditation

Two years ago I wrote about how I started a daily meditation practice. In the past when I heard people talk about meditation, I thought it was something that only monks did while sitting in the lotus position, the backs of their hands resting on their knees with thumb and middle finger touching, and I certainly questioned the value of it. Then I started listening to Sam Harris' podcast. Sam is a neuroscientist, best-selling author, philosopher and an extremely experienced meditator. While his podcast only occasionally discusses meditation, he wrote a book about it called Waking Up and then an app by the same name as a way of teaching people how to meditation. I found his argument about the benefits of training one's mind through meditation compelling.

You've probably worked hard at training yourself to do something important. Perhaps it's physical training to be healthier. It might be learning a new skill that makes you more valuable at work or a new hobby you enjoy. Even learning a new skill, however, is learning something rather than training the mind itself.

As I wrote two years ago, we know that being able to focus on one thing for very long is difficult for most people. Mindfulness meditation, among other things, trains the mind to be able to focus without distraction. We know from studies that when one's focus is broken, it can take quite a while to get back to that same level of focus so distraction can be costly. There's are other equally valuable benefits that I'll get to later on.

At first, you're taught to sit in a quiet room with eyes closed and focus on your breathing to the exclusion of all else. This is surprisingly difficult to do. I mean, you're being asked to do as close to nothing as possible. What could be easier than that, right? As it turns out, it's far more difficult than you think. Without much in the way of sound, your visual field and your sense of touch, with so much of your sensory perception significantly muted, the mind is left with so little to do that it wanders quite easily.

With the Waking Up app, Sam guides you but is silent most of the time. Often about half way through a 20 minute session Sam will say something like, "And if you find your mind distracted by a thought, just acknowledge the thought then return to focusing on the breath." I can't tell you how many times I've heard him say that at nearly the exact moment I found myself distracted. I'm a lot better at it now after two years of near daily meditation. I've reached the point where, during a session, I can very quickly recognize that I've become distracted then dismiss the distracting though and return my attention to the point of focus.

I do my meditation at 11AM each day. I sit in my office chair (no yoga positions or incense burning required) and launch the Waking Up app. Because I use an iPhone and a Mac, the app automatically changes the focus (a feature of those devices) to Mindfulness mode which is a form of Do Not Disturb. This allows me to (mostly) be undistracted by things outside my mind such the sounds of others trying to contact me. When the session ends, it reminds me I'm still in Mindfulness mode so I can tap to shut it off as I return to the mentally noisy world of my typical day.

I picked 11AM because most days that's just before the middle of my work day. At that point I've been working for two or three hours. I've dived into the day's projects so my mind is swimming with ideas, details, timelines and all the other things that require my focus at work. Choosing then to interrupt that with meditation is actually both a nice break and a challenge because I'm immediately required to set all of that aside and become undistracted by it. At the beginning of most sessions Sam tells you to forget about all that for now and that it will be waiting for you when you're done. I do just that. I tell myself that I can let all that go and return to it later.

You might be thinking that this seems to be a lot of work just to be better at not being distracted. If that was the only benefit, you might be right but there's more to it than that. As I mentioned in my first post about meditation, there's good evidence that regular meditation results in measurable brain growth. We know that having more neurons and synaptic connections gives you a greater buffer against dementia when you get older. Essentially if you get dementia but have more than the average amount of brain tissue, you may be unaffected by it. Think of it like suddenly finding yourself with a big loan but having so much extra cash in the bank, you have no trouble making the payments. But lastly and for me most importantly, mindfulness meditation trains you to consider every thought that enters your mind before you react to it. You're probably thinking that that's what you do already. I can assure you that you're almost certainly wrong. For most people, a thought enters their head and they immediately react to it without much, well, thought. Mindfulness meditation teaches you to examine your thoughts and decide with true consideration how you wish to react to them. This can provide a sense of control that you may have never experienced before. It can be quite liberating when you realize that you've been far more a slave to your emotions than you'd ever realized. Don't get me wrong. Emotions are an important and valuable part of the human experience. That doesn't mean we have to reflexively respond to them. I think everyone has had an experience with that going very, very wrong. When asked if there's something they regret, most think of some action they took that they wish they could take back. They think of a moment when they did or said something that, with another moment of consideration, they would never have done or said. You'll find that with practice, at moments when regret was about to be the emotion of the moment, your training will kick-in and you will reconsider.

Mindfulness meditation isn't going to turn you into a monk. The benefits don't appear overnight either. Like all good things, it takes time and effort. Personally, I find it well-worth it. On days I don't exercise, I feel bad that I didn't have time for it. I feel the same about meditation. If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask. I highly recommend Sam's book, Waking Up and the Waking Up app as well. Guided meditation is definitely the only way to start.