The Real Impact of Meditation

The Last Week

If I’m honest with myself, I’ve fell short of my initial goals, though I was most definitely displaying unconscious incompetence when I made the goal. I had thought it modest to be meditating for around twenty-five minutes everyday during the last week of this learning experience, but I’ve since learned what a naïve goal that was. As I had mentioned in last week’s post, less than half the students in my class made it all the through the class, and the best of us left in the class were meditating only three to four days a week. It’s incredibly difficult to strike such a balance in your life that everyday presents a half an hour for sitting. You have to remove all forms of procrastination. Everything needs to happen in the allotted time, or your schedule will eventually trample all of your free time (particularly when you’re working a new (somewhat stressful) more than full-time job and working on a degree).

            Yet this last week I’m counting some victories. I’ve been working hard on what my teacher called affirmations, which are goals that you plant in your subconscious while meditating. The affirmation I’ve been planting for the last several weeks is to be more confident, particularly at work. This week it seems to have paid off as I received a promotion. And I have been able to work meditation into several days a week, which is nothing to shrug my shoulders about.

            It was sort of a bummer that the class ended a week before the wrap up for this experience in our learning theories class. If the class was continuing, I’d be in class right now, but I’m on my own with the meditation now. As I mentioned before, many of my best sessions were in the class, so I’ll miss having those rewarding sessions. Still, I've learned enough to continue practicing meditation on my own, and I will work to improve on my dedication to the discipline because I've found a lot of value in it. 

Reflection

At the end of most of my learning experiences (particularly school semesters), I contemplate what knowledge feels like it’s stuck and will be useful in the future. While the change in behavior and knowledge caused by meditation may be a little more difficult to fully quantify than, say, the knowledge gained in a physics class, I’ve undoubtedly gained some skills and conceptual knowledge. But taking the long view, my meditation practice over the last several weeks will probably have the biggest impacts on areas of my life outside of actually sitting.

            As I have said before (in more ways than one), meditating is really about self-discipline and it connects to every aspect of your life. Meditation is the activity of a high-functioning person. If you don’t have control over all of the major components of your life, meditation is nearly impossible. And even when you’re being the person you want to be in all of your commitments, it’s still requires a high level of resolve to sit for a substantial period of time. So, while I have enjoyed my meditation sessions, I feel that the most powerful skill I’ve learned is to delay satisfaction and follow through with a commitment. Going forward my central goal with what I’ve learned is to transfer these skills into others contexts.

            Looking through my blog posts, I can say that I’ve experienced a bit of all of the learning theories we’ve learned about this semester. I’ve learned a lot about motivation and self-efficacy. I worked on something difficult with other people who also found it difficult, and I survived. I followed through on my commitment, and it makes me feel prepared to take on more difficult learning tasks (ballroom dancing perhaps?). I also learned a bit about how helpful an expert can be when learning a new skill. Particularly when the expert has the connection to make the items she is discussing make sense to a novice. Anna was an expert that was still in a constant process of learning new things. Her favorite part of our classes was always listening to her experiences, and she professed to teaching the class primarily to encourage her own practice. The class experience felt more like a shared exploration than a lecture, which was very helpful for skeptical and struggling learners that needed support more than new terminology to add to a schema. I’m grateful to her for that.

            At this point my central goal is to make meditation at home as fruitful as meditation in the class has been, which is a very clear case of situated cognition. There was something about the way that Anna structured the class (which always had dim lights and a slightly warm temperature) that directed us to an easy transition from the struggles of our daily routine into a state of relaxation and depth. Trying to provide myself the same experiences has really struck home for me the difficultly of transfer and the power of situated learning.

            If I’ve learned anything about myself over the last few weeks through meditation, it’s been that I don’t have to become the master of everything that I attempt. Sometimes it’s just okay to show up, try your best, and make progress where you can. I’m not used to half-successes. I typically do something to its fullest, or I drop it completely, which is really not a positive habit. Skills can transfer, and there is a value in failing at a task. You learn a lot about your limits and capabilities.

Being My Own Sage

This week was the last time that our meditation class met. We had lost more than half the original participants (there were four of us this week; we had started with eleven people seven weeks ago), so just making it through the class sessions was somewhat of an accomplishment. But it was also a reminder of how difficult and important staying motivated is to learning to meditate.

Still, with only a few remaining soldiers, our last class was really great, and it makes the fact that the classes are done even more sad because I’ve really enjoyed our meetings. The central reason I’ve enjoyed the class so much is because I’ve had several of my best meditation sessions there. And now I have attempt to transfer the empowering weekly experiences I had in class to home, by myself, which is difficult for more reasons than one.

Anna (our meditation class teacher) is a great meditation guide, which is part of the reason that all of

us felt we had our best sessions in class. With Anna leading our sessions with suggestive language and the voice of experience, it was always easy to fall deep into relaxation and a Zen-like flow. But it’s difficult to have similar experiences without her guidance (and fellow classmates).

Though I must admit, Anna has been preparing us for this transfer. Three weeks ago, she provided us with a self-mediation script outline, which she assigned us to complete and record an audio recording of. I tried it, but I found it really silly to listen to myself saying the kinds of things that Anna says in our sessions (e.g., “let yourself fall deeper and become more relaxed” and “just notice what it feels like to be…”). I laughed out loud listening to myself. But Anna insists that it is incredibly empowering to record your own guided meditation instructions. It’s something I may try again later.

Anna also made another point that seems to apply to transfer. Although some may have been discouraged by the low-rate of class graduates, she has said several times, “this may not click for you now, but maybe in a year from now you’ll think ‘oh yeah, I’m going to start trying that thing I learned in that class!’”  It’s a very practical view, which I is really hard to assess—the long-term impact of learning. I think it illustrates part of the difficultly of measuring transfer because eventually prior and current knowledge blend together. Initially, a learner may not connect the story of the attack on the city with the problem with the stomach tumor, but if you had to deal with the stomach tumor problem several times of the course of a year, the solution might come to you.

Anyways, it’s now up to me to be my own motivation and guide, so I’m hoping that I can continue to find time to improve my meditation sessions. I feel that the activity is worthwhile.

Situated Meditation

Americans have no legitimate context for meditation, Zen, or Buddhism. In fact, meditation seems to fly in the face of many American values and traditions. We value endless hard work, strength, and action. John Wayne never meditated in between shootouts with bad guys. And as far as the religious aspect goes, Buddhism still hasn’t made much of a dent in the U.S. population. But to be fair, even countries where there is a cultural and communal context to meditation, like Japan, have had decreased participation in Zen and Buddhism. It appears that modern culture is somewhat antithetical to meditation.

I explain all of this to help explain why it might be difficult for many to learn to meditate and keep the habit going, which is really a critical part of learning to meditate—self-discipline. So when reading about situated learning, I thought of how difficult it is to learn something, like meditation, out of the situated places that created the practice (i.e., Eastern cultures with long histories and practitioners). I was raised LDS and grew up in Utah, where the majority of the population (save certain areas of Salt Lake City) is Mormon. Growing up there was a vast array of supporting learning about the religion, including traditions, beliefs, rules, language, and on and on. Every aspect of the small town I grew up in contained within it some form of support or reinforcement: our neighbors, the churches, our church leaders, the way our parents interacted, the activities we were expected to do every Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday night. I’m sure I could go on forever. Being in that situated learning experience, it would be nearly impossible to not learn a great deal about the LDS faith. Even my non-LDS friends new a great deal about the beliefs, culture, and traditions of Mormons.

I’ve been thinking about this while I struggle to force myself to sit for 25-30 minutes every morning to meditate. Because I used do much more as member of the LDS religion than I’m required to do to meditate, and it never felt this difficult. I guess part of the problem is not having a community of support or example. When I used to wake up to go to church on Sunday morning, I didn’t complain because it was just the thing that we did—it was expected of me. And while I do have my weekly meditation class, I don’t feel the same expectations being placed on me, and I start to feel like I’m the only person in the world really doing this wacky stuff. I really believe that I would have an easier time meditating, if I saw other people meditating in the front yards on my way to work. Or if people at school talked about their meditation sessions, like they talk about church meetings and celebrations. I feel like we’re wired to learn this way, but when you attempt to learn something so unsituated to your culture, you run into challenges.

So, as a quick update, I will say that I’ve been able to sit longer, but I still have challenging meditation sessions. With both school and work coming to a fevered pitch in the last week, I’ve been pretty distracted, and it crosses over into my meditation. It’s funny, in a way, because when you most need the relaxation and release of meditation, it’s the most difficult time to do it. Quite honestly, I have learned quite a bit about Zen and Self-Hypnosis, but in the end, this learning project is really about gaining self-discipline and delayed gratification, which I’ve always struggled with. But what I’m beginning to understand is that habits are learned. You don’t flip a habit on or off like a light switch. You work hard and build on your previous skills to obtain a higher competency and a clearer awareness of your self. So I still feel like I’ve been learning, although I’m not regurgitating a laundry list of facts.  In fact, I think learning a new habit is really difficult, up there with learning a new language.

Planting Seeds in Your Subconscious

I’ve heard (or, to be more accurate I’ve read) meditation being referred to as the process of learning to learn, and I’ve been toying with the concept in my practice this week. And though I can’t say that I fully understand why some people consider mediation to be so connected to learning in a meta sort of way, I’ve made a few connections between the process of mediation and various learning theories.

Chapter five of How People Learn was a good launching point for this topic because the chapter’s topic (i.e., the brain) is the focus of any mediation practice. Every time I sit down to meditate, I’m struck by the dramatic change that closing your eyes has on your thought process. As is suggested in How People Learn, vision and neural activity changes the brain and builds pathways and synapses. Shutting off as much of the stimulation as possible for short periods of time (when you’re not sleeping) can help reduce blood pressure and allow for reflection on previous experience.

In fact, I’m becoming convinced that mediation is the time when our working memory is reduced significantly or nearly turned off, during which time we can work through stuff in and out of our long term memory. In my meditation class this week, we practiced what my teachers calls, “planting seeds in your subconscious,” which I really liked. The idea is that we can tell our sub conscious mind the things we want to accomplish, improve, or just remember while in the depths of mediation. This really works great for things that the conscious mind might criticize or ignore. For example, let’s say you wished to be more confident in your interactions with your colleagues at work. Thinking about that consciously might keep your engaged in the work for a short while, but working memory is very limited. So placing this stuff in a situation where most of your visual and auditory stimulation is turned off may really be beneficial for creating greater behavioral changes over long periods of time.

In another surprise this week, I’ve actually begun noticing real improvement in my ability to meditate. You might ask yourself, “what does becoming a better meditator look like?” Well, I’m starting to actually figure that out. First, I am much better at becoming relaxed in a short period of time. It’s as if I’ve learned a few shortcuts through the maze to the good parts of meditation (i.e., being in the “flow,” with my mind clear and my surroundings disappearing).  And getting into the flow of things much more quickly means I have more time to explore the benefits of meditation. I’ve found that using visual memories from past deep meditations helps trigger the feelings and thoughts that I have had in those experiences. I’m nearly immediately drawn back to those experiences (and I must admit, I learned this technique in my meditation class, which I would be lost without). I think the fact that the visual memories bring me back is supported by HPL’s section on “Memory and Brain Processes,” where the authors illustrate that “comparisons of people’s memories for words with their memories for pictures of the same objects show a superiority effect for pictures” (Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L. & Cocking R. R., 2000, p. 124). Visuals are really wired into long-term memories, and it’s a useful tool for meditation.

Things are really starting to gel with my practice, and I’m starting to see the benefits of continued time with reduced stimulation and lowered working memory load. I heartily recommend a little conscious shuteye for anyone who spends a little too much time thinking about complex topics. It can really help you become more cognizant of what information you’re absorbing and what you should focus your energy on. 

Searching the App Store for Enlightenment

Some days are more successful than others, but all-in-all I’ve become somewhat used to the idea of meditating in the mornings. The newest addition to my practice this week has been my attempt to make use of mediation apps, and I’d like to discuss what I’ve found while using them (i.e., what works and what doesn’t).

For the uninitiated 

I believe I’ve said in my previous posts that meditation shares many similarities with exercising, but let me demonstrate that the connection goes beyond the difficulties of motivation. The ubiquitous place of small yet powerful electronics have brought about the beginning of the era of the “quantified self,” and the data that our devices are collecting goes beyond our running speeds. Meditation apps are wedding the usefulness of a mediation guide, a timer, and a mediation log to track progress. My favorite app this far, called Headspace, provides guided mediation sessions, reminds you to take time to mediate, provides you with goals, and rewards your success. It also teaches you the basics of mediation and offers new advice as you go along. It’s very useful for someone who is already glued to his or her phone, as half of the battle with mediation is simply remembering to do it.

The meditation apps I’ve used employee several learning strategies. Scaffolding is a central feature of nearly every app I’ve tried. It’s logical to start small. Headspace begins the first ten mediation sessions at ten minutes, while another app I tried, Insight Timer, only allows you to increase your time beyond ten minutes if you wish. As with nearly all “quantified self” areas, meditation apps attempt a bit of gamefication to increase motivation. Insight Timer keeps track of the lengths and consistency of your mediation, providing statistics, charts, and milestone achievements. Headspace takes it a step further with ladders to climb and leveling up after to certain milestones (e.g., 10 sessions completed).

My two favorite apps, which I’ve mentioned, both include at least an attempt at a social component. Headspace allows you to invite and challenge your friends within the app.  Although I think I’d have a difficult time convincing my friends to meditate, I find the idea to be very useful. Both apps also include “this many people are mediating around the world right now” thing, which I think is pretty useless, but some might find it encouraging to think that they are part of something more significant. Truthfully, neither of the social components work for me. I imagine being in a meditation classroom, where I’m either tasked with finding a partner to bring to class or simply shown dots on a map illustrating people mediating. I don’t think I’d find that very useful. I wish these apps would provide a way to make connections with these other meditating people. Maybe a way to communicate with them would be nice.

Lastly, I want to discuss the expert or guides they use on these apps. While I prefer to sit in silence or meditate listening to someone talking about something unrelated to meditation, I have meditated listening to guided mediation experts. Jack Cornfield is a favorite (who I was glad to find on Insight Timer), but some of the teachers don’t really make a connection with me. The narrator for the Headspace app is really not my favorite. He speaks too matter-of-factly, and I find his explanations or encouraging to be a bit distracting. He does little to increase my ZPD, whereas the better meditators (like Cornfield) provide new ideas and perspectives that I wouldn’t have been able to come up with on my own, but they are really helpful once I understand them.

I’ve found adding technology to this undertaking has been really helpful. I’m still on the outlook for new applications, and I’m just starting to dabble in online mediation forums, which is a very untapped place of wild potential. I’ll update you on my progress there next week.