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.

Gurus and Teachers

At its core, meditation is as simple as any task could be, yet it inspires so much fanfare surrounding experts. I suppose you could just sit, but it seems that no one begins meditating that way. Nearly everyone I’ve met learned from an expert—guru, master, teacher, or what-have-you. I’m learning meditation from a very experienced teacher, but it would be fair (and relevant to this week’s learning theories topic) to ask what a meditation expert can provide to a novice.

Let’s explore a few of the reasons to revere experts that are discussed in chapter 2 of How People Learn. As the authors explain, “experts notice features and meaning patterns of information that are not noticed by novices,” which applies to meditation in a deep way (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000, p. 31). Becoming more proficient in meditation can feel like trying to swim in a field of grass. It’s awkward and you don’t feel like you’re really making progress. So it is helpful (critical, really) to have feedback about your experiences. My teacher is always making meaning of our personal experiences. She nods as we describe our troubles and then explains why and where we are stuck. Her experience allows her to make sense of our struggles and prescribe solutions. Falling asleep while meditating? Try a different time of day. Your mind refuses to relax? Try focusing on your breath, eyeballs, belly button, or heartbeat. Truth be told, I would have already given up on this if I didn’t have such an encouraging and positive teacher with an eye for patterns.

Another key ability of experts is knowing “the kinds of difficulties that students are likely to face” and tapping “into students’ existing knowledge to make new information meaningful” (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000, p. 45). It’s not enough for a great teacher to repeat monologues (particularly for meditation). An expert teacher must be able to guide students’ learning through likely pitfalls, while making what students do know work for them. It’s no easy task, but I’ve been really surprised how well my mediation teacher does this. Using my naïve perception from a month ago of what a successful meditation student would be able to do, I would have thought of my whole meditation class and myself as complete failures by this point. But my teacher was not in the least bit surprised how far we’ve all fallen short of our lofty goals. When we reported to detail how poorly we’d done this week, she only prepared us more for similar struggles.

My expert meditation teacher also connects our difficulties with other difficulties. Meditation is like exercise or any other self-improvement—it takes dedication, practice, and self-forgiveness. Our teacher encourages us to ponder what has made us successful in these other areas and apply it to meditation.

How did you become addicted to exercising?

Well… doing it everyday no matter how much I hated it.

Exactly! That’s what you have to do for your meditation.

It’s a big help to really get metacognitive about your resistance to sitting and clearing your mind, which I’ve gotten better at this week. Having a teacher (and considerate peers) can really foster that sort of thought.

Where How People Learn discussed the great powers of experts, Ambrose touched on some of the blind spots or blunders of experts working as instructors. And I must admit I’ve been guilty of being a blinded teacher in classes I’ve taught. My meditation teacher is very good at not being blinded by her unconscious competence (perhaps she forces herself to remain partially conscious by being open to learning new things), but I have met and seen people who mediate well and assume it is very easy to do. Many of the videos available all over the Internet are great, but some assume a lot of component skills and practice that a beginner would really not have. How long is too long for a beginner? Well probably more than 10 minutes, but a lot of people on YouTube don’t seem to know that. It’s a critical part of being able to teach something—understanding the steps that are needed to get where you are. I believe it is what separates professionals, or even academics, from teachers.

I’m grateful to have an expert to learn from. My teacher is actually really excellent and supportive. I’m making great progress because of it. I typically get burned out on self-improvement stuff so fast, so having the scaffold built by a teacher really helps me stay focused and improving my skills at an appropriate rate.

Meditation and Motivation

Viewing my experiences thus far with mediation through a lens of learning theories regarding motivation is an apt focus point. Quite a few of the concepts we learned from the reading this week make sense to my learning experience.

Let me begin by making this clear: nothing, and I mean nothing, tests the limits of your intrinsic motivation like meditation. It is challenging enough to motivate yourself to do something productive, like mow the lawn or prepare tomorrow’s lunch—things that have some sort of tangible extrinsic motivation as well. You eat the food or admire your lawn. But it is nearly heroic to do literally nothing for half an hour everyday. Try it now. I dare you. Drop everything you are doing right now, close your eyes, and sit for the next thirty minutes. You won’t do it. Your mind begins to race with all of the reasons you couldn’t—nothing inspires. You’re thinking I have to finish this homework, make dinner, go to work, and sleep. These are the same thoughts that race through my mind every time I meditate, and that’s why it requires a heroic dose of intrinsic motivation.

At this point I know what you’re going to say dear learning theory expert, you’ll say but wait, achievement motivation, curiosity, and competence motivation can inspire you! And you’re half right. I do sit most mornings now because I am do possess the need for achievement. I want to be a successful in meditation. I’m hoping to gain all of the great things that people who meditate seem to have: confidence, self-discipline, and an undeniable calmness. The problem seems to be that I have my doubts that I’m capable of being one of those people. My expectancy-value perception is far too skewed. I view the value as exceedingly high, yet my expectation of my ability to claim those rewards is next to zero. I may also have a real fear of failure because of this. It hasn’t stopped me from meditating, but it has made it difficult.

So I need to work on my self-efficacy when it comes to meditation. Truthfully, it may be half rooted in the fact that I haven’t been this bad at anything I’ve tried in a long time. It’s easy to be confident in familiar activities, but something this foreign tests the belief you have in yourself. While I’m sitting with my eyes closed, all of my self doubt creeps up into my mind—after all there is no noise (stimulation from the outside world) to overcome these thoughts. It is difficult to not think to yourself, I’m not doing this right or I’ll never be like Buddha.

Me at a Buddhist Sanctuary (not sure if I belong)

Luckily, I’m getting plenty of positive influence (some of each of the four influences on self-efficacy) from my weekly class.  I have had a couple of enactive attainments. I’ve found myself in flow, a term which applies very well to mediation, several times. I’ve been able to slip into a Zen trance of clarity for longer lengths of time (several minutes). So that has added to my self-efficacy, as well as the vicarious experience of listening to my classmates’ (there are nine of us in the class) detail their meditation successes. Several of my peers are doing really great and a few are struggling as well. It’s encouraging to hear the experiences of both. If I didn’t hear other people talking about their challenges, I would probably have already given up. It’s such a help to know how other people are fairing.

The teacher of the class is very encouraging and her verbal persuasion builds a great deal of self-efficacy for all of us. She is very understanding, yet she helps us set high goals (I need to be sitting for thirty minutes everyday for one week within the next five weeks—no easy task!). The last of the four influences, physiological state, has an impact as well. When everything becomes quiet and you shut off all stimuli, your body does strange things. You notice your breathing, you notice how fast your heart is beating, and your stomach grumbles. Meditating can really make you anxious. Being good at it helps to curb that from happening, but I often start to feel really anxious. I feel the need to do the dishes and my homework; I begin to worry about work. It’s difficult, but eventually your body begins to enjoy the activity. Your physical body becomes a positive influence to your self-efficacy as it begins to relax. It can be really excellent when you have a great session.

I could go on forever about how motivation plays into mediation. In fact, I’ll probably discuss a few other terms that I missed this week.