If you can, try the same exercise again. You could make a mental note of judging, labeling, and thinking when these mental functions kick in and then return to the sounds. Say to yourself “labeling,” when you notice you’re labeling, or “judging” when you’re judging, and “thinking” when you catch yourself lost in thought.
Anchoring Your Mind
The mind needs an anchor. Most of our mental suffering arises when our minds jump around from one subject to another, which is exhausting, or when we’re preoccupied with unhappy thoughts and feelings. When we notice that the mind is behaving in this way, we need to give it an anchor—a place to go that’s neutral and unwavering. That’s what George did when he rubbed his here-and-now stone and what you did when you returned your attention, again and again, to the sounds in your environment. Anchoring calms the mind.
The most common anchor for the mind is the breath. There are good reasons for this:
The breath is happening 24 hours a day.
It’s easy to notice because it creates a slight movement in the body.
It’s familiar, so it can be a safe refuge from the storms of daily life.
It operates automatically, without any personal effort.
It’s our most loyal friend, accompanying us from birth to death.
Awareness of the breath is an excellent way to gather your attention and bring yourself into the present moment.
Some people find it difficult to focus on the breath. People who’ve endured physical trauma may not like being reminded of their bodies because it brings up bad memories. Those with health anxiety find that focusing on any part of the body triggers new worries. Detail-oriented or compulsive types of people may discover that when they focus on the breath their attention grips it too tightly and they experience shortness of breath. People who don’t like the way their bodies look or feel may find that attention to the breath brings them too close to their bodies in general.
If you have any of these experiences, give yourself a different anchor. The only prerequisite is that it be readily available. Some people like to use a word as an anchor—perhaps one that has special meaning (see “Centering Meditation” in Appendix B). Other choices could be the feeling of the floor under your feet, your hands folded in your lap, or an area of your body such as the heart region or a point between your eyes. If it’s difficult to bring your attention inside your body, choose an object on the surface of your body or outside it. Whatever you choose as an anchor, over time it will become like a very close friend.
The following exercise shows how to use the breath as an anchor, but feel free to substitute a different object for your attention.
TRY THIS: Mindfulness of Breathing
This exercise takes 15 minutes. Please find a quiet, comfortable place to sit. Sit in a way that your bones are supporting the muscles and you don’t need any effort to remain in one position for the whole exercise. To do this, try keeping your back straight and gently supported, with your shoulder blades slightly dropped and your chin gently tucked toward your chest.
Take three, slow, easy deep breaths to relax and let go of whatever burdens you’re carrying around. Then let your eyelids gently close, or partially close, whichever makes you feel more comfortable.
Form an image of yourself sitting down. Note your posture on the chair as if you were seeing yourself from the outside. Let your body and mind be just as they are.
Now bring your attention to your breathing. Pay attention to where you notice your breathing most strongly. Some people feel it at the nostrils, perhaps as a cool breeze on the upper lip. Other people can feel the chest rising and falling. Still others feel the breath most clearly in the abdomen, as the belly expands with every in-breath and contracts with every out-breath. Gently explore your body and discover where your breathing is easiest to notice.
Now discover whenyou feel your breath more strongly—when you exhale or when you inhale. If they’re about equal, choose one. (To simplify the instructions, I’ll assume for the rest of this exercise and throughout the book that you chose exhaling and that the location you selected was the nostrils.)
Pay attention to the feeling of each exhalation. Feel the air coming out of your nostrils each time you exhale. Then take a little vacation as your body inhales. Let your entire experience just be as you wait. Then feel your breath as your body exhales again.
Let your body breathe you—it does that automatically anyway. Simply pay attention to the sensation of the air in your nose each time you exhale, one breath after another.
Your mind will wander away from the sensation of the breath many times every minute. Don’t worry about how often your mind wanders. Gently return to the feeling of your out-breath at the nostrils when you notice that your mind has wandered.
You might be using a watch to keep track of time. Sneak a peek at your watch, and when you have a few minutes left, loosen your focus on the nostrils and allow yourself to feel your whole upper body move with each breath. Don’t bother thinking too much about it. Just feel your body, alive and moving, as you breathe.
After 15 minutes, gently open your eyes, looking downward. Savor the stillness of the moment before moving on.
You’ve probably noticed how busy the mind is. It’s very difficult to find the breath amid the clamor of competing thoughts and feelings. No sooner do we focus fully on one out-breath than the mind is off and running on a new train of thought. Perhaps you thought, “Oh, that’s a nice breath,” and as you inhaled you were already thinking of another sensation in the body or what you were going to do later in the day. When the object of our attention is repetitive and neutral, rather than novel and compelling, our brains quickly start sorting through other business.
Mindfulness of the breath cultivates focus on a single object, but you shouldn’t expect your attention to remain unwaveringly with the breath. That’s not how the brain operates. Just return your attention again and again to the breath when you notice your mind has wandered. Nothing more. It’s like the Zen saying “If you fall down six times, get up seven.” When people say, “I can’t meditate,” they’re usually referring to the erroneous assumption that they should be concentrating better. Distractions are a part of meditation. Each moment of recognizing distraction actually should be welcomed rather than used as an occasion for self-criticism, because it shows that you’ve just “woken up” from daydreaming.
The “Default Network”
In 2001, Debra Gusnard and Marcus Raichle identified a whole discrete network of brain regions—the default network—that is active when the mind is at rest and that becomes inactive when the mind is engaged in a task. When the mind wanders in meditation, it’s in default mode. The default network operates in the background, linking our past to the future and providing us with a sense of “self.” We’re usually aware of the default network only when it has failed, such as in patients with Alzheimer’s disease who appear “mentally empty.”
Giuseppe Pagnoni and colleagues at Emory University observed the default network during meditation using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). They asked two groups—Zen practitioners with more than 3 years of daily practice and a comparison group that never meditated—to focus on their breath, to occasionally decide whether a string of letters presented to them was a real English word (“conceptual processing”), and then to return to their breathing. Conceptual processing activated the default network. Zen practitioners were able to return to the breath and turn off the default network more quickly than the comparison group; they could rapidly abandon the stream of associations that spontaneously arose after thinking about the meaning of words. The authors speculate that this ability may help alleviate psychological conditions characterized by rumination, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorders, and major depression.
It’s not clear why we have a default network. Gusnard and Raichle speculate that it’s crucial for human functioning. For example, the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, a brain reg
ion that is active when we monitor our own thoughts, speech, and actions or those of others, is in the default network. It appears that this part of the default network is not just involved in “free association” and “mind wandering,” but also when we’re preparing for the future. Meditators should not blame themselves when their minds wander—when their brains do what they evolved to do while at rest.
Daydreaming can sometimes be a good thing, perhaps a source of creative inspiration, much like Sigmund Freud was referring to when he described our night dreams as the “royal road to the unconscious.” The key is to know when we’re daydreaming and to wake up occasionally. Unfortunately, most of the time our attention is lost in our daydreams and we suffer from stressful preoccupations—“Do I look fat?” “That was dumb!” When we return to the breath, we have a moment of respite. There are no issues when we’re in the present moment. When you’re upset, see what happens when you take a walk and focus only on the sensations of your feet on the sidewalk. No past, no future … no problem.
If you find that your stress level increases when you do the mindfulness of breathing exercise, try to do it in a new way. First of all, let go of the need to get it right. (You’ll never get it right—and you’ll never get it wrong.) Learn to work harmoniously with the mind as it is. The mind will always dredge up another memory or feeling that will disturb your concentration, so don’t despair when that happens. We don’t meditate to improve ourselves; we meditate to end our compulsive striving to do everything better. The sign of a seasoned practitioner is the willingness to return to the breath, again and again, without judgment, for decades.
Anchoring your attention in the breath does more than cultivate a focused, calm mind—it allows you to see how the mind works. It’s like holding a camera steady to take a picture. From the three exercises presented in this book so far, you’ve already learned how easily the mind wanders, compares, judges, and labels whatever it perceives. The longer you spend in meditation, the more you’ll discover about your mind. You’ll also discover a lot about yourself: your emotions, your memories, and how you react to different circumstances.
Knowing that you can always take refuge in your anchor will give you courage to explore your mind. It’s like the child who hides behind his mother’s skirt when he’s feeling timid; knowing that we can calm ourselves by returning to the anchor/breath enables us to peek back into our turbulent inner worlds.
MINDFULNESS OF THE BODY
The body is the foundation of mindfulness training. We live in a body, so to appreciate the fullness of life we need to experience the body fully. We shouldn’t think that the body is less important than the mind when we practice mindfulness. Anything occurring in the present is a suitable object of mindful awareness. Since the body is relatively slow and stable, it’s an excellent vantage point for observing our mind and emotions. The problem with trying to be aware of thoughts in mindfulness meditation is that thoughts occur so quickly that we can hardly keep track of them; they’re ancient history the moment we notice them. The mind also becomes quickly absorbed in its own ramblings when it observes itself. It’s much easier to remain aware of the present moment when we focus on the body.
We’ve already begun practicing mindfulness of the body by focusing on the breath. Now let’s open the field of awareness to body sensations around the breath.
TRY THIS: Mindfulness of Body Sensations
This exercise takes about 20 minutes. Please begin by finding a comfortable, stable position, close your eyes, and take three relaxing breaths.
Form an image of yourself. Note your posture on the chair as if you were seeing yourself from the outside.
Find your breath within your body and practice mindfulness of breathing for a few minutes. Let your body breathe itself while you feel every out-breath, one after another.
After a few minutes, release your attention from your breath and open your awareness to your entire body—to the space within the skin. Your body is vibrating with activity at every moment. Let your attention be called to whatever sensation predominates. Simply notice one, two, or three sensations in succession, such as your beating heart, moist feet, tight neck, warm hands, cool forehead, clenched jaw, or the touch of your body on the chair.
Let each sensation be just as it is. If you feel discomfort, incline toward it gently and softly in your mind.
Let your attention be with body sensations as long as it’s naturally drawn there and then return to your breath. You can return to your breath anytime you need to gather and stabilize your attention.
Then open your awareness again to whatever body sensations call to you—whatever you feel most strongly. Take it slow and easy. The task is to remain with sensations occurring in the present moment, not to identify as many sensations as possible.
For the remaining 10 to 15 minutes, let yourself feel your breathing and then feel any other predominant sensations in the body. Go back and forth between the breath and other sensations in a relaxed, leisurely manner. Notice your breathing alongside the other sensations going on in your body. Be fully embodied, breathing and feeling.
Gently open your eyes.
Did you feel yourself relax when you returned to the breath after being aware of the other sensations in the body? Perhaps you had the opposite experience—that focusing only on your breathing felt constricting and full-body awareness was a relief?
Mindfulness meditation is commonly a dance between single-focus and open-field awareness. When our attention is too tight around the breath, causing stress, we can relax by opening our awareness to other perceptions. Alternatively, when our attention is swept up in the tornado of events continually occurring in the body or mind, we can find shelter from the storm in one-pointed attention to the breath.
SHOULD I MEDITATE?
There are two categories of mindfulness meditation: formal and informal. “Formal” mindfulness meditation is when we dedicate time—usually half an hour or longer—to being mindful of what we’re sensing, feeling, and thinking. “Informal” meditation is when we take a brief, mindful moment in the midst of our busy lives. Both approaches can be practiced while sitting down, standing, walking, eating—anywhere and anytime. The difference between formal and informal meditation is mainly a matter of time and purpose.
Each person should decide for him- or herself whether it makes sense to establish a formal meditation practice. Formal practice is more intensive, which generally transforms the mind at a deeper level: it yields deeper insights into the nature of mind and our personal conditioning. If you wish to do formal meditation, it should be enjoyable and it should fit your temperament and lifestyle. Most people don’t want to squeeze yet another activity into their busy schedules. Nor should they. This book is not written for people who want to become meditators, although some readers might develop a taste for it. The formal meditation practices here are offered primarily so you can have a direct experience of mindfulness and self-compassion, and they can be used as a model for practicing more informally.
Formal meditation is never an end in itself; life itself is the real practice. It’s hard to stay conscious and aware amid the flood of sensory impressions and emotional reactions we encounter in daily life. Consider your mind state on a morning when your baby daughter has been sick all night, you have to make a presentation at the office in 3 hours, the freezer door was left open all night and ice cream is dripping on the floor, and your babysitter is on vacation. Many parents would find themselves crying on the kitchen floor. Maintaining presence of mind to handle problems calmly and efficiently is a skill that grows with meditation practice. If you spend a chunk of time every day exploring your inner experience in formal meditation, the same kind of compassionate self-monitoring is more likely to continue throughout the day, even during the worst of times.
Formal mindfulness meditation especially helps us figure out how to live with discomfort—to inhabit our bodies in a way that doesn’t turn everyday physical and emotional pain into a large
r problem. Depending on how you’re feeling from moment to moment, you might focus your attention on the breath, explore a body ache, return to the breath, sense an emotion, find the emotion in the body, breathe, soften the body a little, breathe, listen to sounds in the environment, return to the breath, and so on. This practice gives us, in Jon Kabat-Zinn’s words, the freedom to “respond” rather than “react.” We can make wise choices about our lives: “Shall I eat that snack? Should I argue with my spouse right now? Is this a good time to act on a sexual urge?”
How much formal meditation is generally recommended? The usual length of time is 30 to 45 minutes daily. That amount has been shown to increase well-being and even enhance the immune system. Busy people are more likely to meditate for 20 minutes, once or twice a day, which is also good. Improvement appears to be “dose-dependent”—it depends on how much training is given.
Training Your Brain
In 2003, Richard Davidson, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and colleagues found that 8 weeks of mindfulness meditation training (mindfulness-based stress reduction [MBSR]), 1 hour daily, 6 days a week, produced lasting changes in the brain and the immune system. Twenty-five stressed-out biotech employees were trained to meditate, and they were compared to 16 people who received no training at all. After the meditation training, everyone was asked to write down one of the most positive experiences of their lives and one of the most negative experiences. EEG recordings were made of their brains before and after the writing exercise. Their blood was also drawn to measure how many antibodies they produced in response to a flu vaccine.
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