I swear I look out my window every day and never see exactly the same scene twice. If you browse through this blog, you’ll find lots of examples of that – the ever changing scene of Ben Ledi, the cloud patterns, the rich variety of sunsets and of dawns.
This morning I looked outside and saw something I’ve never seen before – from the roof of an adjacent building the long icicles catching the sunlight just like a rainbow maker, sparkling with colour.
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My answer to this question would be you’d only think all forms of meditation were the same if you think differences are irrelevant. My entire working life is based on understanding difference. I think it’s true of all holistic and integrative practices that understanding the uniqueness of a personal story, told by an individual within their distinct context, is the core focus. But I’ve wondered, just what is different between TM and Mindfulness practice? They seem very different to me. They involve different methods. So it wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out they had different effects on the brain, and hence on the body too. Well, here’s some fascinating research which is beginning to clarify just what the differences are. It starts with a description of three “types” of meditation practice – Controlled focus; Open monitoring; Automatic self-transcending, then goes on to explore different brain wave patterns associated with each, different mind-body changes and the published research on the effects of different practices. The summary is as follows –
- Controlled focus: Classic examples of concentration or controlled focus are found in the revered traditions of Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, Qiqong, Yoga and Vedanta, though many methods involve attempts to control or direct the mind. Attention is focused on an object of meditation–such as one’s breath, an idea or image, or an emotion. Brain waves recorded during these practices are typically in the gamma frequency (20-50 Hz), seen whenever you concentrate or during “active” cognitive processing.2
- Open monitoring: These mindfulness type practices, common in Vipassana and Zazen, involve watching or actively paying attention to experiences–without judging, reacting or holding on. Open monitoring gives rise to frontal theta (4-8 Hz), an EEG pattern commonly seen during memory tasks or reflection on mental concepts.3
- Automatic self-transcending: This category describes practices designed to go beyond their own mental activity–enabling the mind to spontaneously transcend the process of meditation itself. Whereas concentration and open monitoring require degrees of effort or directed focus to sustain the activity of meditation, this approach is effortless because there is no attempt to direct attention–no controlled cognitive processing. An example is the Transcendental Meditation technique. The EEG pattern of this category is frontal alpha coherence, associated with a distinct state of relaxed inner wakefulness.4
My personal experience is greatest with the third category. I practice TM for 20 minutes twice every day. I’ve explored some Mindfulness meditation with colleagues at work over recent months (Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy is one of the services we offer at the Centre for Integrative Care in Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital) But I’ve no experience of the first type – controlled focus. My first take on this research is that I’m encouraged to know that it’s good to engage in more than one kind of meditation practice. If loving kindness and compassion meditation increases the amount of love, kindness and compassion in the world I’m all for it. If Mindfulness also reduces negative rumination as it suggests in this research, then that strikes me as also a very good thing. And if TM can lower blood pressure, reduce chronic anxiety and lower stress hormones like cortisol, then that’s good too.
I do enjoy a scientific exploration of how something might work, but I also think that we are all different and it’s likely that we will all experience different meditation practices differently. It is a subjective human experience as well after all! I know Dan Siegel, of Interpersonal Neurobiology fame, claims that there is plenty of evidence to show that Mindfulness meditation increases the size and function of the integrative fibres of the mid prefrontal cortex. He also says that just 10 minutes a day of breath awareness will produce measurable change in integrative neurons.
Are you convinced yet? If you haven’t done it yet, maybe a month from now as you think ahead to 2011, making meditation part of your daily life should be part of the changes you might want to make. (you know what I’m talking about – resolutions!)
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If you’re a more regular reader of this blog, you might be wondering why my posting rate has plummeted this month……well, the answer lies in that little winner’s badge here.
nanowrimo is National Novel Writing Month. It happens every November and the deal is you sign up to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days….that works out at a steady 1,677 words a day. Of course, you’re not expected to produce a fully crafted novel by day 30, just to have the raw text of a novel to spend the next few weeks or months, editing, revising and developing.
I signed up on November 1st, and completed my 50,000 words on November 27th and it’s been one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had. I write a lot. This blog is part of my writing output, but I’ve written almost exclusively non-fiction so far (I have a collection of about 80 or so small fictional clinical cases entitled Dr Cannyman’s Casebook to accompany my course in Patient Centred Homeopathy). I’ve had a dream to write fiction as long as I’ve had a dream to be a doctor and I’ve been doctoring some 32 years now, but a novelist for none of them! After all this time, I’ve wondered, could I actually do it? Do I have it in me? I’ve read a few books about creative writing and the one thing they pretty much all say is you have to actually turn up and write. I know. Sounds obvious, huh? But it just isn’t easy. And one of the things that always stopped me from getting started was I might have the germ of an idea, but I sure as hell didn’t have characters or a plot. Surely, I reasoned, you need ALL of that AT LEAST before you start.
I was wrong.
The nanowrimo experience is an experience in motivationally supported daily writing. Yes, I’ve done daily writing for long periods, but never daily fiction writing. Nanowrimo is about daily fiction writing. You sign up online, get your own user page, a box to enter your daily word count and a graph to show you your progress along with stats encouraging you to write a little more by telling you how much more you need to write today to get the 1667 daily target, and what date you’ll finish if you keep on at the rate you’re going. In addition to that you get regular emails encouraging you and they are just brilliant. Liberating messages from other participants and writers saying things like “OK, you’re several days into this now and you’ve probably no plot and no idea where it’s going. Welcome to writing fiction! This is how it is. Keep going. You’ll find your characters and your plot emerging as the month progresses”. Well that was news to me. I had no idea that an approach like that could work.
So here’s what I learned. First of all I learned it really took a LOT of discipline to write those 1667 words a day, but I was more determined the more I progressed. Second I learned that although on the vast majority of days I would have no idea what I was going to write, an idea would emerge, I’d start with that, and before I knew it these characters appeared, this dialogue occurred, these events happened. I found things coming together in ways I hadn’t planned (because I hadn’t planned anything!) and I found little remnants of stories of my life and of people I’ve met turning into brand new elements of other stories under my fingers as I typed. It was a total revelation. Thirdly, this comment from one of the emails “It’s so strange how our mind knows more than we are aware of it knowing.” hit me right between the eyes. That is exactly what I’ve discovered in doing this writing exercise. It’s all in there. Even when you don’t consciously know it.
So here I am. The proud owner of a nanowrimo 2010 winner badge. A writer with a new habit. The owner of 50,000 words to work on, words I feel which have a good chance of turning into a proper novel. I’ve only shared with others some of what I’ve written so far, but the feedback has been so positive I am thoroughly encouraged.
I think that’s what nanowrimo is all about – enabling you to get to the place where you can say to yourself “I believe I can do this”.
It’s been quite a month!
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…taken exactly two weeks apart I think these photos show the change of the season from autumn to winter
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Seth Godin, spot on, as ever…….
If it’s a new problem, perhaps it demands a new approach. If it’s an old problem, it certainly does.
How true. Yet how often have you actually followed through on a thought like this?
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and…..
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Mary Midgley is an English philosopher whose latest book, The Solitary Self [978-1-84465-253-2], develops a case she has laid out in previous books. I first read Mary Midgley in her Science and Poetry, which was so clear, readable and thought-provoking. In that book, she argued that the concept of atomism when applied equally to the parts of a person and to individuals within society didn’t make sense. She develops that argument here in a brilliantly focused attack on neo-Darwinists such as Dawkins, who, she argues, have reduced Darwin’s thought to the principle of survival of the fittest. Dawkins’ Selfish Gene being a classic example of such a world view – the world view that competition and fighting for individual advantage is the way of Nature, the way of human beings, and the way society should be run. The values they promote are the values of selfishness. She elaborates in detail, quoting from Darwin’s own writings, how humans are actually intensely social creatures.
In fact, you can’t reduce Mary Midgley’s arguments to simple sound-bites in the way the neo-Darwinists like to promote their ideas. This is because she completely accepts the complexity of life, and the inescapable conflicts at the heart of every human being.
I think this little book is terrific at putting the case for an understanding of the importance of collaboration, as much neglected in recent decades. She is also very strong on the irrationality of using reductionism to try to explain complex wholes –
One way and another, then, it emerges that, in general, the reductive thinking that theorizes about large-scale behaviour from analogy with the behaviour of small parts is not reliable or scientific.
Here’s one paragraph from her book, which I think, really does capture her most important argument.
All this later became part of a much wider campaign, conducted by thinkers such as Nietzsche and the existentialists, to exalt freedom above all other ideals, isolating modern individuals in pure and heroic independence. Like all such one-sided advice, this campaign ignores crucial aspects of our nature. It assumes that we are independent items, isolated brains, intelligent billiard balls that need no sustenance and could choose to live anywhere. But we are actually earthly organisms, framed to interact continually with the complex ecosystems of which we are a tiny part. For us, bonds, are not just awkward restraints. They are lifelines. Although we all need some solitude and some independence, total isolation is for us a desolate and meaningless state. In fact, it is about the worst thing that can happen to us.
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Whenever I see a web I think about how interconnected everything is. The network model (networks are made up of nodes and links) really does help me to understand that. Our whole being is an amazing interconnected system of cells, organs and tissues. Our world is an increasingly connected world. What happens in one country quickly changes what is happening in another.
This particular web seems even more dense than most.
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I looked up and the sun was setting, casting a red glow on the spire of the church. Over a few minutes the glow ascended towards the sky as the sun set below the horizon. A lovely effect
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