Meditation When Our Mind Is Busy
Don’t fight the nature of your mind.
This is one of the first teachings I learned in 1993 as I began to study and practice in the Himalayan Tradition of Yoga Meditation. The other was to give your mind something to focus on.
I’ve learned a lot about my mind since and it is very different from the stressed, compulsive, catastrophic thought generator it is was back then. In the 28 years I’ve been teaching meditation, I’ve learned a lot about our minds. Our modern world is very different but the conditions of our mind are similar to what was taught 5,000 years ago.
The 8 Rungs of Yoga, the Royal Path, Ashtanga Yoga are in two parts. The first four are known as hatha yoga and include asana (yoga poses) and pranayama (breath and energy). They are the preparation for the next four, where we deepen into meditation.
Our minds are obsessed with ruminating about the past, and trying to predict our future. This is mostly due to the negativity bias and our nervous system trying to keep us safe. When we’re alarmed, our survival responses are activated and peace of mind disappears.
“I sit down to meditate and my mind explodes with catastrophic thinking. I don’t get a moment’s peace from my mean inner critic. What’s the matter with me? I even fail at sitting still with nothing to do.” Said by every traumatized meditation student I have ever worked with. Read a previous blog on meditation and trauma here.
The four steps in meditation are pratyahara (withdrawing the mind from the senses), dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), and samadhi (enlightenment).
We live in a world with overwhelming sensory stimulation and increasing fear and anxiety. Meditation shows a path to peace and practices to build strength and capacity.
Withdrawing our mind from the senses comes before concentration, meditation and enlightenment. These steps are not completely linear and sequential but they do build on each other.
Watching our mind is a revealing practice. What distracts us from stillness is often repetitive and boring. One meditation teacher compared it to having the Queen come for tea, and part way through you realized you had new mail, went to check it to find it was junk mail advertising a sale. It is interesting to observe what interrupts our peace of mind in part because then we can make decisions about our focus that are more in alignment.
A profound way to increase the stillness in our minds is to reduce the amount of alarm that goes in. Alarming content includes much of social media, the news, and anything that increases our sense of disconnection and distress. We lose access to compassion when we are in a survival response and for many people, highly stressed and anxious is the new normal.
Our mind is drawn to, and at times compelled, to thoughts that relate to safety. We use the past to predict the future, and we’re often not accurate.
How well do you sleep after watching a violent movie or after being in a loud chaotic environment? Our minds are often over-stimulated and exhausted. There are very real threats and dangers in our personal and communal worlds. And most often we can afford to take a good look around the space we are in, take a few breaths, and relax our grip. Meditation can provide a guided structure that helps us build the concentration we need to ease into meditation.
We begin with noticing safety in our immediate environment in this moment in time. We take a few breaths and loosen our shoulders. We bring our attention away from other times and places, and focus on our Being. We soften our body and feel the relief of deeper breaths. We observe our thoughts and sometimes we also direct our thoughts. We might count our breath or bring to mind a beautiful experience or location. When we have intrusive thoughts, somatic inquiry can help release the energy.
Over time, we become more skilled at bringing our attention away from sensory stimulation and we build our capacity to concentrate. This naturally allows us to deepen into deep stillness in meditation.
This weekend, our meditation practice is especially for people with busy minds. Join us Sunday at 10AM Eastern (small groups and sharing after the practice) and/or Monday at 7PM.