My Meditation Project

by Nina

The Promise by Rene Magritte

My confession: I am really bad at meditating. And by that I don’t mean my mind wanders a lot when I’m meditating (which I do not consider being bad at meditating). I mean that I just can’t seem to maintain a regular meditation practice. I’ve tried countless times. I’ve made a vow, started practicing short sessions every day, and then petered out. 

Of course, I’ve wondered why this is. It was actually really easy for me to start regular asana practice at home. And once I get going, it is often hard to stop. Practicing for two hours when I have the luxury of the free time is really easy for me. So, the problem is not related to being uncomfortable spending time alone or anything like that. I’m guessing that the problem is that while practicing asanas makes me feel good immediately as well as after the fact, practicing meditation does not. I find it boring and aggravating during the session, and after the session I so far have not noticed any increases in equanimity or peacefulness.

Yet I still feel like this is something very worth pursuing. Did you read Ram’s post Brain Waves and Yoga this week? I found it utterly fascinating and revelatory. I originally trained to be a yoga teacher so I could help people practice yoga for emotional well-being. And when I started this blog, I had a lot of information on that topic I wanted to share. But while I had some information about why yoga helped people with stress, depression, anxiety, fear, grief, etc., for example, how about how yoga triggered the relaxation response, there were still some mysteries about how an asana session could make you feel less depressed. Then in Ram’s post, I saw this:

"Depressed, introvert people have more alpha brainwaves in the left temporal lobe, while chirpy, gregarious people have more alpha waves in the right side. Thus, yoga-associated increase of alpha brainwave in the right temporal lobe provides a natural setting to counteract stress and depression. (See Effects of yoga on brain waves and structural activation: A review.)"

Wow, it was actually mind-blowing to read that yoga changed your brain waves and that this helped counteract depression along with stress! I checked the abstract for the study, which said:

"It was concluded that breathing, meditation, and posture-based yoga increased overall brain wave activity. Increases in gray matter along with increases in amygdala and frontal cortex activation were evident after a yoga intervention. Yoga practice may be an effective adjunctive treatment for a clinical and healthy aging population."

Two points stand out. First, they studied a combination of breathing meditation, and asana, not just asana. And second they also proposed this practice for "healthy aging," which is probably due to the increases in "gray matter along with increases in amygdala and frontal cortex activation."

So many benefits! And I’d really like to dig into it that all more the future. But for now, let's look at Ram's conclusion:

“Thus, a combination of breathing practices, meditation, and asanas is sufficient to shift the brainwave pattern to a physical and mental state involving reduction in stress, anxiety, mood disturbances, and depression and improvements in mood, focus, alertness, and an over-all sense of well-being.”

Again, we're looking at a combination of practices, not just asana. So, I’d really like to add a regular meditation practice to my life to see what it does for me. Who knows what my asana practice will become as I age? And I expect to face many life challenges in the future. Meditation is something that would always be available to me, no matter what. 

What I have decided to do this time is something different. I’m going to start my practice in the new year in a public fashion by posting a meditation diary once a week. I’m hoping that making a public commitment will help me stay on track for a good while, and maybe even help other people who want to do the same. My meditation diary will be on a different blog (not here), and I will announce its location this coming Monday, so stay tuned for that. If you want to join me in starting a practice, you can comment on my diary posts with your own weekly report. This will be a kind of virtual support group! And, of course, if anyone just wants to chime in with advice, encouragement, or support of any kind, that would also be very welcome.

What do you think? Does anyone out there want to join me?


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Friday Q&A: Gayatri Mantra

Summer Afternoon by Eyvind Earle

Q: I've been reading about Brahma Muhurta. I have started chanting Gayatri Mantra a few days ago and I was doing it from 6am to 7:45... Now, tomorrow morning I will do it from 4:16 am (1 hour and 36 minutes before sunrise) to 5:52 am. My question is: Is there also an appropriate time for the practice of meditation/mantras in the afternoon? 

A: The Vedic texts are replete with mantras (sacred sounds) to propitiate nature. Thus, the texts have mantras to appease the planets, stars, nature (seasons, climate (rain, summer, winter)], wildlife, crops, etc that can be recited at any time of the day. 

Specifically, Gayatri Mantra is a part of an entire SandhyaVandanam (salutations to the natural planetary transitions-in this case the SUN) and consists of recitation again from the Vedic texts. Sandhyavandanam literally means "salutation to Sun" at the different transitions (rising, noon, setting), hence the mantra is recited three times a day; morning (prataḥsaṃdhya), noon (madhyahnika) and evening (sayaṃsaṃdhya). You are welcome to chant/recite the Mantra at these different times (Brahma Muhurta time, Noon and the time at which the sun sets). 

A simple silent 15 mins meditation is also helpful if you are not into chanting or recitation. There are so many benefits of a silent meditation practice that we have discussed in this blog. I like to meditate early in the morning so my day starts of well, noon time meditation helps to consolidate the peace and calmness and evening mediation is a good practice to settle down from the day’s events.

—Ram

Why Meditating on Your Breath Works

by Nina

Wheat Fields at Auvers Under Clouded Sky by Vincent van Gogh

"The research shows for the first time that breathing—a key element of meditation and mindfulness practices—directly affects the levels of a natural chemical messenger in the brain called noradrenaline. This chemical messenger is released when we are challenged, curious, exercised, focused or emotionally aroused, and, if produced at the right levels, helps the brain grow new connections, like a brain fertiliser. The way we breathe, in other words, directly affects the chemistry of our brains in a way that can enhance our attention and improve our brain health.” —from Trinity College Dublin

I always wondered why we are most often taught to meditate by focusing on the breath. Obviously, as ancient yogis discovered, meditating on the breath is particularly effective at quieting the mind. But why is that? Eventually I came up with my own theory. But I’m not going to share that theory with you today because some researches at Trinity College Dublin had a much more interesting theory, and they went ahead and developed a scientific study to study it! The study Coupling of respiration and attention via the locus coeruleus: Effects of meditation and pranayama  looked at the “neurophysiological link” between breathing and attention.They did this by measuring breathing, reaction time, and brain activity in the locus coeruleus, the part of your brainstem that produces noradrenaline, a hormone and neurotransmitter. (I’d say more about how they did the study, but frankly the original paper was somewhat impenetrable, and even though I usually glean some information from these types of papers, I’ve got nothing.

According to The Yogi masters were right—meditation and breathing exercises can sharpen your mind, the researchers discovered that your breath affects noradrenaline levels in your brain, with levels slightly increasing during the inhalation and slightly decreasing during the exhalation. 

In general noradrenaline readies your body and brain for action but levels go up when you are, as they said, “challenged, curious, exercised, focused or emotionally aroused,” not just when you’re in danger. In fact, levels are lowest while you are sleeping and start to rise when you wake up and become active. So, some amount is needed just for you to go about your day!

We have discussed the effects of this hormone in our post Understanding Your Autonomic Nervous System noting how it prepares your body and mind for action by stimulating your heart to beat faster and stronger and slightly raising your blood pressure to improve blood flow, and by opening your airways so you can breathe more easily. In extreme situations—where serious action on your part is needed—this hormone is part of what triggers your fight-or-flight response. In this state, your sympathetic nervous system actually turns off the background functions of nourishment, restoration, and healing that are provided by the parasympathetic nervous system because these functions will slow you down. 

In addition to readying you for action, noradrenaline also affects your ability to focus. Michael Melnychuk, the lead author of the study, says that both too much noradrenaline, which is present when you are stressed, and too little noradrenaline, which is present when you are sluggish, reduce our ability to focus. He says, however, “There is a sweet spot of noradrenaline in which our emotions, thinking and memory are much clearer."

You know I kind of wonder about this. I learned from psychologist Dan Libby that in the fight-or-flight state, it’s not so much that you can’t focus but rather that you can only focus on certain things, that is, fight or flight strategies (see Stress and Your Thought-Behavior Repertoire). So perhaps the “sweet spot” happens when you’re relaxed enough to think clearly but at the same time not too sleepy or exhausted. Regardless, how do we get to that sweet spot by practicing breath awareness or meditating on our breath? Michael Melnychuk says:

“It is possible that by focusing on and regulating your breathing you can optimise your attention level and likewise, by focusing on your attention level, your breathing becomes more synchronised."

This sounds like a kind of feedback loop that happens just on its own. When you focus your attention on your breath, even though you don’t intend to change it, bringing your awareness to it alone will likely slow it down and make it more even, which in turn increases your ability to focus on it, which in turn regulates your breath even more, etc. 

Besides being a particularly effective meditation technique, there is a good possibility practicing breath awareness or meditating on your breath can help with our aging brains! According to Ian Robertson, the principal investigator of the study, the sweet spot you reach when meditate on your breath (mindfulness meditation) “doses” your brain with the right amount of noradrenaline to grow new connections between your brain cells, something that doesn’t happen when your levels of noradrenaline are too high or too low. As he says:

"Our findings could have particular implications for research into brain ageing. Brains typically lose mass as they age, but less so in the brains of long term meditators. More 'youthful' brains have a reduced risk of dementia and mindfulness meditation techniques actually strengthen brain networks. Our research offers one possible reason for this—using our breath to control one of the brain's natural chemical messengers, noradrenaline, which in the right 'dose' helps the brain grow new connections between cells. This study provides one more reason for everyone to boost the health of their brain using a whole range of activities ranging from aerobic exercise to mindfulness meditation."

Now, what about pranayama, the breath practices where you intentionally control your breathing rather than allowing it to settle on its own? If you consider that more noradrenaline is released on your inhalation than on your exhalation, you can see how making your inhalation longer than your exhalation would be stimulating and making your exhalation longer than your inhalation would be calming. This allows you to use your breath practices to simulate yourself, calm yourself, or balance yourself as we describe in Pranayama: A Powerful Key to Your Nervous System. The study’s author seems to recommend pranayama to help you self-regulate, just as we do:

“In cases where a person's level of arousal is the cause of poor attention, for example drowsiness while driving, a pounding heart during an exam, or during a panic attack, it should be possible to alter the level of arousal in the body by controlling breathing.”

Of course, we know from experience that pranayama allows us to change our levels of "arousal." What Melnychuk is adding to that here is that balancing your nervous system with your breath will affect your noradrenaline levels, which in turn, should help you find the sweet spot where your ability to focused is maximized. So, if you're stressed out or sluggish, practicing pranayama to balance your nervous system before meditating on your breath seems like the way to go. If lack of experience with focusing is the only thing interfering with your ability to meditate, you could just go ahead and meditate on your breath.

It does seems possible, however, that a balancing breath (where the inhalation and exhalation are of equal length) would serve the same purpose as breath awareness. (Information on how exactly to get to that sweet spot either isn’t in the original paper or I just couldn’t find it. In the end, I was left with a number of questions!)

Ian Robertson, the principal investigator of the study, says the research shows that both these breath practices have a strong connection with “steadiness of mind.” With that term, he’s including not only attention but arousal (stress levels) and emotional control (related to stress levels). So that’s an argument for practicing both pranayama and meditation.

"Yogis and Buddhist practitioners have long considered the breath an especially suitable object for meditation. It is believed that by observing the breath, and regulating it in precise ways—a practice known as pranayama—changes in arousal, attention, and emotional control that can be of great benefit to the meditator are realised. Our research finds that there is evidence to support the view that there is a strong connection between breath-centred practices and a steadiness of mind."

2.2 When the breath is disturbed, the mind is unsteady. When the breath becomes focused, the mind becomes focused and the yogi attains steadiness. —Hatha Yoga Pradipika, translated by A.G. Mohan and Dr. Ganesh Mohan

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