Meditation is a
century year old practice that I experienced firsthand this week at the New York
Insight Meditation Center. Clearly, the notion of meditation usually brings to
mind an image of Buddha sitting at peace. Since it was my first time however, I
didn’t know what to expect, and had a multitude of questions about the
practice. Why’s the purpose of meditation? The ultimate aim? Are there
different types of meditation? What are the advantages associated with
meditation? The readings for this week shed light on several of these
questions, and together with my experience in my first meditation session, gave
me a much clearer sense of both the process and end goal of meditation. We
begin with a brief overview of the readings for this week and follow with a
description of the meditation session, with particular emphasis on its
relationship to mind wandering.
Before going to
the meditation session, I read up on the research concerning this practice, and
I was surprised to find that meditation is a rather varied practice that had
clear advantages. I always thought that the increased sense of peace associated
with meditation came from simply resting the body more so than the mind. This
week’s readings as well as my own meditation session refuted this conjecture.
Indeed, the session included an emphasis on the power of the mind in focusing
on the task at hand such as following the breath and relaxing certain areas of
the body as well as in broader endeavors such as reaching acceptance.
Thus, one can say
that “mindfulness,” as defined by Baer et. al. (2006),
was an important component of my meditation session. In accordance with the
instructor’s talk, Baer and his colleagues found that mindfulness, defined as
“bringing one’s complete attention to the experiences occurring in the present
moment, in a nonjudgmental or accepting way,” can be developed with regular
meditation. Furthermore, the authors also mention that mindfulness can lead to
increases in qualities such as awareness, compassion, and equanimity. In their
study, the authors used questionnaires to measure awareness, nonjudgemental
“present-moment observation and openness to negative experience,” and “acting
with awareness…accepting without judgment.” The found that the results of the
questionnaires demonstrated internal consistency and showed that mindfulness
correlated such several other variables, thus making the questionnaires
psychometrically promising tools.
Lutz
et. al. (2008)’s report focused more on the practice of
meditation itself rather than on a certain characteristic/result of meditation. Specifically, Lutz and their
colleagues defined two types of meditation, namely focused attention (FA) and
open monitoring (OM) meditation. FA meditation, like its name suggests, refers
to focusing thought on a selected object and maintaining attention only on the
present task/object while minimizing distraction and intrusive thoughts. On the
other hand, open monitoring (OM) meditation involves “non-reactively
monitoring” thoughts as they occur from moment to moment, allowing the mind to
wander as a means to experience and appreciate one’s “emotional and cognitive
patterns.” Thus, FA meditation is more involved in training the mind whereas OM
meditation allows us to experience the mind by accepting the thoughts that
cross it.
Clearly, the
characteristics of FA meditation (such as focus on one object or task) are
reminiscent of vigilance and the characteristics associated with sustained
attention. MacLean
et. al. (2010) saw this
connection and performed a study on whether FA meditation led to improvements
in sustained attention. The authors found increased visual discrimination as
well as improvements in vigilance/sustained attention tasks as a result of
meditation training. These results suggest that intensive FA meditation
involving attention on nonvisual perceptions such as breath indeed generalizes
to improved visual perception during vigilance tasks. I found this to be
particularly interesting because it suggests that meditation training resulted
in an improvement of mind and not just an increased peace in body. I would be
interested to see whether meditation leads to improved performance on other
types of vigilance tasks not including visual perception.
Jensen et. al. (2012) addressed a possible confounding factor
in MacLean et. al.’s 2010 study. Although
the investigation had compelling results, Jensen questioned whether the
improvements were actually the result of increased attention. Specifically,
Jensen and colleagues propose that these improvements could have been the
result of increased “attentional effort,” and thus reflect the subject’s willingness to focus attention on a
selected object or during a vigilance task and not the subject’s ability to do
so. In their study, they tested 48 healthy subjects without previous meditation
training were assigned to groups with differing mindfulness (mindfulness-based
stress reduction/MBSR and non-mindfulness based stress reduction/NMSR) and
incentive levels. The premise is that the “incentive” group will have greater
motivation and willingness to perform—and thus exhibit a greater attentional effort. The authors found
that attentional effects of MBSR, NMSR, and the incentive groups were
comparative, though slightly greater in the incentive group. However, only the
MBSR group exhibited notable improvements in selective attention and an
improved threshold for “conscious perception and visual working memory
capacity.” Therefore, the authors argue that MBSR may contribute uniquely to attentiaonl improvements
but further research on the effect of test effort is needed before one can make
a conclusions such as that of MacLean et.
al. In essence, Jensen’s study serves as a cautionary tale to account for
the presence of confounding variables in the study of attention.
Clearly, after
reading these reports and looking up interesting pictures of meditation, I had
a conglomeration of different expectations for what my first meditation session
would be like. Personally, in my mind, meditation reminds me of Rafiki (the
wise old baboon) from the Lion King more than anything else. He meditates on a
rock just before leading Simba to the vision of his father and motivating him
to accept the past, move on, and embrace the future. If you can’t tell, Lion
King was my favorite childhood Disney movie. And Rafiki was my favorite character.
On to (real) meditation! The session began with sitting meditation, in which we
assumed a restful sitting position and concentrated on our breath. This focus
was paired with instructions to relax certain areas of our body in sequence.
Occasionally, the instructor would ring the gong three times during our
meditation session. I found this session to be a mixture of both FA and OM
meditation, as defined in Lutz et. al. For instance, our instructor
encouraged us to focus on our breath and to not let our minds stray or wander.
However, he also encouraged us to let our thoughts pass through our minds one
by one. Regarding mind wandering, he told us to “be gentle with yourselves;”
because of the power of the mind, he said that mind wandering is inevitable, especially
during a beginning meditation session. “When your mind wanders, just gently
bring yourself back to the breath and focus on that.” Thus, I found it
interesting that the session included both types of meditation. The second half
of the session, and the one I found to be most interesting, was a discussion on
the practice and benefits of meditation. Through personal anecdotes, our
instructor elaborated on the power of meditation to foster acceptance and
“clearing.” By focusing the mind and becoming one with the universal “self,”
meditation helps us see the interconnectedness of everyone in society. In
particular, he talked about how meditation led to positive changes in his life
by enabling him to release the negativity and move on from tragic events and
find peace and acceptance.
I found this
week’s readings and in particular, this week’s meditation session, extremely
informative both academically and personally. My experience this week helped me
understand meditation in a broader light and shed light on how it could
positively contribute to a more accepting and positive life.
Word Count: 1289, not including references :D
References
MacLean, K. A., E. Ferrer, et al. (2010).
"Intensive
meditation training improves perceptual discrimination and sustained attention."
Psychol Sci 21(6): 829-839.
Jensen, C. G., S. Vangkilde, et al.
(2011). "Mindfulness
training affects attention-or is it attentional effort?" J Exp Psychol
Gen.
Baer, R. A., G. T. Smith, et al. (2006).
"Using self-report
assessment methods to explore facets of mindfulness." Assessment
13(1): 27-45.
Image
References
The Lion King—Meditating
Rfiki. http://findingmickey.squarespace.com/disney-animated-features/the-lion-king/9161332
7 Health
Benefits of Meditation. http://foodmatters.tv/articles-1/7-health-benefits-of-meditation
No comments:
Post a Comment