Mechanics of Meditation

For hundreds of years Eastern religions and philosophies embraced meditation, often in search of God, but also to withstand life's stings - physical pain, mental anguish, emotional upset.

Western religions at best ignored meditation, and at worst, called it evil. Today, many scientists in many disciplines are looking at the actual mechanics of meditation.

No matter which guru you follow many of the steps or procedures of meditation, and for that matter hypnosis, are similar. A typical beginning is to ask the meditator or client to take three deep breaths. There is at least a little actual help in this as most people breathe very shallow, often due to stress. Just as stress can cause shallow breathing, deep breathing can inversely calm stress.

The great Tony Robbins talks a lot about "state" or if I dare paraphrase him for my purposes, "smile and the world smiles with you."

But there is another very good reason for the deep breaths. The real technique involved in meditation is to get the client to stop thinking about the past and the future. The past is often filled with regret and guilt and sadness, and the future is often filled with fear or at least anticipation. The "now" is the safe place. As you calm the mind and come into the now you realize there is not much else going on but your breathing and heartbeat and normal functions of the body that take care of themselves in an other-than-conscious way every minute you are alive.

I like to think of the brain like a hard drive on a computer. Hard drives get fragmented as data is written to them in random free areas and so the more fragmented the drive, the longer it takes a computer to process the information. The solution is to "defrag" them or  run a program that organizes the bits of information in more complete chunks, thus allowing the computer to process faster. This is very simple physics at work.

If we imagine the brain as something similar, we are fragmented by all the responsibilities and worries that plague us, and our very powerful mind begins to have trouble sorting it out, or at least processing our life's challenges efficiently and without causing us increasing confusion.

As we come into the now, through breath work and relaxation, the mind is able to process what it is dealing with in a much easier way. Many folks view the answers their mind comes up with as inspiration or divine intervention, but it is more likely simply the mind being allowed to defragment. As this happens, stress begins to lessen, blood pressure often falls, and we feel so much happier about life.

And so, if meditation amounts to no more than this, it is worth it.

Another common instruction is to hold the tongue up against the back of the upper front teeth. Some say this is to allow saliva to be automatically cleared from the throat to avoid breaking the meditation. Others say it is a subconscious way to keep the self-talk we all do in control, because we literally feel tongue tied. I believe it is also a method to keep our focus in the now,  as it is one more thing happening "right now" that we are focusing on, allowing us to avoid the past and future.

Of course all versions will ask us to relax and how could you focus on only the now if you were uncomfortable? Some insist on sitting over lying down. This may simply be because it is easier to fall asleep lying down and that would defeat the defragging  process.

Hypnotists often use contradictions in instructions to cause the client to focus even more on the now by worrying about whether they are following the instructions correctly. The client is puzzled by their own inability to follow simple instructions and relies more and more on the hypnotist to do their thinking for them. Thus, when a suggestion is made, the client is very willing to follow it.

In meditation, especially if it is simple, quiet meditation, there is no "suggestion" factor. The mind is free to explore itself, sort itself out, find answers to the challenges of life, and act upon the body in healthy ways such as reducing stress, lowering blood pressure, lessening pain, solving problems, and other positive results.

The techniques for staying in the "now" include repeating a single word or Mantra (the technique behind Transcendental Meditation), or Sutras (a series of words developed a thousand years or more ago in India, which keep the mind focused on silently repeating them in order), the rhythm of your breathing (a basic device of Yoga), focusing on the Chakras, (several points along the center of the body), and even focus on the point right where your nose meets your forehead (the Third Eye is said to be about an inch or two behind that very point.) All of these techniques, and others, help keep our mind off the past or future.

Any technique that keeps your mind occupied on something seemingly unimportant and yet in the present or now is bound to get you into a meditative state. The big mistake is that a lot of people expect something miraculous to happen while in that meditative state.

The benefits of meditation are often found after the meditation, as the mind is more clear and the body more relaxed and healthier, with a good rest and lower blood pressure. Also, meditation has a cumulative effect. The more often it is done, the more the benefit.

However, that is not to say that a great idea won't pop up, often just as you are "waking" yourself up. This often happens when your brain is in the so-called alpha state.

The point is that there are measurable scientific reason why meditation works - and it does work – no hocus-pocus, just common sense.