We had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss. We practiced a guided meditation adapted from Dr. Rick Hanson‘s book, The Buddha’s Brain: the Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom. We explored a gradual expansion of focus from the area where we felt the breath most distinctly, to feeling all parts of breathing, to the whole body and finally on the faculty of being aware itself.
Rick explores the development of wisdom by examining the foundations of mindfulness and our miraculous capacity to sustain attention. He writes:
When your attention is steady so is your mind. Attention is like a spot light . . . what it illuminates streams into your mind and shapes your brain . . . Developing greater control over attention is perhaps the single most powerful way to reshape your brain and thus your mind.
He offers a variety of ways to help sustain focused attention. He explains why focusing our awareness on our body helps to quiet the inner chatter of our minds. Some parts of the brain are linked by reciprocal inhibition: when one activates it suppresses the other. To some extent the left and right brain hemispheres have this relationship. When we stimulate the right hemisphere by engaging in activity it quiets the left hemisphere verbal centers. The right visual spacial hemisphere has greater responsibility for representing state of your body – so awareness of body can help suppress left brain verbal chatter. Right hemisphere activation increases further when we sense the body as a whole.
Whole body awareness supports singleness of mind: a meditative state in which all aspects of awareness come together as a whole. Attention is very steady. This steady attention is one of the factors of deep contemplation. Many meditators report feeling enhanced clarity of mind and more at peace.
On balance this was a more challenging meditation – one student reported ways she chose to “make it her own” by visualizing the breath coming up her back and cascading back down her front as a nourishing stream. This is an elegant example of how we can adapt our approach to allow for our “neuro-diversity”. Rick encourages this compassionate way of working with our individual neural temperaments in service of gradually building mental resilience as well as empathy.
I so appreciate students who come and share their experience – we learn so much from each other!
You can find this week’s homework and other resources at: