Week 8:

As I wind down this 8-week experience of learning to meditate. I’ve found myself

narrowing down my focus to two practices I’ve found successful. Since most of the meditations I’ve tried focus on breathing as a main component, I’ve done the breathing exercise and the “peace/praise”, “thank you” mantra that Dr. Fields suggested. I’ve found this a great way to start the morning before even getting up.

The other practice is the Omvana six- phase meditation. I’ve enjoyed the guided meditations because of the scaffolding they offer. Repetition and rehearsal of the steps removes the need for the recorded guide, but I still enjoy it for the quality of the voice of the guide. As I mentioned last week, I’ve begun to teach it to my mother as well.

Teaching meditation to my mom helps me to remember the steps and integrate them into my thinking. My teaching has mostly been direct instruction, listening to the guide with her, and answering her questions.

I wonder how one would go about inquiry- based or problem- based instruction in the case of meditation. I suppose you could pose a problem or inquiry to a person or group about how to achieve a meditative state of mind and then see how they would suggest achieving it. However, that state of mind would only be hypothetical until they actually experienced it. That would suggest to me that the learning experience would need to be carefully scaffolded at first, perhaps with direct instruction as well.

As I’ve become more of an “expert meditator”, I’ve found myself taking opportunities to meditate in different situations. A few minutes in the car, or in the waiting room at the doctor, or before church services begin, are all situations in which I’ve meditated. Successful meditation would seem to be about transfer and automaticity We create a purposeful, conscious meditation context or situation in which we focus and concentrate on bringing that peace so we can find ourselves creating it automatically or unconsciously in situations of stress, work, driving, etc.

Once you are familiar with the states of relaxation or consciousness you are striving to create, it’s easier to achieve those states. You can then adapt the skills necessary to achieve the state of meditation to the context or situation you’re in.

In some ways, it reminds me of the cognitive belief therapy I went through a few years ago where effortful re-direction of thoughts is undertaken in a controlled setting in order to promote automaticity of that re- direction, especially in stressful situations.

In conclusion, I’ve found that meditation does work and is effective for me. At this point, it’s not completely intuitive- it takes work. I have a lot more to learn. I feel like I’ve just dipped my toe in the water, but I intend to keep at it!

11-12-15

This week I’ve been focusing on two aspects of meditation, breathing and the Great Circle Meditation as described in Justin Stone’s book, The Joy of Meditation.

Breathing: I’ve been finding success with breathing using the brief mantra Dr. Fields suggested to me a few weeks ago. I repeat “peace” in my mind when I inhale, and “thank you” when I exhale. Counting while breathing also works. Both practices allow me to be aware of the breathing without trying to control it. Additionally, I try to focus on my belly moving up and down and visualize “vacuuming in” peace or energy or gratitude into my body with the inhale and expelling “waste” or undesirable stuff on the exhale. My mind does tend to wander, but I’m getting better at drawing it back to focus on the breathing. 

Typically I do this when I awake while lying in bed for about 15 minutes before I get up. I’ve found it has a useful effect on the frenzy of thoughts that almost immediately overtakes my mind when I wake up. Sometimes it even leads me to fall back to asleep. It’s a good thing I work in the afternoon and not the morning!

The second thing I’ve tried is the Great Circle Meditation. As I mentioned last week, this involves drawing warm, moist, golden light into your body from a “waterfall” you visualize. You then direct it in a particular path around your body, through your extremities, up your back, and so on, until you arrive at the dantian, a point about two inches below the navel.

As described in Wikipedia, the dantian is loosely translated as "elixir field", "sea of qi", or simply "energy center". Dantian are important focal points for meditative and exercise techniques such as qigong, martial arts such as t'ai chi ch'uan, and in traditional Chinese medicine. (Wikipedia)

The point two inches below the navel is the lower dantian, which is considered to be

the foundation of rooted standing, breathing, and body awareness in qigong, Chinese martial arts, and other martial arts. The lower dantian has been described to be "like the root of the tree of life". (Wikipedia)

When you reach the lower dantian with the “golden energy” you are supposed to focus it and keep it there.

Performing the Great Circle Meditation was a challenge because I had to read the procedure from the book and then remember it. The steps are rather exact. I suppose rehearsal and repetition would have eventually cemented it into my mind, but I wanted some additional scaffolding. To that end, I recorded myself reading the description of the steps in my best, most relaxing, enlightening voice. Even after two separate attempts to record it, I found myself wishing I had someone a little more dulcet and soothing in tone to record it for me!

There may be nothing more distracting than trying to do a guided meditation to the sound of your own voice, but maybe there’s some benefit in it. Could it be that hearing me tell myself to relax and engage in meditative behaviors would actually enhance my own chances of success?

My mother’s taken an interest in my efforts to learn to meditate. This week I had the opportunity to drive her to visit a relative in the hospital and she began to ask me about meditation. I began to teach her about the Omvana six-step meditation I tried a few weeks ago. In doing so I ran into the “expert blind- spot” we’ve talked about where, as a relative expert, I described the process to her without giving sufficient detail to the small, simple steps that actually make it work, such as sitting down and doing it in a quiet place to begin the day.

The other thought I had about meditation this week is that in order for it to work, the person meditating has to want to feel the positive effects of it. No- brainer, right? It should be, but my natural inclination seems often to tend toward negativism and cynicism. It’s comfortable. I’m good at it. It’s hard to give up what’s comfortable for what might be better but require more work to achieve.

Learning Blog 6:

Monday: Spent 30 minutes or so in bed focusing on my breathing. It seemed to work better today. I counted the breaths in and out and was able to hold longer breaths and not focus so much on controlling them.

I went back to sleep and had very vivid dreams!

I got this excellent suggestion from Dr. Fields in her response to last week’s blog about breathing, she said,

“We do it for 3-4 minutes at the beginning of each yoga class. Just "deep belly breathing". You might try saying (inwardly) "Peace" on the inhale and "Thank you" on the exhale. Gives your mind two simple ideas to 'hang on' while you breathe.”

I like this idea. I think I will try that this coming week.

Last night I read chapter 1 of The Joy of Meditation (Stone) about Indian vs. Chinese meditation and how the former is inwardly- focused (one-pointedness of mind) and the latter promotes meditation that coexists with awareness of external situations and circumstances. The author promotes the latter form of meditation, which seems to be more appealing and useful to me.

Tuesday & Wednesday: I’ve continued to read The Joy of Meditation. I’ve learned about the Great Circle mediation which involves visualization of certain things such as sitting on a soft white cloud, imagining a great waterfall of flowing golden light, allowing that light to pour over your head, and then visualizing the light passing around, through, and over your body in a particular sequence or orbit, pausing in certain crucial spots such as the T’an T’ien, which is two inches below the navel.

The author describes the Great Circle meditation as “fairly simple” and says it contains “elements of the Taoist Macrocosmic and Microcosmic breaths, as well as the Chinese and Tibetan Backward Flowing Method.”

Wait, what? All that is fairly simple? I’m starting to feel overwhelmed.

In further reading, the author describes the principal forms of Japa, one of the oldest spiritual practices in India. He then goes on to describe basics of Zen meditation, beginning with the correct sitting poses. I was lost.

For a simple book of just over 100 pages that purports to be an introduction, this book is really quite advanced in some of its concepts and practices. Trying to visualize things like sitting poses and how to make golden light- energy flow around my body in a particular orbit and pause at certain locations was difficult. It made me think of some of the readings we’ve done this week about cognitive apprenticeships and legitimate peripheral participation. There are things talked about in this “basic” book that I think could best be learned in an apprenticeship, or at least a zone of proximal development, guided by teachers and near- peers. I thought about how the “work” or “expertise” of meditation might compare to that of midwives, tailors, or meatcutters.

Trying to figure it out on my own by just reading a book is overwhelming.

Here’s an interesting blog post about apprenticeship and Zen training:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildfoxzen/2012/10/its-not-so-easy-the-apprenticeship-model-for-zen-training.html

Thursday I returned to the Lakhania’s Envisioning Method guided meditation that I enjoyed a few weeks ago. It was like meeting an old friend, but one who still has new things to say. I think that kind of meditation is where I may find the most benefit.