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!