Physical 00: Meditation

    It occurred to me that in my previous post on Physical resolutions, I failed to more fully justify with evidence some of  the changes I proposed. It's a common fallacy: somehow it has entered my head, whether it be through conversations with people online or IRL, or through some article I happened across, that all of these things were "good", and did no further research. Some of these shouldn't need justification - I do not think there is any controversy in claiming that exercise is good for your health. However, I would not be surprised if some skeptical readers out there doubted the claim that meditating has any benefit.

    First, what prompted me to seek meditation? I was raised Christian, so I was not exposed to it as a part of my cultural upbringing. I learned about it most in high school, through maybe a few paragraphs in my World History textbook, but mostly through my conversations with a good friend, who was in the midst of her own spiritual journey at the time and whose mother attended a Buddhist organization. Still Christian at this time, I found it no more than a curiosity.

    Sometime after my de-conversion, I began my own "spiritual"¹ quest, a part of which was developing my meta-cognitive abilities. I became very aware that a deficiency in my ability to attend to things - conversations, my environment, etc - obstructed some of my academic and personal goals. Another way to say this: my attentions span wasn't as long as I'd have liked. My mind has a tendency to wander from idea to idea. In it's way, this is a good thing, since I've often had great insights into problems during these moments. But I also find myself having hypothetical conversations or puzzling over certain implications of new material when I'm trying to prepare for school or work, almost always causing me to forget something. My mind also wanders in class or even during a conversation, even though often I do want to pay attention, and even when the topic is crucially important.

    I researched the long-term effects of common ADHD medication, and while they're mostly benign - dependence, volatile temper, and possibly a slight decrease in memory over the long term - I decided I preferred not to spend money on a prescription drug (and not to take something which my exaggerate a genetic heart arrhythmia). I do not think I have ADHD, anyway, so I turned to meditation instead.

    Pulling from Wikipedia again, mindfullness-based meditation was described in the following way:

The first component [of mindfulness] involves the self-regulation of attention so that it is maintained on immediate experience, thereby allowing for increased recognition of mental events in the present moment. The second component involves adopting a particular orientation toward one’s experiences in the present moment, an orientation that is characterized by curiosity, openness, and acceptance

    The two components are, in brief, awareness and orientation. I believe that this practice enables people to identify their patterns of thought, and allows them to interpret these patterns in non-emotional ways, even leading them to change unwanted thought patterns.

    Research suggests that the act meditation triggers the "relaxation response", which is a decrease in arousal. This response has been used clinically to treat the stress and pain of the chronic or terminally ill. Stress, as you may know, has a few short-term benefits, but over the long term may cause or aggravate many negative conditions, including decreased immune system activity. Researches are now looking into whether this same stress-reduction benefit can be replicated in the workplace, and the initial results seem to be positive².

    Now, before I stop attending to the original point altogether, what about attention span? We live in a world of constant distractions - novel information in the form of a text message, a Google search, or an email notification can constantly bombard us. You constantly hear that this is a generation of multitaskers - and of the negative consequences of some forms of multitasking, such as texting and driving. It's sometimes difficult to find activities to strengthen your sustained-attention "muscle," so is meditation a viable option for this?

    Again, the research seems to suggest so³. Perhaps it's not surprising that making sure you're focused on the present moment for extended periods of time increases attention span. Scientists created two groups, gave both a demanding test of attention three separate times, and sent one group off to a meditation retreat, over the course of three months. The results showed a positive gain for the experimental group, and even maintained gains 5 months after, especially for those who reported they continued the practice of meditation.

    What about my experiences? I can't say I've done it for long enough to know or not, but I will say, paraphrasing the words of the Dali Lama, I find meditation to be hard work⁴.

1: Using the definition I gave in a previous post.
2: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/mindful.htm
3: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2010/maclean.cfm
3: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=meditation-on-demand