Meditation techniques for mental health

Meditation is about being more physically relaxed at the same time as gaining greater mental awareness - throughout the day and with your eyes open! It’s about being in the present moment and therefore more grounded in reality. Despite the rather naive acceptance by some psychiatric authorities of mystical claims about ‘altered states of consciousness’; misunderstanding over an apparent connection with trance, dream like states and psychosis; and the timid approval by the NHS of just one aspect of meditation known as Mindfulness (sometimes referred to as ‘kitchen-sink meditation’) - it is, once stripped of its religious elements, the most important tool I have against madness. It’s the best anti-psychotic there is.

Untangling the myth however is not easy, you need to ‘suspend your disbelief’ and consider for a moment that the meditator is more in touch with reality than you are. You may imagine someone on a mountainside, eyes closed in the lotus position, but the real practitioners may be passing you in the street unnoticed - they blend into the social landscape because they are in the here and now, whilst you are preoccupied with your own thoughts. Your conscious thoughts can only be about the past or future, in the present you only have your senses with which to literally ‘feel’ your way around. Realise your emotions come from the data your senses are giving you now - then you’ll have it! It’s a shock, like waking up from a dream, you are back in the real world for the first time since - when? Suddenly self-consciousness, anxiety and fear can be put to their proper use; of spotting the occasional occurrence of real danger. You can get back to the proper use of your time, finding activities that match your skills and can become absorbed in, achieving some degree of ‘flow’, that sense of happiness that comes from the loss of self-consciousness - something we all felt in childhood play.

The first ‘pay off’ from meditation is the awareness of where you feel fear in your body, what in the environment has triggered or cued your brain to remember some past unpleasant association. It may be an unwelcome series of sensations to begin with, but it soon becomes a useful revelation. This is followed by learning to let go of unwanted thoughts and feelings about the past and future. In the process you can stare life in the face - as it is now.

One of the things meditation tackles well is our ‘illusion of self-control’. We like to think we are consciously in control of ourselves all the time. We distrust our basic, spontaneous impulsive actions. We must be constantly choosing all the time as free independent individuals. As a result we have become acutely self-conscious. Yet there is only so much we can keep at the forefront of our minds at any one time. We come to consider it a failure or lapse in our own standards when we inevitably end up following the impulses of biology, and the learning we unconsciously achieved earlier in our lives. Meditation, by placing us back in the present moment and allowing us to feel what cues us, what stimulates our senses, shows us just how unnecessary the time and trouble we spent on worrying about decisions really was. Decisions are all about an unpredictable future over which we can exert little control. However, we can learn to trust our own brains to get on with it, become grounded in the environment of the present, reconnected to the social world of others, and just be.

Objectives

- to concentrate on the present moment all the time; let go of any thoughts that come up (knowing they can only be about the past or future), know too that in any one moment there is no observable ‘self’; to notice what is happening (not a series of events but continuous change), to pay equal attention to all that can be seen and therefore know what habitually cues you to feel or respond in a particular way (your attention, reactions, emotions, and the ‘story’ you tell yourself about who you are) - and so ultimately realise that it is the actions of others that is creating you.

- to understand that the ‘I’ or ‘me’ that appears when you want something is an obstacle to your sense of wellbeing; to allow decisions to make themselves (unconsciously) since the conscious self is not in control and actions happen whether or not you will them - sense the freedom that comes from knowing you don’t have to try to do anything!

- to refuse to get involved in desires and hopes (about an unknowable future), to know that it is quite possible to live without hope (now is all there is), that in the world of the present you can stop inflicting your desires on others, stop the harm we often do and be able to notice others more.

Finding A Focus

At the core of meditation is the ability to focus on something; whether it be within the body, an external object or a mental image. Focus is not concentration as such, but a fixed point of reference, something you always come back to. A fixed point, baseline or benchmark from which you can navigate your mental interpretation of the physical world. Physical relaxation must come first and the easiest way in is to focus on the breath - not control it, just ‘watch’ it. Once relaxed you can begin to focus away from yourself towards the environment you find yourself in. In a natural environment it makes sense to let your gaze rest on the horizon and make that your focus. Whether we like it or not our attention will be constantly distracted by whatever our senses pick up from the environment and the internal thoughts and feelings prompted by those cues. The ‘trick’ is to always come back to the focus, again and again. You acknowledge the thought or perception, and let it go in the act of always returning to the focus. When truly focused, for however shorter time that may be, you think of nothing else. However the choice of focus at any one time does need to be something that holds your interest - something you enjoy exploring. Good focusing is a joy, as you begin to learn to let go you can start to recapture that childhood sensing and feeling, which never required conscious thought and has a fascination all of it’s own.

Balance

There is however a need to create a balance, between physical relaxation (too much of which leads to sleep) and greater mental awareness (which if not matched with the right degree of relaxation, may provoke a degree of anxiety about ‘what’s going on’ and increase self-consciousness). Stress is not an external force, but occurs within the body, our attention is usually directed outwards so we don’t recognise it in our bodies. In the process of physically relaxing we can identify stress and let it go; so our increasing awareness becomes a tool with which to see the world rather than a product of anxiety that may cause us to turn away.

Relaxation

If the first requirement is physical relaxation, and that is dependant on focused breathing, then an unrestricted diaphragm is a precondition of meditation - it is not the choice of posture itself that matters, but how you hold yourself in it. You can meditate whilst sitting, lying down or walking. The breath naturally changes throughout the day and from minute to minute, if you can learn to watch it and not seek to control it, you notice how it automatically adjusts itself. After meditating for a while you realise it was your conscious attempts to control it that caused the problems in the first place. Unrestricted breathing then allows you to ‘listen’ to the body. Normally when we relax our minds have a tendency to wander, to fantasise or free associate, leading to sleep. Meditation usually has the opposite intention, beginning with the kind of self-knowledge that arises from a greater awareness of the body. You can literally feel mental stress as physical pain - as you begin to relax. Much mental distress is a shutting-off of awareness, of stopping feeling. Becoming more aware of the body begins to put you back in ‘touch’! Much of the tension in our bodies is an attempt to suppress unacceptable emotional responses. The technique known as a ‘body scan’ starts with an awareness of the breath, followed by deliberately focusing bit by bit on every area of the body, identifying tension, gently flexing the muscles, at the same time as noticing the thoughts and feelings that arise. And in the act of physically letting go, it’s a shock to realise just how much mental preoccupation seems to float away. Fear, anger, sorrow and desire all disappear when we are truly relaxed.

Meditating for sleep is different, with the eyes closed you may wish to initially focus on the breath, and body scan. But you shouldn’t seek greater awareness nor be tempted to move on and fantasise in a controlled, ‘story making’ way. Rather think of how dreams are when you’re asleep - less coherent, more a free association of thoughts. One technique is to explore a single visual image rather than imaging a movie.

The link between mental and physical relaxation becomes obvious when you see what great physical performers can do, and realise they could never do what they do unless they were relaxed in a holistic sense. But an even greater revelation comes when you see and hear those same people interviewed! If you want exemplary examples of ‘mental health’ look to the great dancers.

Awareness

Many people equate being alert with conscious thinking. But we can only be conscious of a very small amount of the brain’s activity at any one time and much of it we are never aware of. And we don’t need to be. What is useful is to educate ourselves from time to time about those things that habitually cue us to behave in a certain way. Not so much in order to change, but to stop ‘beating ourselves up’ over those things we have consciously decided should not be part of our self, our ‘I’ or ‘me’. Indeed with a lot of practice you can have consciousness, but no consciousness of self - just awareness!

Mindfulness is a basic technique to help you move from motionless meditation at an allotted time, to incorporating it into what should be continuous movement throughout the day. It’s about focusing on, and paying close attention to the detail of what we are doing in any given moment. Being very aware of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures of the moment, becoming awake and tranquil by focusing intently on minute details. (There are obvious parallels here with being absorbed in the physical practice of a skill, but without the prescribed outcome). When eating just eat, when walking just walk. Walking is a good way to face each day a fresh, when you walk you ‘own’ nothing, you’re in constant movement and there is nothing but change around you, it feels natural to be nomadic - or it should do!

Mentally letting go again and again, brings greater awareness in the hear and now. It is the greatest reward of meditation to be suddenly flooded with insight, an intense feeling or a change of mood. To wonder where it came from, stop, look around, and then be amazed a second time to realise what cued that change. Understanding, and acceptance, of how things just are - in the same moment. And then to let go again. To borrow from Wordsworth: ‘Surprised by joy - impatient as the Wind …’. You lose nothing by letting go of good, as well as bad thoughts and feelings, because as you change, the ones that are useful and real will come back time and time again. Equally tranquillity comes not from changing the world, but from allowing the moments of emotional pain to die a natural death. Sometimes we don’t want to let go of our worries and fantasies, the conflicts that preoccupy us, they become part of our identity and maintain the world as it is, giving the illusion of self-control - the feeling that we can predict the future. But if we can be relaxed and aware in the present, all that falls away - we forget what used to preoccupy us.

When out and about the focus may switch from the breath to a visual object, a fixed point for navigation, but equally there is visualisation, an imagined image for still periods, usually with the eyes closed. But then there are transition states too, for example, ‘body asleep, mind awake’ which can have a better quality than sleep alone. You gain the benefit of an asleep body, but the mind, rather than having the chaos and illogical thoughts of dreaming, stays clear and focused.

And there are the times when it doesn’t matter if what we are sensing, tasting, touching with our bodies is pleasant or not! You just don’t feel the need to explain, understand, or solve, but simply watch and feel - then the realisation of the ‘right thing to do’ will occur at the time when it is appropriate to act. If we are open to the world, not preoccupied with ourselves, then our instinctive responses (which we have been taught to mistrust or contain) will fit the facts and we just feel the appropriate response in a given situation.

To Be More ‘Grounded’

Once grounded, we change and move on automatically. A connectedness to the physical world around us should be our moment to moment preoccupation. We cannot see others in our environment as they are, without it. When we are not preoccupied with ourselves, then we can see the needs of others. And it is in this state that we can approach an understanding of what may be the true basis of what is called spirituality or religious experience. Making others, and or, other things, rather than oneself, the central focus of our lives, allowing transcendent experiences - going beyond our usually limited perception of others. But it is equally valid to assert that in the past there must have been a time when we were all very effective at meditation. That in some sense it must be a natural state, for it is hard to imagine our hunter-gatherer ancestors being able to survive without such skills. Think of hunting, of long hours on one’s feet, of the constant gentle movements needed to pick up a trail, to track and stalk, feel movement in the air, the physical coordination, the ability to navigate, feel the sudden stress of real danger, but be able to let go when it passes, the need for so much stillness, and the quick flowing response. And afterwards, to squat for a while under a tree, to be within the only real temple there is - not enclosed by the buttressing of the branches, but open to the vaulting of the sky beyond. Later, the making of fire - the focus of community and collective narrative.

'To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.'
William Blake 1757-1827: ‘Auguries of Innocence’ (c.1803)

That might well serve as a description of the potential of meditation and truly being in the moment. And Blake of course, experienced visual hallucinations from early childhood onwards. Meditation is a discipline that takes time and effort; though the more competent one becomes the more effortless it feels! Nonetheless like any set of skills, if you don’t practice then you lose them. It’s often when you feel at your lousiest, and have to ‘try’ the hardest that the most rewarding meditations follow. It is not unusual to suddenly feel worse as you relax and become more aware - you realise what’s been going on! This is the crucial moment to learn to continue meditating and not turn away - it is when the benefits really begin. At its best meditation gives a series of ongoing, ever deepening natural ‘highs’ based solely on increasing awareness of the fascination of the world around you. But don’t become a ‘bliss junkie’; stuck in a particular form of meditation, confined by time, place and routine or ritual - with a fixed set of beliefs about what is happening to you and your state of mind, seeking a continuous high, but effectively isolated from the rest of the world.

Meditation offers greater enjoyment of the sense world, deeper more varied emotional experiences and a sense of there being enough time. It feels like life with the ‘blinkers’ off, of a mental fog having lifted, in which we no longer fantasise - but then you catch yourself losing the focus again! But that’s as it should be, when navigating your way around a world of continuous change. Scientists and researchers in search of an ‘evidence base’ for meditation may object that whilst you can demonstrate a link with physical relaxation, the idea of greater mental awareness is not amenable to experimentation. Perhaps they are looking in the wrong place. I would wish to argue that it is the heightened awareness that comes with sudden stress or anxiety, and which to some extent has been measured, which through the discipline of meditation, is being harnessed by an individual who nonetheless remains physically relaxed.
　
Catch Tomorrow Now
　
Can you stop?
Let go of thoughts and feelings
Of the past and future
And just be in the present moment.
Now is all there is.
Reattach your emotions to your senses
In the real physical world of the present.
Notice what cues your thoughts now
Acknowledge them and let them go
Good or bad.
Allow yourself to feel the bad when it happens
Then it passes quickly.
Allow yourself to be ‘surprised by joy’
And let go those feelings too.
Knowing they will return unbidden.
Think of yourself as having no fixed self.
Able to construct a self anew every day
Attentive to others, unconcern for an ‘I’ or a ‘me’.
Aware of the others who make you what you are.
You learn most by imitation.
You only remain fixed
When you remake yourself today
As you were yesterday.
You imagine the past must persist into the future
But only because you reproduce it afresh everyday.
Don’t look forward or back, but around.
Seek to be more relaxed and aware.
Absorb what’s around you
And catch tomorrow now!
　
The Rules
　
Can you stop?
Let go of the past and future - again and again
Be in the present moment
Pay equal attention to everything
Notice in the moment what cues your thoughts and emotions
Now is all there is
Let decisions make themselves
Refuse to get involved in hopes and expectations
Physically relax yourself continuously
Always have a focus

Catch Tomorrow Now - part 2

Can you replace your assumptions about others,
With curiosity and fascination?
And can you unlearn as you let go?
Your routines should be made to work for you,
Habits should be unconscious,
Leaving you free to notice other things.
There is no such thing as a mistake, only new learning.
And the meaning of any communication,
Is always the message received.
Every thought comes with an emotion attached
And rationalising is just a way,
Of putting emotions on hold!
Experiences just make you feel good or bad,
Meanings become attached afterwards;
And meanings never started anything!
Motivation for action can only come,
From an emotional attachment to others.
But it’s a misplaced fear of others,
That is the consequence of mental disorder!