Science Tidbit: Meditation Cycle

Science Tidbit

Meditation Cycle

By now you’ve no doubt gotten very familiar with the classic meditation progression: mind wandering, realizing your mind is wandering, bringing it back, maintaining focus. Around and around we go. One time I was in retreat, talking to a very advanced practitioner who had just finished her own retreat. I said, “No matter which practice I’m doing, it’s all forgetting and remembering, forgetting and remembering.” She laughed, “Yes, when we pass by each other in the Bardo, we’ll say, ‘You still forgetting and remembering?’ ‘Yep!’”

We aren’t just wasting our time, going in circles. Dan Harris, news anchor and author of 10% Happier, says that this cycle is like a bicep curl for your brain. In the laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Richard Davidson and his colleagues have shown more precisely what that bicep curl looks like, in the brain. Similar work is going on at Emory University, among other sites: in an article in the November 2014 issue of Scientific American, Dr. Davidson and his colleagues, Antoine Lutz, and Matthieu Ricard recount the findings of Dr. Wendy Hasenkamp from her work at Emory University.

Dr. Hasenkamp and her colleagues studied the four stages of the cycle I described above, capturing images of which areas of the brain become active at each stage. They were able to map out a consistent pattern. They were specifically studying “focused attention,” which is a non-Buddhist term for the combination of Shamata and Vipassana that I’ve described above.

When they were in the first phase— distracted wandering—the part of the brain that lit up was the “wide-ranging default-mode network (DMN).” Put an “A” in that and you get the word you might feel like saying when you realize you’ve been wandering. Again.

Posterior cingulate cortex Precuneus

Medial prefrontal Lateral cortex temporal cortex Mind Wandering Imaging of a meditator in the scanner illuminates the posterior cingulate cortex, the precuneus and other areas that are part of the default-mode network, which stays active when thoughts begin to stray.

But wait! That’s the second phase—realizing you were wandering. Now other areas light up, as you can see in the illustration. You just shifted to those desirable areas. No need to curse!

The third phase—bringing your mind back to the object of focus— activates the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the lateral inferior parietal lobe. Trust me, that’s a good thing. We want to strengthen those areas and the pathways to them. Then we can get increasingly better at bringing our attention back once it’s been distracted.

Wouldn’t it be nice to hold it there, on whatever we want it to stay focused on? That’s the last phase they studied. Indeed, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex stays active as we keep our focus on the breath, image, or wherever we want our attention to be. Of course we do get distracted— i.e. going back to stage one of this four-stage cycle. Anterior But instead of permanently staying in stage insula one (which is what we did pretty much 24/7 before meditation), we move through the before meditation), we move through the other stages. Much better to add the other three, wouldn’t you say?

Anterior cingulate cortex

Distraction Awareness

The salience network, which includes the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex, underlies the meditator’s awareness of the distraction.

Inferior parietal lobe Reorientation of Awareness

Two brain areas—the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the inferior parietal lobe—are among those that help to disengage attention from a distraction to refocus on the rhythm of the inhalations and exhalations.

Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex Sustaining Focus

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex stays active when the meditator directs attention on the breath for long periods. Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

need to stop there. You can also do it with “feelings” (the emotional kind) and “thoughts.” The Tibetans see us as having six avenues of perception, with thinking being one of them. I see their point. What a great tool, for dealing with thoughts on the cushion!...not that we have any of those . . .

Instead of seeing these as mere distractions to drop, you can see any of them as a means to bring yourself back to the Way of Abiding.

Resting

Through analyzing either the thought or the thinker, we fall into the most pure and accurate, direct perception of the truth that we can. With Vipassana, now we not only see it clearly, as we do in Shamata; we comprehend it. Now the only thing left to do, as I’ve said before, is to . . .

Rest in that state. Shamata.

And just in case we can’t rest for very long, once we notice we’re in a mind-movie again, we can use Vipassana to find our way back out of the movie. Then we land in a fresh state of cognizant abid- Once we notice we’re in a ing. Now that you’ve analyzed mind-movie again, we can using Vipassana, you have a use Vipassana to find our better understanding of that way back out of the movie. resting/abiding state. Each time we realize we’re distracted, we use that distraction by applying Vipassana to it. We find our way home and settle back into that state, resting in it. Again we get distracted. Around and around we go. Slowly, after resting in this Shamata/Vipassana more and more, we’ll come to trust that experience, and live from it more and more. We gradually come to more and more profound realization of that “home base.”

Other studies have found that the parts of the brain involved in the realizing, remembering, and re-settling phases seemed to benefit, in two ways. First, some of the critical parts

The wider the gap, the more misery; of the brain that become active in these phases grew measurably bigger and/or the smaller the gap, denser. Some of those parts that enlarged the less misery. usually shrink with age, but in older meditators they held their size (though

they didn’t get bigger). Second, the connections between desirable parts and other parts of the brain increased. The following Science Tidbit gives a bit of an overview of this.

Now that I’ve gone into some of the benefits to your brain, I want to circle back to the benefit for your life experience. After all, the end goal isn’t just to light up di erent parts of your brain; it’s to be a better, happier person. Or for some of us overachievers, totally waking up like the Buddha! We could boil it down to this: if true reality is one thing,