Meditation -- Hack Your Own Brain

Our brain is an incredible organ. We have more control of it than we realize.

Meditation is an ancient practice, yet is still widely misunderstood. It is an adjunct to some religions, but it is not a religious practice — it’s fundamental biology. We don’t have to wear yoga pants, or sit on the floor in a lotus position with our fingers touching. It’s not a cult. It is a form of mental discipline with many tangible and intangible benefits.

Those who practice meditation claim benefits ranging from just feeling calmer, up to cosmic oneness and out of body experiences. More recently, meditation has been subjected to scientific scrutiny, which has confirmed many benefits. An article at the National Center for Complimentary and Integrative Health of the National Institutes of Health cites several studies demonstrating important benefits:

• From 2012 to 2017, meditation tripled from 4.1% to 14.2% in the US

• Benefits are reported in pain management, blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis, anxiety, depression, even smoking cessation

• Meditation creates more folds in the outer layers of the brain, increasing processing

• Meditation stops or reverses deterioration seen in aging brains, such as atrophy of the hippocampus associated with dementia disorders like Alzheimer’s Disease.

• Meditation affects the emotion processing center of the brain, the amygdala, improving the emotional state that lasts beyond the meditation session

A detailed look at meditation benefits from the EOC Institute describes 141 benefits, with numerous citations of published research. There is even discussion, with evidence, of improved immune health, which could improve our outcomes from COVID infections.

These benefits are very inexpensive, costing only a few minutes of your time. As with many things, different people may get different results. But the first step in any journey is the most important. Let’s start.

Is Meditation Just for New Age Mystics or Does It Work for Scientists?

Yes!

Consciousness is a nebulous concept, treated with awe and mysticism by some, usually ignored by most. Some say our self awareness is only possible by a divine spark. Others say it’s just randomness of an assembly of brain cells. I think we can all agree it’s important, and worth studying more closely. Practicing meditation is an easy way to explore your own consciousness, and to find ways to harness it to your advantage.

The brain is the major organ in our body, consuming a larger portion of energy than any other organ. It controls our thoughts, our motions, automatic functions like heart and digestion, our joy and our tears. It contains 100 billion cells, which construct interconnections that are interpreted as memories and thoughts. It works 24 hours a day, even when we’re sleeping. Those brain cells are assembled with chemical reactions that produce interconnections between brain cells that act as an enormous computer program. It connects through the nerves to sensors throughout our body that provide impressions we interpret as reality.

Perception is all there is. Our perceptions are defined by interpretation of signals from our senses — sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Light reflected from objects hits our eye. That light creates a chemical reaction in our retina, which sends a signal to our brain, which combines with stored memories to define the object we see. The same with our other senses.

A lot of that process is automatic. We open our eyes and the signals flow in. A lot of what we see is ignored. We focus our vision on only those objects that interest us. But we can control our perceptions, broadening our visual focus with awareness of the field of view. Awareness is a technique of the mental discipline we call meditation.

I mentioned meditation in a recent post on sleep. I described how similar meditative states are to sleep, and my use of meditation discipline to overcome insomnia. As we discussed here, the brain is a computer based on interconnections between our 100 billion brain cells, which make electrical circuits we observe as memories and their processing. We haven’t yet learned to read those programs externally, but we know they emit electromagnetic fields when they activate, and we know how to detect those signals with sensors attached to the scalp. We can’t (yet) identify specific thoughts or memories, but we can characterize general characteristics by interpreting measured electromagnetic wave forms.

Our waking thoughts and activities create signals all around the brain which make electromagnetic waves that seem random, but are just the sum of numerous simultaneous thought processes. They’re called beta waves. As we relax, or fall into light sleep, or enter meditative states, those waves become much more orderly and take a smoother, slower shape called alpha waves. Sleeping shifts us to even slower theta waves in “rapid eye movement” (REM) sleep, or dream sleep, and even slower delta waves in deep sleep, where we’re nearly comatose. Those can also be achieved in very deep meditation. Just as sleep restores our brain health, so too does meditation. But meditation has an advantage that we can control entry to the slow, organized wave states, and how we use them.

What is meditation?

Meditation is a discipline of the mind, intended to create a sense of calm. Some seek more esoteric goals — enlightenment, oneness with the universe, insight to how everything works. I don't. Maybe someday. I’ll describe here methods to improve mental health, improve focus and concentration, and my main objective — help to clear out accumulations of plaques in my brain. I have a genetic abnormality that makes clearing brain trash less efficient, increasing my odds of getting dementia, sooner.

Meditation has been around longer than historical records. An early description came from India in the 2500 years ago. A young man dissatisfied with his comforts decided to go on a quest to learn how the world works. During his travels he learned and practiced meditation, and found what he described as enlightenment, or nirvana. He returned to India and began teaching others. Much later, others decided to write it down, and these writings became the basis of modern Buddhism. It spread across Asia, usually practiced by monks of various sects. Thus, meditation has become associated with religious practice. It can be, but its not necessary. Fundamentally, it’s a biological process. Those who choose to adapt it for other purposes show the flexibility of the techniques.

Then the Beatles adopted Transcendental Meditation at the height of their popularity. Meditation became a thing.

How does it work?

There are many styles of meditation, but they can be categorized as awareness or concentration. Both share a common technique of focusing the mind, and both can produce the slow, rhythmic brainwave patterns that have been shown to have beneficial effects on mental and physical health.

There are several concentration methods. We can stare at a candle or the ocean st sunrise and enter a trance-like state which produces alpha waves— meditation. Transcendental Meditation uses a word assigned by a senior practitioner, which is repeated as a mental chant. It’s a commercial enterprise and instruction is expensive. And they have some strange customs for greeting senior people. Too formal for my taste. I didn’t make it past the introductory lesson.

One form of Zen uses a question that can’t be answered, called a koan, to baffle the mind into silence. The sound of one hand clapping, for common example. Not my style.

Mindfulness methods focus on our body sensations to achieve a heightened awareness of our self. If thoughts intrude we're instructed to gently push them aside and return to focusing on our sensations. Vipissana is a practice developed in India and used by Buddhists, Taoists and Hindus.

How do I Meditate?

There are many tutorials online, and many good books. I began with yoga, long ago, which is often seen as an exercise regimen, using the positions (asanas) which give the muscles a good workout, but also integrating breathing control and body awareness which are introductions to meditation. Advanced yoga practice is much more about meditation than downward dog. I didn’t realize it at the time, but a yoga technique I learned when very young, to visualize and relax muscle groups, is a form of awareness also used in vipissana meditation. I have used that to relax my neck and shoulders whenever I feel stressed, and I haven’t had a headache since then.

In my meditation practice, I was directed to TM several years ago by a cardiologist who has a lot of experience with that method. It is a concentration method using a mantra, which is a sound repeated in the mind, to produce mental focus. I moved to studying mindfulness methods, and settled into vipassana practice described by Marshall Glickman in Beyond the Breath. This book describes the Buddhist origins and linkages to Buddhist practice, but emphasizes Buddhism is not essential to successful meditation. He does suggest that a Buddhist mindset is helpful, and will probably evolve naturally as your experience with meditation grows.

His title refers to the focus on the breath as a concentration method in conventional awareness meditations. The book says, “Don’t try to control your breathing. Don’t imagine or visualize the breath or think about it.” But Glickman does use breathing as a tool to focus our attention on body sensations induced by the movement of air. You’re training yourself to be with whatever is. This meditation is simple, but not easy. The method:

Breathe naturally, observe the sensations the touch of the breath makes in the area of the nostrils… the important thing is to be continuously concentrating on the feeling the breath causes in a small area — continuity is the secret of success.. Your objective is to be a scientist of your existence.

More recently I have been practicing the more flexible approach described by Richard Haight in The Warrior’s Meditation. The author was living and working in Japan while studying Samurai martial arts, when he developed a meditation he calls Total Embodiment Method (TEM). It adapts the Samurai’s need to be highly focused in combat, which meditation enhances, but to be able to enter the meditative state immediately when attacked. It’s a structured approach to what some call walking meditation, where we concentrate on our breathing (while walking an unobstructed path), creating an alpha wave state.

As you can see, there are many ways to calm your mind and achieve the beneficial alpha wave state.

An Effective Merger

TEM is a more structured approach than conventional sedentary meditation, necessary to achieve quick transition to the meditative state. Basic vipissana mindfulness meditation focuses awareness on the breath, giving a more expansive experience than concentration methods like Transcendental Meditation. But both methods are exclusive in focus, which takes a lot of attention for a long time.

The Warriors Meditation asserts that mastery takes practice. The Samurai described the learning process as ShuHaRi, with the Shu stage being an apprentice, following the rules. Ha is competence, where the prescribed techniques become ingrained. The Ri stage is mastery, where the warrior becomes “unconsciously functional.” The book describes a series of exercises to introduce the focus methods that need to be accomplished together to achieve the RI stage. Each, individually, can induce alpha state on its own, but the combinations produce the desired unconscious functionality. The objective is spherical awareness which improves the warrior’s capabilities, and will improve non-warriors as well. For those who are not routinely thrust into mortal combat, the resulting calm clarity can help us in all aspects of an active lifestyle. The book provides detailed exercises to introduce each of the techniques. The techniques:

• Vagal breathing

• Unconscious alpha

• Conscious alpha

• Conscious sight

• Conscious hearing

• Conscious olfactory

• Conscious tasting

• Conscious feeling

• Spherical awareness

Our brain controls our actions, and our meditative states. We can train our brains to be more effective at performing as we want it to, not just reacting to random environmental events and the resulting chemical responses. It has been said that we only use a small amount of our mental capacity. And we don’t always use that very well. Meditation can unlock more of that capability.

All meditation techniques can lead to beneficial experiences. I hope you’ll give them a try, and find what works for you.

---

In case the subtitle “Hack Your Own Brain“ sounds familiar, it was a slogan for the 1995 film Johnny Mnemonic. The story line was a large pharmaceutical company, Pharmakom, had defacto control of the world in 2021, providing partially effective therapies with horrid side effects, for a disease afflicting half the population. Johnny saves the world with the help of a networked dolphin. Author William Gibson must have had a spectacular clairvoyance.

---

UPDATE December 29 Corrected typo, Buddah's time was 2500 years ago, his records were all verbal, passed from student to student for many years before some started writing it down.