Personalising meditation and some science
Not all meditations are the same.
Not all meditations are right for everyone.
But meditating is good for everyone according to the neuroscience...
Are you someone who could count your heart beat without checking your pulse? Or someone who has no idea what's going on that even if you had a heart attack, you wouldn't notice?
Spotlights of Perception
We sense things inside our body all the time.
We sense things outside of us all the time.
We sense sound, pressure, temperature and so on but we're not perceiving them until we place our attention on them. Sensation is distinct from perception. Perception is the sensations that we happen to be paying attention to in that moment.
We can't perceive everything all at once. That would be overwhelming. Instead, we have spotlights of perception. These can either be very narrow, e.g. focusing all our perception on our right big toe and whether there is tingling. Or we can broaden that spotlight to include perceiving both feet, our whole body or the entire room. These spotlights of perception can intensify or dim. All of this is possible because of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
A little anatomy of the brain – a neural conversation
Behind our forehead in the brain, we have the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The left side controls our bodily senses and makes sense of what's going on in our emotions. It interprets our bodily signals of comfort or discomfort, and then makes decisions based on that interpretation.
The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is in direct communication with the anterior cingulate cortex, or ACC. This area of the brain is interpreting different things about bodily signals, such as how fast we're breathing, or heart is beating, whether its beating quickly or slowly for the circumstance that we are in. E.g., you're fit and running up a hill and your heart is beating very fast. The ACC assess that there is nothing worry about it. However, if you're moseying along the high street and your heart starts thumping very quickly for no apparent reason, then the ACC lets you worry.
The insula, another part of the brain, interprets signals of what's going on even further and works with the ACC. E.g., this is a steep hill that you’re running up, and your increased heart rate and heavy breathing makes sense.
These three are working together in a neural conversation, to figure out what's going on inside.
Interoception and exteroception
Within that word “perception” there's a continuum. On one end interoception, meaning everything that we sense at the level of our skin and inward, the sensation inside our stomach, the sensation of our heart beating. The other end of the continuum is exteroception, meaning the perception of everything that's outside or beyond the confines of our skin. The ability to switch our attention/ our perception from one thing to another is a handy tool to have. We tend to get locked at one location along this continuum. E.g., you're scrolling your phone for a long period of time and completely forgetting your bodily sensations.
Ideally, we want to be able to consciously choose what we are doing at any given moment; dynamically adjusting our attention from what we are doing on our computer to a question somebody asks and then back again. The fatigue of life and the maladaptive behaviours and emotions are not about any set of behaviours or emotions being right or wrong, but often inappropriately matched to the space-time domain that we're in.
Slicing up time
If you watch an aeroplane out in the distance, it looks as though it is flying very slowly. If that same aeroplane were a few metres in front of you, you’d see how fast it really is moving. This is not a coincidence. How you slice up the time domain of your life, and your experience has everything to do with your vision. The closer things are, the more finely you slice up time. If you focus your visual attention very far, then you are slicing time more broadly.
Looking in the distance, things look like they’re moving more slowly, because your precision of measuring time is actually not as good as you think. It’s as though you only have the hour hand on the clock – it seems like time moves very slowly.
Which meditation?
Many meditations want you to close your eyes. These practices will improve your interoceptive awareness which isn’t always beneficial. An example might be people with anxiety, who are already very keenly aware of any subtle shift in their heart rate or breathing or change in the sensations within their stomach. Is a practice that highlights this the best option?
On the other hand, little interoceptive awareness is problematic too. With no awareness of their own body, people might ignore the fact that they're having a heart attack or have high blood pressure and carry on as usual with the focus on everything external.
What about you?
Back to my original question: Are you somebody in touch with your bodily sensations? Could you count your heart beat without checking your pulse? Or are you somebody who tends to be less in touch with your interoceptive state? So much so that a heart attack would go past unnoticed?
Chances are it’s not that clear cut, and you are sliding along that continuum depending on what’s happening.
Some people, have social anxiety and when someone talks to them, they will be thinking about whether they are blushing, whether they look or sound right or whether they have a boogie on their nose. Other people are just paying attention to the conversation. Of course, this depends on the context. Speaking to someone you fancy or your mum will make a difference, but it speaks to this issue of whether you tend to shift more towards interoceptive awareness or exteroceptive awareness.
A wandering mind is an Unhappy Mind
A study called A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind, showed that humans have this wandering of the mind that they call stimulus-independent thought. This means there's nothing happening to create these thoughts or anything happening in the immediate environment. These thoughts are just happening on their own internally. It’s the default mode network.
This study consisted of contacting over 2,200 people on their iPhones many, many times throughout the day, asking the question "What are you feeling right now?" and "What are you doing right now?" It was looking for the match or mismatch between what people were doing and what they were feeling. Essentially trying to probe what people were thinking about.
The study’s conclusion
People generally think about something else, except when having sex.
All other activities (grooming, self-care, listening to the news, watching television, relaxing, working, etc) people claimed that their mind wandered a lot.
People were less happy when their minds were wandering than when they were not
What people were thinking at a given moment was a far better predictor of their happiness than what they were doing.
My interpretation of these results was have more sex to stay present. But according to Dr Andrew Huberman whose podcast "How Meditation Works & Science-Based Effective Meditations" is where I got this information, apparently the key point of the study is that it did not have to be the case that people were thinking about something unpleasant. If people were working and thinking about something else that was pleasant, that also made them feel unhappy.
People are often not present to what they are doing, and that is a great source of unhappiness, even if their thoughts are those of happy, joyful thoughts.
Why have you told me all of this?
Meditation and mindfulness in particular, being present to what we are doing in a given moment is one of the essential keys to happiness and improved mood, even if what we are doing is unpleasant. Meditation practices adjust our place along that interoceptive-exteroceptive continuum to what we happen to be experiencing in that moment.
Before you meditate do this
We need to understand if we are interoceptively dominant or exteroceptively dominant.
Sit down or lie down, close your eyes. Does your attention tend to fleet to things outside of you? (Cars going by, people in the room, birds chirping) Or are you able to focus on your internal landscape and shut out the rest?
Open your eyes. Focus your attention on something external to you. Can you separate your perception from sensations occurring internally?
Based on your findings ask yourself: At this moment, should I meditate to enhance interoceptive awareness? Or should I meditate to enhances exteroceptive awareness?
Then decide whether to choose a type of meditation with your eyes closed or open. It’s up to you, but perhaps it’s a good idea to choose to work against your default state. This way you are actively training up the neural circuits, engaging in neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to change in response to experience. You are deliberately engaging a shift along that continuum. And a step closer to being happier.
Slicing up time
If you watch an aeroplane out in the distance, it looks as though it is flying very slowly. If that same aeroplane were a few metres in front of you, you’d see how fast it really is moving. This is not a coincidence. How you slice up the time domain of your life, and your experience has everything to do with your vision. The closer things are, the more finely you slice up time. If you focus your visual attention very far, then you are slicing time more broadly.
Looking in the distance, things look like they’re moving more slowly, because your precision of measuring time is actually not as good as you think. It’s as though you only have the hour hand on the clock – it seems like time moves very slowly.
Here is a meditation practice which Dr. Andrew Huberman calls 'Space-Time Bridging', it balances interoception and exteroception, it balances interoception and dissociation, and it crosses the various time domains that the brain can encompass using vision.
How to do a Space-Time Bridging meditation
In essence, you remain aware of your breath, whilst also splitting your focus on other things.
Sit or stand outside or by a window
Close your eyes, focus on 3rd eye centre or your breathing. For 3 breathes. (100% interoception)
Then, open your eyes, hold your hand out at arm’s distance and focus on palm of hand and at the same time focus on your breathing. For 3 breathes. (Splitting interoception and exteroception 50/50)
Next focus something in front of you 3-4metres away and at the same time focus on your breathing. For 3 breathes
Next focus your attention on the furthest thing you can see and at the same time focus on your breathing. (If you find it challenging to focus on both, imagine a bridge between the two)
Next focus on the fact that you are a tiny speck on this big ball of earth that is floating out in space. For 3 breathes (disassociation)
Then close your eyes and focus back on your third eye or breath. 3 breathes. (100% interoception)
If this isn’t for you, I have a selection of free meditations if you wanted to try something different. The important thing is not just read about it but try it.
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