Meditation 101

Week 2 - Attention and The Brain by Dave Potter

Introduction to Sitting Meditation

The scene: Joshua Bell, one of the world's greatest violinists, playing a beautiful, intricate, moving piece on a three million dollar violin in a DC Metro Station, and while he plays, over 1,000 people walk on by and only 7 stop to listen, and even then only for a few minutes. How many amazingly beautiful things do we miss in a day, simply because we don't expect them to be there, or because our attention is somewhere else, or because we are not even focused on anything present right now, but on a past or anticipated future event?

Videos

This week's videos include The Monkey Business Illusion by Daniel Simons, a cognitive scientist at University of Illinois, who tests our powers of observation and illustrates the limitations inherent in our ability to perceive fully what is going on around us. If you haven't already seen this short clip, you may be surprised at just how specific (and limited) our powers of attention are. Another short video, Joshua Bell Plays a $3 Million Violin, chronicles the "concert" Bell played at the DC Metro station described above. Also included is Coming to Our Senses in which Jon Kabat-Zinn talks about our sometimes shaky relationship to our own senses, and there's an entertaining All it takes is 10 Mindful Minutes that includes juggling and a provocative challenge to do "nothing" for 10 minutes.

Readings

Sitting Meditation describes the practice we are introducing this week. Something to Think About is a one-page description of the Joshua Bell experiment described above. The next two readings, How the Brain Rewires Itself and How Meditation Affects the Gray Matter of the Brain, discuss the growing body of research that demonstrates how meditative practice, even when done for a relatively short period of time (weeks not years), can physically alter the brain in positive and adaptive ways.

Daily Practices

This week, for the formal practice, we continue the Body Scan but also introduce Sitting Meditation, using breath as the primary object of awareness. It can seem that the goal of the Body Scan or a Sitting Meditation is to stay focused on exactly one thing at a time (ankle, wrist, breath) and that when you notice your awareness has moved (to a memory, internal narrative, sound and wonderings about the sound), that you are somehow failing. These practices will increase your ability to focus and concentrate, but they will also expand your ability to be with whatever comes into your field of experience, non-judgmentally. Your NOTICING that your attention has moved to another object is, in itself, mindfulness in action. Mindfulness includes both a concentrative attention (think laser beam) AND a capacity to perceive a larger picture (think floodlight). Both are important. Focusing on only one thing leaves the larger picture unseen, and maintaining only a broad focus does not allow exploration of the parts.

The informal practice this week is about becoming aware of how we experience and process pleasant events. They don't need to be major events, they can be something as simple as noticing the sun on your face or someone smiling at you. Just as we did last week, allow a few minutes before going to sleep to complete the informal practice log. As you did last week, print out the Formal and Informal Practice sheets and use them to record your experiences during the week.

Below are your materials for this week:

Videos

The Monkey Business Illusion by Daniel Simons [2 min]

Joshua Bell plays a $3 Million violin (and almost nobody notices) by JJ Musgrove [4 min]

Coming to Our Senses by Jon Kabat-Zinn [9 min]

All it takes is 10 Mindful Minutes by Andy Puddicombe [10 min]

Reading

Sitting Meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn [excerpted from Full Catastrophe Living]

Something To Think About... summary of Joshua Bell experiment (w/ links to original Washington Post articles)

How the Brain Rewires Itself by Sharon Begley

How Meditation Affects the Gray Matter of the Brain by David R. Hamilton, Ph.D.

Practice sheets