What happens when we meditate

What actually happens to us as we meditate? To our body. To our mind. To us after we’ve meditated?

My coaching looks at a number of different practices and tools, some ancient, so far more modern. What I have started to notice though is that it’s meditation that gets the most air-time when it comes to people wanting to know more. It seems to be the most mysterious, potentially the most misunderstood and considered the hardest to practice. Even today, I spoke to someone that said that they would love to meditate, now more than ever, but unfortunately they didn’t have the discipline to do it justice.

So, let’s do a little deep dive into what is actually happening. I’m going to talk about my experience mostly as this isn’t a practice where everyone has the same experience. They are different types of meditation and depending on which you practice, they may have different experiences themselves (which I can attest to as well). This is what makes meditation so mysterious. It’s incredibly hard to describe, hard to compare, hard to quantify.

What even is meditation?

Let’s start at the beginning. Meditation is the practice of focusing inward. You gently pay attention to you. Your thoughts, your emotions, your internal landscape, in a nutshell, your human-ness. You are consciously paying attention, most importantly, non-judgemental attention to your now. Our minds have a love affair with future tripping and rumination. Panicking about what may happen and what has happened. The practice of sitting still (or gentle movement) to welcome, acknowledge and again very importantly, to accept your current thoughts, emotions and how you perceive your world.

The act of sitting still

When I sit to start a meditation I like to find a space that I’m comfortable in. Ideally that’s seated on my meditation chair, with my sheepskin and blanket but it can be anywhere really. My car, outside, on a plane, train or even in the bathroom if I’ve got no other option.

I start by closing my eyes, turning my focus inward. The simple act of closing my eyes changes my focus and turns up my other senses. I become more aware of the space I’m in. Noises, smells, physical sensations. I then go a little deeper and take note of my breath and I then start a gentle inquiry.

• How does my physical body feel?

• How does emotional body feel?

At this point I usually notice irritations. Maybe a muscle, pain, noise outside. I often find that there is this moment of annoyance, frustration - I call it the scream because all I want to do is open my eyes and get up. This is when I acknowledge I’m exactly where I should be and I pause. I start to notice my thoughts. These are the internal ramblings that during the day that just become a constant buzz. They are everything from things that I’ve forgotten to do, to get, basic to-do lists. Sometimes they are focused on things that have been on my mind, my worries. Sometimes they are outrageously random (these are my favourite thoughts!). I start to think about family and friends, the dog! I also notice the space between. I also almost always deal with a mind-bending foot that has fallen asleep or a most unwelcome itchy nose (anyone else?).

Again, I notice the space between. Little moments between these rambling, flowing thoughts. When I first started, there was virtually no space in between. Nowadays, there is a lot more space - although that depends on the mood! You see our minds are amazing. They are pretty much the same brain that we’ve had for thousands, tens of thousands of years ago and they are always on the move. We have trained them to problem solve, to keep us safe, to plan ahead and that is what they naturally do. Unfortunately this can come back to bite us as these clever brains don’t know when threats are real or perceived, it’s all the same. We don’t give them time to process, to rest. Modern technology means that we are far too often engaged. The practice of meditation lets us tap into an awareness that we don’t often activate.

My practice is Awareness Insight Meditation. This is an open monitoring practice and doesn’t include breath focus, mantra or anything else. It welcomes the wandering mind and this is where the insight comes into play. It allows the process of emotions. I practice twice a day, once in the morning, as early as possible and once in the afternoon. My practice has definitely evolved (it’s always evolving!) and I’ve really challenged myself on practicing at different times of day. I highly recommend this as you get great insight into you. The twice a day practice is also important for me. I love the analogy of thinking of the mind in the same way as a jar filled with sand and water. It needs the space for the sand to fall and settle at the bottom of the jar, once it has settled then I can see what’s really going on and process. The second practice of the day is most often the processing and clearing practice.

What are other meditation practices? Which is the best?

There are a lot of different ways in which you can meditate and practice mindfulness. There’s Vedic, transcendental, MBSR, sound meditation, movement meditation, mantra meditation, metta meditation… the list goes on. Now, I don’t have experience in all of them but they do all have some commonalities, a focus that over time allows you to move through the different states of awareness, to connect you back to who your truly are, reduce stress and anxiety and sometimes tapping into a somewhat elusive state that activates our Delta brain waves - a state of non-thinking, which is impossible to explain and to even know when you are in it! This last point is important because this is the state that most people wish to get to, they expect that this is the norm for meditation when in fact, it often isn’t.

I don’t think that there is a best practice, it’s what you are drawn to the most. At its core, meditation is about consistency, so whatever your practice, make it one that you feel motivated to take up. Meditation is one of the very few things that we do where it doesn’t matter how ‘good’ you are. To get to ‘excellence’ you have to simply get the hours up. There is no such thing as a good or bad practice. You can’t be better than someone else, it is just that, a practice. This can be relatively confronting for some because the way that you get better at it is to keep doing it. To move through the thoughts, feelings and emotions that tell you to get up, sitting through that ‘silent scream’!