The neuroscience behind why meditation helps you control your mind.
Why Meditate? | Change your Brain’s Default Mode
What I’ve Learned
Key Takeaways
Flow is an elusive mental state. A state of effortless concentration, and optimal performance. A state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. Usually occurs when a person’s body or mind are stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. All chatter in the head ceases to exist. Unfortunately, the brain’s default mode of operation is pretty much the opposite of this enjoyable state of high performance and high focus.
fMRI studies have shown that there is a set of brain regions known as the “task-negative network” or the “default mode network” that are active whenever you are not focused on anything in particular. When you aren’t focused on anything, there will be increased activity in the default mode network and less activity in the task-positive regions.
The opposite is true when you are paying attention to something. The areas of the brain that belong to the default mode network are responsible for self-referencing, understanding other people’s emotions, remembering the past, imagining the future, and general mind wandering.
The default mode network seems to be responsible for the inner narrator we all have going on in the head. Otherwise known as “the monkey mind” an annoying, repetitive stream of information about yourself, how other people are thinking about you and ruminations about the past and worries about the future. The default mode network is great at preventing the flow state.
In order to enter the flow state, you need to be actively focused on a task for a long stretch of time. Electrocortigophary studies have shown that the default mode network re-activates within a fraction of a second after people disengage from a task. The monkey mind is ready to spring into action the moment you stop paying attention.
Another consequence of the default mode network induced mind wandering is simply a state of unhappiness. A wandering mind is an unhappy mind.
Meditation has been a great way to lower activity in the default mode network and turn down the inner chatter that comes with it. Studies show that with meditation, people actually change their brain’s standard mode of operation to be less distracted. It lowers your levels of stress hormones, lowers your blood pressure, boosts your immune system, mitigates depression, anxiety, ADHD, and age-related cognitive decline. There are hundreds of studies that document these benefits.
“More than 80% of the world-class performers I’ve interviewed have some form of meditation or mindfulness practice….it is a meta-skill that improves everything else.” -Tim Ferriss
There are various types of meditation but they mostly have one thing in common; they are improving your abilities of awareness and attention. This skill of attention is even more important nowadays- our awareness is constantly being redirected by advertisements, emails, and technology like iPhones. It seems the more we unconsciously let our attention be directed and redirected, the less aware we become of the fact that it’s happening.
In general, most forms of meditation are helping you to develop mindfulness. Jon Kabat-Zin, the creator of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, says: “Mindfulness is paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.” It can be annoying to notice that you were unsuccessful in maintaining your focus, but this is the whole point, this redirecting of attention is like a bicep curl for the brain.
Dan Harris author of 10% Happier says: “You are breaking up a lifetime habit of walking around in a fog, in a daydream of projection into the future and rumination into the past and you are actually focusing on what’s happening right now.” Mediation allows you to sit in the experiences of life without letting them control you.
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space, is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Victor Frankl One thing meditation does is it helps you to be comfortable sitting in this space. If you spend some time sitting in the space between stimulus and response, you’ll notice that space is only as uncomfortable as your inner narrator makes it.
By toning down the default mode network and its inner chatter, meditation allows you to better focus your attention to your experiences and be OK with not acting on every uncomfortable feeling in your body. Just because your irritable doesn’t mean you must have a cigarette. Just because you’re hungry right now doesn’t mean you need to eat low health, high convenience foods and you don’t need to respond to every slight feeling of boredom by checking your phone all the time.
By developing an “autotelic self” one is far more likely to enjoy life rather than be overwhelmed by it. The “autotelic self” is one that easily translates threats into enjoyable challenges, is never bored, seldom anxious, involved in what goes on and is in the state of flow most of the time. He provides four rules for developing such a self: set goals, become immersed in the activity, paying attention to what is happening & learning to enjoy the immediate experience.