Mental Drumbeat

Some of my iPHone meditation apps feature "Binaural Beats".  In theory, if you listen to a "Binaural Beat" with headphones, the sounds can change your state of mind.  Depending on the frequency of the beat, you might relax deeply, feel sleepy, feel alert, or enter a meditative state.

I did some very cursory research into how these "Binaural Beats" are supposed to work.  Here is a link to one of the more interesting articles:  Stanford study of brainwave "entrainment".  Basically, brainwaves--like any waves--occur at regular intervals or frequencies.  These frequencies tend to be very slow for sleepy states, faster for relaxation, faster still for meditation, faster for normal "wide awake" states, and still faster for extreme focus.  A recording with a "Binaural Beat" is designed to match, for example, the rhythm associated with meditation.  When you listen to the recording, your brainwaves start to "dance" to the rhythm you are hearing.  This is called "entrainment".  Your brainwaves switch from an alert, or an even higher frequency stressed drumbeat, to a meditative drumbeat.  Meditation then becomes easier.

Does it work?  I haven't done enough research to claim any expertise.  But it sounds reasonable, I know that brainwaves can be measured, and I've read that the shift in brainwaves to match the "Binaural Beat" has been measured repeatedly since they were first discovered in the 1970's.

My personal experience with "Binaural Beats" has just been in the last few months.  One of my favorite meditation apps for iPhone and iPad is "SleepStream2".  This app gives you high-definition recordings of sounds such as ocean waves, fire, and wind, and lets you choose a variety of "Binaural Beats" to play at the same time.  I THINK it makes a difference for me.  It seems to make it easier for me to go quickly from a hyper, task oriented state of mind to a meditative state of mind.   This morning, I was even able to do something I can't normally do:  meditate while walking the dogs.  Normally, I'm too distracted by sights and sounds, negotiating traffic, keeping the dogs under control, and dealing with other dogs and pedestrians to ever feel as if I was able to achieve any kind of meditative state.  But this morning, listening to the ocean sounds with a meditative "Binaural Beat" in the background, I think it worked.  For the first time ever, I walked the dogs and meditated at the same time.

Experiences out of nowhere

Mindfulness meditation is really about stopping all tasks to notice EVERYTHING that comes up during your practice:  thoughts, emotions, muscle tension, noises, aches, pleasure, and pain.  It's about being passive and watching what experiences arise spontaneously like clouds moving in and out of the sky.

I've practiced this much more often in the last couple of months because I've been too busy NOT to meditate.  It's the only thing that got me through some major deadlines both at work and outside of work co-chairing a large fundraiser for my neighborhood.  Without meditation, my mind would have constantly been bombarded by thoughts of tasks I needed to do, deadlines, unanswered e-mails, and the feeling that I could not possibly get it all done.

Mindfulness meditation gave me at least two breaks per day when I could let it all go and get grounded again in my body, my heart, and my mind.

The major deadlines are done, but this is a habit I intend to keep.  Meditating once per day--my old habit--is not enough.  Once in the morning starts me off on a relaxed tone.  By the early evening, however, the constant drumbeat of task after task after task has usually caused me to lose much of my self-awareness.  Another shot of meditation gets me grounded again for the evening and for a more restful sleep.

Sensations out of nowhere

Bodily sensations also pop out of nowhere when I meditate.  I never knew I had so many little itches and aches until I meditated.  I'm sure they are there all the time, but I only "hear" them in the silence of meditation.

This is part of the practice:  to notice how the senses dart around from my right leg to my forehead to the pressure of my body against the chair to breath moving in my belly to breath in my nostrils.  In Buddha's most famous sutra (teaching) on mindfulness, he said, "Breathing in a long breath, I know that I'm breathing a long breath.  Breathing in a short breath, I know that I'm breathing a short breath."  As if it doesn't matter how you breath.  It just matters that you notice the way it is right now.

I used to think that the goal was to maximize the pleasurable moments--those times when a long deep breath opens the belly, chest and shoulders and then comes out slowly and you feel all the tension melting away.  Those moments are fine, but sometimes I find that they will not come unless I first notice the shallow, constricted breathing when I haven't relaxed yet.  I notice the aches, the tension that, for some reason, often remains in my legs long after I've deeply relaxed my upper body.  When I notice and accept these imperfect sensations, I seem to be able to tune in more deeply to the subtleties of my breathing exactly as it is happening right now.  And then I'm more likely to feel the euphoria that sometimes comes with meditation.

Thoughts out of nowhere

Thoughts pop up out of nowhere when I try to meditate.  I'm trying to focus on my breathing, and I suddenly get an idea about something to do for a project at work.  Part of me wants to stop and write it down so that I won't forget it.  But if I do, other ideas pop up over and over.  Before long I realize that the time I set aside for meditation is over and I'm no more relaxed than when I started.  I didn't reach my goal of shifting, for a while, from my logical left brain, the half of my brain that wants to change things, to the perceptive right brain, the half that accepts reality just as it is.

Fortunately, I've had enough meditation practice that this doesn't happen that often.  I know what I'm supposed to do when thoughts arise:  notice them, don't fight them, but don't let them turn into "conversations".  A thought that is not followed by a series of related thoughts soon fades.  Silence returns.

And there is much to learn from the thoughts that come out of nowhere.  The ones that pop up spontaneously and that keep coming back throughout the meditation:  these show me the things that are REALLY important to me.  Prior to meditating, I might not even have realized how much these things were bugging me.  But noticing how often they break the silence of meditation, noticing the emotion they bring with them, I learn that these are the things that matter most to me right now.

Ironically, it is often when I am NOT DOING anything, when I'm at my most passive state in meditation, that I learn what I must DO.