The Reluctant Yogi by Carla McKay

Author:Carla McKay [McKay, Carla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Yoga
Publisher: Gibson Square
Published: 2013-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

9

Meditation: Out of Your Mind

If, like me, the idea of some patchouli-scented, hippy-dippy, new-agey journey sends you running for the hills, or more likely the wine cellar, then, also like me, you are going to shy away from the whole idea of meditation. But, hear me out.

Yoga – which I have now embraced – is doing a kindness to your body; that much we know. How about doing a service to your mind? Because that’s what I choose to see meditation as – giving your mind a break, giving it a much needed rest. All day long (and often for part of the night) we are chattering to ourselves – worrying, wondering, plotting, analysing, agonising… planning the future, regretting the past, thinking about lunch… ceaseless, often pointless chatter. This is what the Buddhists called the ‘monkey mind’ – never still, always leaping about, and always babbling nonsense. And it is this monkey mind that needs to be subdued and tamed because thoughts are the barriers to the meditative state.

Before I did any yoga, I was never interested at all in meditation, even though I could see that if you just sit or lie still in one corner of the day and focus on your breath – just that – for as long as you possibly can, chasing away the random stuff that comes knocking on the mind’s door, then you can begin to appreciate how mastery of this ancient art might be wonderfully beneficial, calming and rejuvenating. Why is this?

Let’s start with the brain. Our brains are the result of the interaction between our genes and our experiences. Genes predispose you to things and experiences then wire up the brain. Nowadays we know about the enormous plasticity of the brain – it can be changed by behaviour. If, for example, you learn a new language or learn to play a new musical instrument, your brain will respond by creating new neural pathways to accommodate the new information it is receiving. You can also train your brain to abandon old neural pathways in favour of new ones – this is the basis for cognitive therapy.

In Chapter 3, I have already discussed some of the benefits on the brain of physical yoga including lowered blood pressure, mood enhancement, stress reduction, memory improvement and psychological equanimity. But, as you would expect, there is now a whole tranche of scientific research into what exactly happens to the brain when you meditate. This relatively new science called contemplative neuroscience is gaining more credibility and, importantly, more funding for research. In the U.S. the National Institutes of Health has upped its grants in complementary and alternative medicine ($300 million in 2007, to an estimated $541 million in 2011) and has helped establish new contemplative science research centres at Stanford University, Emory University, and the University of Wisconsin – the new home of the world’s first brain imaging lab with adjacent mediation room.

One of the more recent studies has even more exciting implications – meditation can delay ageing.

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