Meditation for HeadBangers


Med­i­ta­tion typ­i­cally brings to mind images of sit­ting in full lotus on a moun­tain top some­where, head in the clouds, a slight lev­i­ta­tion visible.

Ever meet any­one that's done that?

meditate_sky.jpg
pic by pureen­ergy

No, me either.

For­tu­nately, if you step back & look at med­i­ta­tion as a con­cept, it's really just aim­ing to do two things:

  1. Empty your brain of thoughts (you remem­ber those, they're the things that are not-you)
  2. Bring you into a deeper state of relax­ation or awareness

This is pretty much the descrip­tion of flow. Any ath­lete in peak per­for­mance has that. In fact, any peak per­former, in any area, is in that state.

No thoughts, no noise, just pure beingness.

If you're any­thing like me, you've heard great things about med­i­tat­ing. Sat down, tried it, & given up due to dis­trac­tion. Or, you know, found some­thing more impor­tant that urgently needed doing.

So what's the trick?

Well, to start with, yep, it can be hard. Thoughts swirl around us like dust in a tor­nado. We're assailed from every direc­tion. It can seem damn near impossible.

Here's a trick though. Who said you have to be sit­ting still to med­i­tate? Try going for a walk, or a run — or just sit & jig­gle your leg if you're feel­ing lazy. That's fine too.

Sec­ond, who said you have to be quiet? It's your mind that you're try­ing to get to shut up.

So, how about this. Get some music you really like. Prefer­ably stuff with­out words — you don't want to be putting new thoughts into your mind. Prefer­ably rea­son­ably fast — oth­er­wise your brain may (will!) start wan­der­ing in the gaps.

For me, I'm a fan of high bpm (beats-per-minute) dub, drum & bass, and other elec­tron­ica. It has a reg­u­lar rhythm, which means you can kind of tune it out, but it's fast enough that it drowns out most of what's going on upstairs.

Crank it up loud & start walk­ing, run­ning, or jiggling.

You'll find the music & move­ment will swamp most of your thoughts. This is a great start. It just makes it eas­ier to see any remain­ing thoughts that peep out from above the noise.

Now, what to do when you do catch your­self drift­ing off? Well here's the trick.

Just pay atten­tion. When you see thoughts aris­ing, bring your focus back to the music (or the exer­cise). Let the thought go. You can always worry about it later, turn it into a haiku or scrib­ble it on a bal­loon & fling it to the wind.

Each time your brain starts bur­bling away, get back into the music. You did choose loud music you absolutely adore, right? Well, that'll make it easier.

stage_dive.jpg
(be sure to stretch before attempt­ing this super-advanced med­i­ta­tional asana)
pic by juljo

As an added ben­e­fit? It'll make you hap­pier. Less crap going on upstairs, lis­ten­ing to music that makes your heart beat that lit­tle bit faster, endor­phins pour­ing through your body…

Besides, you can always sit still & just breathe when you reach the top of the hill.

ps. If you're keen to try some other non-standard tech­niques for still­ing the mind, my good friend Dhru­mil has an excel­lent 15min audio on "Falling Still" (or if you pre­fer, a 20 min video). Then there's always those old saw-horses EFT & releas­ing, of course — to get rid of spe­cific thought pat­terns. Or, you know, just try all of it & see what works for you.

April 4, 2009 – 05:27 | By Si | Posted in health, life | View Comments
  • http://www.TheMindsetApprentice.com Sean Patrick Simpson

    Hey Si,

    Great post. Med­i­ta­tion is such an inter­est­ing con­cept that I believe you're right, a lot of peo­ple imag­ine it to be sit­ting on a moun­tain top in a white robe say­ing "OHMMMMMMMM". Though I know the ben­e­fits of med­i­tat­ing, even still I some­times have a tough time get­ting myself to do it.

    It's a great reminder to con­sider med­i­tat­ing in dif­fer­ent ways, such as while walking.

    One thing I feel is really impor­tant to men­tion though is that there is a mis­con­cep­tion about med­i­ta­tion, in that to med­i­tate prop­erly, thoughts have to be released. I thought med­i­ta­tion was only about clear­ing the mind as well, but then when I used the Holo­sync med­i­ta­tion tech­nol­ogy, as well as stud­ied there mate­r­ial, I found out that some­times the deep­est med­i­ta­tions can actu­ally occur when there is lots of chaos going through the mind.

    …Okay, took me about 20 min­utes to find it, but I had to share the arti­cle. I don't know where the orig­i­nal post­ing is from Holo­sync, but I found a copy posted on another blog. Search in google for "After many years of attempt­ing to find a med­i­ta­tive prac­tice" — Then click the 2nd result which should be titled "My Des­tiny" (I'm not giv­ing the direct link because it might get flagged as SPAM).

    The 1st few para­graphs of that arti­cle is by the blog owner, and then the con­tent I am refer­ring begins where you see these words: “Be mas­ter of mind, rather than mas­tered by mind”

    Enjoy!

    –Sean Patrick Simp­son
    **The Mind­set Apprentice**

  • http://sidawson.org Si Daw­son

    Hey Sean, nice to see you.

    I've been giv­ing your com­ment a bit of thought over the last day or two. Try­ing to dis­till the essence of it.

    I think the point you're try­ing to make is that med­i­ta­tion does NOT have to just mean "quiet mind." Which is a very valid point — as evi­denced by the brain scans (oh & links here are fine, you're logged in, so won't be flagged).

    There is some­thing that's quite impor­tant, that you've kind of phrased into the mid­dle of this dis­cus­sion, & that is — let­ting go of thoughts.

    Even with the monk that had a noisy mind, she would have been, as the zen apho­rism says "Treat your thoughts like clouds in the sky and just watch them go by."

    In my expe­ri­ence, that is THE most impor­tant thing. Every­thing else about med­i­tat­ing you can take or leave. The crit­i­cal bit is let­ting go of those thoughts. How­ever many thoughts you have, doesn't mat­ter one jot. Just that you let go of them.. or at least, watch them go by.

    That's where the REAL ben­e­fits kick in. Why? Because that "let­ting go" is actu­ally an ener­getic heal­ing process — it's (more or less) basi­cally the sedona method. & for that to work it doesn't mat­ter whether you're doing it on a moun­tain or a nightclub.

  • http://web.me.com/sixfeetabove Dave

    Yes yes!
    The per­son that really kicked me into med­i­ta­tion and really helped me was Eck­hart Tolle. Those images of clouds and so on really don't help me, but I can wrap myself around the kind of the­o­ries and con­cepts that he talks about. The action of observ­ing the mind, and thus asso­ci­at­ing your­self with the space of sep­a­ra­tion as opposed to the thoughts. This idea of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, for me, was the most impor­tant key. What YOU iden­tify with, uncon­sciously, dic­tates so much of your energy. Once you direct your atten­tion to that very idea of iden­tity, it becomes a lot eas­ier to cre­ate the space.

  • http://sidawson.org Si Daw­son

    Absolutely. So true.

    It's — as I wrote back, that dis­cov­ery that you're not your thoughts.

    &, as you dis­cov­ered — it's really about find­ing some­thing that works for you — regard­less of what any­one else uses.

  • Aimoss

    Hi there!
    Have you tried Holo­sync?
    I really enjoy using it as a tool to aid my med­i­ta­tion.
    So happy to have found your blog it is really inspi­ra­tional — you use the same tech­niques as I do EFT & Releas­ing. Glad to see they are work­ing for you too!
    Best wishes
    Aimee

  • http://sidawson.org Si Daw­son

    I gave holo­sync a brief go — for a few days.. but seemed that it was going to be a VERY long slow process (years), & I was doing ok with eft/releasing etc. Pretty inter­est­ing con­cept though, & I do still lis­ten to bin­au­ral beat tracks from time to time.

    You're dead right about EFT+releasing being a great combo together. Releas­ing while tap­ping, or tap­ping while releas­ing — it's all great stuff.

    I've also found throw­ing reiki into the mix (which basi­cally just means open­ing a mas­sive tube to the heav­ens, draw­ing a ton of energy down & using that to flush out your body) really help­ful — par­tic­u­larly with the releas­ing stuff. Gives you a nice lit­tle boost.

    Way I fig­ure it, any­thing that helps, that seems to res­onate for you personally..well, that's gotta be good, right? :)

  • http://www.angelguidedjourneys.com/ Sacred Site

    An exam­i­na­tion of sci­en­tific stud­ies acknowl­edged relax­ation, atten­tive­ness, an altered state of alert­ness, a sus­pen­sion of log­i­cal thought and the preser­va­tion of a self-observing atti­tude as the behav­ioral com­po­nents of med­i­ta­tion; it is accom­pa­nied by a host of bio­chem­i­cal and phys­i­cal changes in the body that alter­me­tab­o­lism, heart rate, res­pi­ra­tion, blood pres­sure and brain chemistry.

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