5 Best Practices to Lengthen Meditation Time

If you’ve already established a strong meditation habit, it can still be difficult increasing the time you sit.

At some point most of us will hit a wall. Some days we’ll have more energy and go for longer, but over the week we’ll find it difficult to stay consistent with longer sits.

Luckily there are several methods you can use here, not just for meditation, but any practice you want to expand on:

1. Increase by a few minutes a week.

Add a minute or two, wait until your mind adapts, then move forward. The problem is that it's hard to estimate right because 10 more minutes for a few days might feel easy at first, but will it become automatic 5 days later? I found that it kind've doesn't. Also I have a tendency to add more time than I should because I'm feeling excited on one day, then the next day it'll drop back down.

2. Sign up for a meditation challenge.

Whenever I've done some sort've organized challenge – National Novel Writing Month, exercise challenges, meditation classes – I'm usually hopped up on Motivation and Novelty, supported by their methodology (usually gamified), the teachers, and the other participants. I also know that I'm only going to do it for a short amount of time.

Afterwards, when I'm done with the challenge, my daily practice is naturally elevated.

I find challenges are best done from the position of already having a solid practice nailed down. The problem is that such challenges often take a lot out of you, and if you don't have a plan on what to do afterwards you can just end up not meditating for awhile.

3. Train with a group.

There are tons of temples, centers, and meditation groups around. And nowadays a lot of them are also offering Zoom practice sessions. The setting makes it so that you're behaviorally bolstered through expectation and forced to do longer sessions, usually 45 minutes to an hour. It's also a great method to learn new things and meet new people. The downside is that you're locked into their style of practice.

4. Change up your practice.

If I do 3 techniques back to back it feels like I can effortlessly extend practice. For example - I was always stuck at 20 minutes of choiceless awareness meditation. Sure, I could sometimes up it to 45 minutes or an hour, but it would always drop back down - and it always felt filled with effort. But if I dropped to 15 minutes, then immediately switched to 15 of metta, and then 15 of anapanasati, 45 minutes suddenly felt really, really easy.

This is my favorite method, because not only does it get you used to longer sits, but we know that interleaved training helps to accelerate progress. I gained things in metta that gave me further insight in vipassana. And I love it when techniques solve two issues for the price of one.

This method also worked incredibly well for other skills, like reading and cardio. I think this works because once you have a habit set up and you’ve done some training, you aren’t limited by capacity, your limited by attention. So you can physically do 45 minutes of cardio, it just gets boring, and forcing attention into doing one thing like this seems to significantly drain your energy.

5. Alternate easy and difficult sessions across a week.

I have not done this for meditation, but in good running training programs you don't just try to continually extend runs linearly - you'll run longer one day, have an easier run the next day, then have an average run day, followed by an even longer run.

If the X axis is time in days, and the Y axis is distance, then day to day the runs would look like undulating waves getting higher and higher. The more I look into it, the more I feel really good running programs are an ideal template for meditative training. The only downside that I can see is that it requires long term preplanning and a lot of tracking.

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Periodized Meditation: Why Mental Training Benefits From Running Cycles

Lydia is ramping up for a half marathon early next year, and there’s a surety she feels. Knowing where you are and where you’re going is the most important part of any map of progression. With running, that map appears set.

RUNNING PERIODIZATION

As we talk, Lydia describes how programming depends on the event – its intensity, its duration and length, and what goals you’re shooting for. 12 weeks is a good training time for a half marathon from her base skill.

There are established modules where you can work on specific vectors of progress, like endurance or inclines – she’s now working on speed.

Her sense of security is stunning to me.

But as she continues, it starts making more sense. Running is relatively simple – it’s distance and time. It has tons of data because lots of people run and keep track of it. Furthermore, this abundance of tracking seems to have created a consensus in a way few training regiments have. There are established parameters for not only training up to peak performance, but also knowing how much time to take off so as not to overtrain. In fact, Lydia talks a lot about how easing off the throttle seems key to consistent forward progression.

LACK OF PERIODIZATION IS BAD FOR MEDITATION

The stillness of the meditation hall is an apt metaphor for the lack of dynamism found there. 

When I think of sessions I’ve put in at local temples or meditation groups, each practice is roughly the same as the last. Overtraining can happen a lot - the default is to cram as much practice as possible as you advance. And after my own “half marathon” equivalent – an intense meditation course – I find myself static as well, not knowing how or where to go on my own map of progress.

It has me asking - what would a periodized system of meditation consist of?

BEYOND CROSS-TRAINING MEDITATION

I benefited greatly from working on different angles of the mind like awareness, concentration, and compassion. The course I finished exposed me to over 30 techniques, many of which I had never tried or heard of. As in any discipline, different practices and training styles improve the speed at which we improve.

But I’ve been so caught up on cross training that I didn’t realize that there was a level even beyond that. Body builders talk about it in macrocycles and athletes have seasonal vs maintenance training - it’s a system that includes cross training but also builds upon it, including challenges and times off, extending strategically across years.

Meditation is more confusing simply because metrics are hard to come by. It’s not just duration and distance. It deals with nebulous concepts like equanimity and focus. And while there are metrics – crude old school ones measuring time to newer devices that track brain waves, heart rate variance, and galvanic skin response – it’s still difficult.

But even without precise quantification, this way of looking at practice seems far superior, especially in a field where people tend to languish for years or decades with very little forward movement. 

It seems as though the less clear data we get, the less pressure there is to move towards a periodized training system. However, I would argue that those disciplines are where it’s needed the most.

A ROBUST MEDITATION TRAINING SYSTEM

I envision a system that takes all the training concepts of running and overlays them on to mental training.

What if there were months where you worked on times - both long AND short -  or where the speed at which you got into states was what you focused on? What if some emphasized how long you could sustain those states? Or if some forced you to practice meditating in real world situations? How about training modules where you targeted focus or visualization depending on how good or bad you were at them.

Imagine training up to different events - whether that’s gunning for stream entry at a retreat or just a particularly stressful family vacation. Such a system should also provide guidance for not only ramping up practice, but how to ease back off of it.

I see a system that’s truly all encompassing - one where information guides cross training and time off in order to peak higher every year you train. That’s a paradigm that helps guarantees true, all around competence. Furthermore, it should ideally give you that same surety of practice runners seem to have, the ability to project where you’ll be in a year and how you’ll improve.

This is desperately needed in every good system that involves growth, and we should be talking about it for all learning, even creative tasks like art or writing. The product of this system is not only someone who has practiced for X number of years, but a well rounded master who has excelled on all fronts of training and knows it.

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I still don’t know where I’m heading on my next stage of meditation. But my hunch is that running will show me the way.

How to Deal with Social Anxiety

Pandemic lockdowns have made us all a bit socially awkward. Learning how to push past it is important if we want to reconnect. But it doesn’t have to be complicated – here’s how you can do it from your couch:

1. Choose an awkward show.

   Try one that is viscerally, shoulder tensingly, toe curlingly cringey (I highly recommend Love is Blind on Netflix).

2. Notice your emotions.

   As you watch, turn your attention to the physical component of your emotions as they course through you.

3. Be specific with your observations.

   Where exactly is the feeling of awkwardness in your body? It it in your stomach? Your throat? Think about it like old medical pain subjectivity tests. How awkward is it from 1-10? Ask questions like - is the feeling of awkwardness tingly? Is it steady? Does it move or striate outwards? Does it change moment-to-moment? Notice any involuntary tensing.

4. Keep going.

   Practice until you can cooly and distantly feel the tiny physical sensations wash over and through you. Each mental moment will have a clear arising and ending - try to find those moments.

Tips: If you need more help, you can use a simple system - is the awkwardness rising, diminishing, or staying the same? Repeat this out loud or inside your head in a calm, detached manner - “more” “more” “less” “same”, etc. Don’t worry about catching every single sensation. Try to stay consistent. Start slow, with about a 1 second pause, and then increase in speed. When you get better, you’ll naturally drop the subvocalization.

This technique is called “noting” and it’s a classic in meditation. Think of it as though an alien scientist is temporarily stuck in a human body, experiencing awkwardness for the first time. Your observations should be cool and clinical, yet detailed. 

Post Quarantine Awkwardness

In college, whenever things got socially weird, a few of us would nonchalantly stack our hands on top of each other and use our thumbs to mimic swimming. Gradually, other people caught on and began doing it as well. We called it the “awkward turtle” (apparently other people did too!).

While it was exclusionary and kind’ve mean, pointing out the situation in a ludicrous way distanced us from it and made it oddly bearable. 

Unfortunately, the quarantine has made us all awkward. In this BBC article, Manyu Jang delves into why Zoom video chats make us so fatigued. Processing delays, awkward silences, changes in non-verbal cues like body language, tone, and facial expressions takes energy. I would add that the slight difference between looking at a camera vs looking at an image’s eyes might contribute – those subtle changes just make an interaction feel “off”. 

And yet, connecting in such a time, where everyone feels isolated, is incredibly important.

A few years ago I was traveling intensely, moving countries every few months and staying in isolated areas. It lasted about two years, and the first time I attended a gathering all my social skills were uncalibrated. As another traveler friend puts it, the atrophying of interpersonal skills makes you feel “troll-ey”. 

If socializing really is like a muscle, I wonder how well we’re all going to deal with real people face to face in our post pandemic life.

Enduring Awkwardness Is Important

Covid nonwithstanding, some of the most cathartic, life-affirming conversations I’ve ever had occurred in moments of extreme discomfort. And I would argue that building the capacity to swim sedately through uncomfortable waters is of huge benefit to all your relationships.

Few people know that as intimately as David Schnarch. As a marriage counselor, he’s presided over some spectacularly difficult discussions. In fact, his “Crucible Method” depends on it. In the process, he encourages partners to differentiate – to grow personally rather than as a fused pair. It’s a situation that often makes couples angry and passive aggressive, unable to honestly describe what’s wrong with their relationship.

To do this, clients are asked to learn and embody 4 different capacities. The fourth - meaningful endurance - is the capacity to “tolerate discomfort for growth”. 

We mostly react to awkwardness with squirmy avoidance. Yet, resisting the urge to run away has personally helped me powerfully strengthen and sometimes completely reforge old connections.

Applied Mindfulness

But if you don’t have a marriage counselor on hand, how do you surmount the natural reactions to such situations? I’d like to offer up an unlikely solution.

In an article I wrote for Tricycle Magazine, I described how I countered my phobias through watching horror movies and practicing mindfulness through them. This type of practice inoculated me against other, more real forms of fear - like my fear of heights and rollercoasters.

Author and retired Navy Seal commander Richard Marcinko always wrote about how the elite military forces train as close to combat conditions as possible. Unfortunately we rarely do this in any endeavor.

Meditation practices mostly take place in calm rooms, sometimes set to peaceful background music. But training closer to real life better enables you to deal with emotions as they are forced upon you.

Luckily, sometimes the problem comes hand-in-hand with the solution. 

While stuck at home, watch Love is Blind.

According to my girlfriend, a secret connoisseur of dating shows, Love is Blind is perhaps the most awkward, cringe-inducing reality program of all time. In it, contestants are not allowed to see each other while dating. They then propose, meet each other in real life, and go on a romantic getaway with the other couples. Adding further fuel to the fire, they reenter their normal life, meet each others’ friends and family, and then actually get married.

My shoulders are tensing just thinking of it.

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As you watch the show (or others like it), shoot for longer and longer times. Eventually you’ll shift from being amidst the feeling of discomfort to the pure observation of it. As you get better, you’ll feel like you’re surfing across waves of unpleasantness, and the tension will personally effect you less and less.

And if it gets overwhelming, you can always turn off the TV.

Try extending the practice to real life, like during the weird pauses and clipped off audio of your next Zoom meeting. Use this tool as an opportunity for meaningful growth.

The pandemic has made trolls and awkward turtles of us all. Perhaps awkwardness can also help us socialize again.

How to Focus Better While Meditating

Deliberately practicing concentration dramatically improves ALL meditation.

Some of the old Buddhist training manuals treat concentration practice as a prerequisite to any other meditation. Nowadays, I think that's solid advice for most people, especially since every app, smartphone, and email ding is designed for distraction.

This method trains granular focus (something I’ll describe in more detail later in the article) and incorporates several accelerated learning and behavioral strategies.

Practicing Granular Focus

• Get a stop watch. Make sure it has a physical button so you don't have to check to see if you've started or stopped the timer.

• Set up a log book. I use Google sheets. Set columns for the date and/or the day, 3 separate columns for times, and one last column for a daily average.

• Select an object of meditation. There are a lot of traditional ones. I'd select something that is really clear. Objects in the mind tend to morph, and you want one where there’s a clear delineation between being “on target” vs muddling it into something else.
  
  I also like selecting a visual object, rather than focusing on the breath (though if that works for you, be clear to isolate what you mean - is it the breath near the nose? The movement of your chest?). I like images because there are other practices that use visualization - I find those very helpful, so I'd rather kill two birds with one stone here.
  
  I imagine a candle flame.

• Go somewhere quiet. While mindfulness can be trained by including distractions as a part of the meditation, this is a targeted practice that actually does, to start with at least, require some amount of solitude.

• Do the practice. Summon the object to mind and focus on it. Hit the timer. As soon as your focus changes or shifts or morphs in ANY WAY from that object, hit the timer again. Record your time. Repeat 2 more times. Average the times and record that.

• Tips and comments. You will probably average a few seconds per try…. Like 2 seconds. That is completely normal. We are training super fine attention here.

  Do NOT follow the normal advice when doing this type of training, which is to "focus, and then gently bring the attention back".
  It's 3 discrete, separate sessions, done back to back with a clear beginning and ending. Also, don't worry about forcing it. As long as you're consistent your mind will adapt.

I trained in this for several months and got some really awesome results. Every other meditation technique was just easier.

But why does this work so well?

MEASURING CONCENTRATION

For one, that which we observe, we change. I think it's a pretty clear tendency used a lot in gamification and the quantified self movement.

The problem with meditation and focus is that there usually isn't a clear metric of improvement.

Here you've got one, and you can even graph it.

ACCELERATING LEARNING

Secondly, deliberate practice accelerates learning. Studies on elite practitioners across many fields suggest that those who focused on what they already knew performed worse than those who practiced on the point at which they were making mistakes. It’s the difference between generally playing a song over and over again and painstakingly drilling problem sections.

Zoning in on the moment when focus shifts is the inflection point you’re training with concentration, something that's glossed over when you just "focus on the breath and gently bring attention back" - which is the equivalent of just generally playing a song again and again. Sure, you'll get better just from sheer practice, but the skill graph will be be steeper when you hit and track your problem areas.

TINY HABITS

Third, this type of practice is incredibly short. When I first started, the entire thing took a minute or two per day tops - and that’s including recording. Behavioral scientist B.J. Fogg has done a lot of research on the power of small behaviors, showing how they boost our ability to stick to routines across time.

Starting with a ludicrously small meditation habit like this increases the chances of making it a part of your life.

THE BENEFITS OF CONCENTRATION PRACTICE

Mindfulness practitioners sometimes report feelings of immense anxiety and depression arising in practice.

This makes total sense to me - some practices like choiceness awareness (observing whatever comes up in the mind in a non-judgmental manner) are like opening the floodgates of the subconscious. If you are prone to mental health issues, that’s not a good thing. Developing granular focus is one method to bypass such anxiety because it builds up the skills needed to focus on the other aspects of the technique.

As someone with extreme anxiety, this never became a problem for me, and I believe it was because I started out training granular focus, which prevented me from being swept away by the torrent of my own mind.

I also noticed that other practices just got easier. Whether you’re sending out loving-kindness, summoning gratitude, or visualizing your negativity turning to light, they all require control.

Concentration practice is like lifting weights; it makes all other mental endeavors easier.

I can’t help but find many parallels to such practice and the work of Cal Newport, especially in his book Deep Work. Newport is one of my favorite thinkers - he talks about how our tendency to multitask doesn’t actually accomplish much, and one of the great capacities to develop these days is this type of focus.

One of my students trained with this method and I could see her change before my eyes. She was generally quite scattered - any distraction in a conversation and the thread was lost. After a few months it was startling how much she would circle back to the open threads and actually focus in daily life. It was like watching someone get cured of ADHD before my eyes.

THE SECRET TO CONCENTRATION

A long time ago when I was a kid I came across this technique from, of all people, children's author Roald Dahl. In The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar the titular character uses a stop watch to time granular concentration. As I mentioned before, the practice is very different from the normal focused attention instructions in a few key ways.

We usually use the term “concentration” to describe generally getting absorbed in a book, or a TV show. But at a minute level, our minds are moving quickly from one thought to the next. So while we might be reading, we’ll also notice the cars outside, or the ticking of a clock, or even a small worry about a deadline. Our mind will shift from the book to the clock back to the book again incredibly fast.

Preventing the mind from manically shifting and focusing the mind to stick on whatever you choose is the granular attention that I’m referencing.

I finally ended up trying Dahl’s technique, I've taught it to others, and it's improved our focus dramatically. Try it out yourself, and let me know how it goes.

What Is Meditation and What Are its Benefits?

I’ve tried many types of meditation. But from mindfulness to loving-kindness, from Stoic visualizations to single pointed concentration, meditation is, at its most basic, mental training.

Specifically, it trains your mind from being swept away by the fickleness of emotions.

Let's say you have a bad day.

The causal result of a bad situation is getting down. That's normal - and it's encoded in almost everyone's actions and all throughout media. Car cut you off? You’re going to honk angrily. Someone yell at you? You might snap back or get sad.

Meditation Improves Mental Control

But meditation gives you more control over that. You’ll reach calmer states, even joyous ones, at will irrespective of the situation you're in.

That's a crazy, almost logic-defying ability, and I would not have believed it if I hadn't seen it described and demonstrated, and practiced it myself.

If free will is a sliding scale, then the vast majority of us are slaves to our previous upbringing and experiences, or the situations we currently find ourselves in. Meditation is the slow nudging of that meter towards greater freedom in an unfair, unjust world.

This capacity can effect everything from countering depression and anxiety, making clearer decisions, managing physical pain, fighting through fear and uncomfortable situations, to just feeling good. At the very least, it trains us to maintain grace in the many mundane moments life loves to provide, like long lines, annoying computer issues, or traffic.

Meditation Helps Manage Depression, Anxiety, and Fear

Personally, I suffer from massive depression and anxiety. Meditation has helped that significantly. I no longer feel like I'm in a prison with the cell locked. Some days, it's bad, and sometimes I don't feel like doing the mental exercises. But I know I always have that option of walking out. The jail cell is unlocked and hanging open. I’m not trapped, and that makes a huge, fundamental difference in my life.

Meditation has greatly helped me navigate (and sometimes actually enjoy!) my many fears - fear of new situations, fear of heights, fear of horror shows, even fear of roller coasters.

Meditation Eases Physical Pain and Breaks Bad Habits

I've managed physical pain with meditation, and it's helped me with addiction and breaking habits. I've been able to wade through those mundane annoyances with aplomb. I can better recognize, welcome, and rise above common patterns where I get nervous and frustrated, greeting them as old friends who will inevitably leave.

Meditation Improves Relationships

But most importantly, I've been able to have incredibly uncomfortable and awkward conversations with those that I'm close to, like my parents. This has significantly deepened my relationships and in some cases turned them around completely.

It isn't perfect for me. It wasn't like magically flipping on a switch and still isn't. I still struggle with situations. And I'm still gunning for the ultimate end goal, which is to make that state of equanimity last permanently.

But as far as I may be from that peak of mental perfection, I look back to when I first started consistently meditating, and it's hard to see the parts of my life that HAVEN’T benefited.

A Peek at a Course Promising Enlightenment

The Finder’s Course has a 60-70% enlightenment rate. I’m on day 19.

It all started 5 years ago when I saw an ad for a course on meditation. It drew me in with its use of psychological, secular terminology and scientific rigor. Important sounding research institutions were mentioned and it claimed to be one of the first, large scale, studies on enlightenment. But there was something in the too-slick advertising that immediately turned me off. It felt like a get rich quick scam selling spirituality, and I quickly rolled my eyes and moved on.

Years later, I caught an in-depth interview with the course founder, Dr. Jeffery Martin, on Buddha at the Gas Pump, a podcast that has “Conversations with ‘ordinary’ spiritually awakening people”. There, Martin discussed the history of his methodology. He was initially a skeptic, but after interviewing over a thousand people from different cultural and religious backgrounds who claimed some form of this persistent mental shift, his view changed. He put people through a battery of physiological and psychological tests to categorize and study the phenomenon. As the data flowed in he began to view it as an actual thing.

SKEPTIC

This paralleled my own trajectory with meditation. I grew up on Indian tales of magical yogis, and later studied Eastern philosophy and religion. Although I was fascinated with the subject, the practice itself never really stuck, and I never bought the grandiose claims. And the idea of an end to the contemplative journey didn’t even make sense until a few years ago, around when I first saw the Finder’s Course ad. 

At the time I was getting into Stoicism, cognitive behavioral therapy, and other more acceptable, less “hippy sounding” schools of mental development. But I soon started consuming books and podcasts on “hardcore,” “secular,’ or “pragmatic” dharma - writers like Daniel Ingram, Sam Harris of the Waking Up app, Sharon Salzberg, Stephen Batchelor (author of Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist), Shinzen Young (author of The Science of Enlightenment), Culadasa, and, most popularly, Dan Harris, author of the NYT Best Selling book, 10 Percent Happier and Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. 

In one form or another they described a practice that was non-religious, practical, and had a great love of both skepticism and science. When I dipped my toes in and genuinely tried the practices, they worked for me. With a bit of trust built up, I noticed many of them were talking about more than just mental strategies applied to individual moments. They also hinted at a permanent mental shift that could occur. Up until then I viewed such claims as pure fantasy. 

This all begs the question - what exactly is this psychological transformation?

AWAKENING

Stripping away the dogma and poetry, the way Martin and others like him describe it is as a persistent state where the primacy of the ego/narrative self/personality is dramatically reduced/shifted. Rather than viewing the world through the lens of the ego, the ego is simply one of many elements in broadened awareness. 

Imagine yourself in a dream - there’s you, acting and moving around and other characters you interact with.

You’re in school, you have to give a presentation, you’re unprepared, and the teacher is angry.

When you wake up you’ll describe the dream - “I was in school again, and I was nervous because I wasn’t prepared, and then teacher started yelling.”

But that’s not true, is it? You were the teacher. You were the class. You were even the dream itself. But yet, we automatically view the world from the perspective of our self, even when recounting a dream. 

This shift can occur when people clearly observe the narrative self vanishing, then reappearing, while maintaining complete awareness.

This tends to trigger a series of massive psychological changes, which makes a lot of sense. Suddenly you know that everything you associated with your self isn’t all there is to “you” (pronouns get really hard at this point).

Basic forms of meditation focus on understanding that thoughts and emotions are like clouds passing by and aren’t essentially YOU - You aren’t angry, anger is only visiting you for a moment. This also applies to mental images, memories, hopes, desires, even the voice in your head.

Your narrative, ego-centric self is another thought passing through the sky of awareness. If you aren’t the only fixture, then all of your hangups become fundamentally less substantial.

The result of this shift is a larger way of viewing the world - one that removes a great deal of suffering.

Imagine giving advice to a friend - that friend might be in agony, but you have a greater capacity to view his situation with rationality and calmness. But when similar circumstances occur to you, that equanimity flies out the window. 

This persistent, non-ego driven view has different names throughout cultures and mystic traditions: the peace that passeth understanding, ego dissolution, non duality, unitive experience…And while it can also come through happenstance or intense drug trips, it’s usually experienced through some form of lengthy and rigorous mental exercise.

WHAT WORKS

The biggest issue Martin encountered in his research was “The Fit Problem”.

People didn’t necessarily practice the type of mental exercises that worked best for them. Back in the day, the guru down the street may have gotten enlightened with one method - but that didn’t necessarily mean it would work for you. Yet disciples would practice that one method for decades, either because they didn’t have any other recourse (another guru) or simply because the guru was so sure it would work.

The Fit Problem also answers a tangential issue - why does this have to take so long? The assumption is that such a spiritual and cognitive leap can only occur after a lifetime of practice - even though some people appear to stumble upon it in an instant. A large portion of the class focuses on honing in on the right technique for individuals.  

After listening to the interview I started reading everything I could on the course - which had a lot of behavioral and accelerated learning elements embedded into it that particularly appealed to me. Unfortunately, it was very expensive, intense, and long (4 months). But due to the pandemic, Martin released a 45 day version. It wasn’t the full protocol, and according to him the rates of success are a lowered 60%. Stuck in quarantine, I figured, why not?

I’m now about halfway through.

THE COURSE

In my own research and testing, cross training is one of the best methods to significantly increase learning and skill development. The Finder’s Course does this in a big way. We are directed to intensely practice specific “Gold Standard” meditations - ones that kept floating to the top when test subjects described what caused their psychological shift. I’ve practiced techniques I never thought would work. To say they have had a powerful effect on me is to put it mildly. The other day I started meditating in a chair and ended up on my back after continually losing track of my identity and passing out, not quite remembering how I got to the floor.

In addition, there are morning and nightly practices of visualization, gratitude, forgiveness and compassion. There are continual exercises, very similar to my tally clicking experiments. And there’s a once a week group meditation that is far and away the best practice I’ve ever read or heard of.

There are also one-off exercises that I find immensely informative. I’ve written out my life story and a eulogy of my own death. Both are exercises I initially thought quite silly, but were surprisingly powerful when done formally.

The extensive goal setting was also unexpected. As someone who is really into the behavioral science of habits and sticking to things, this was particularly important to me. 

Martin knows his stuff.

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If I were to describe the course thus far in one word? 

Surprising. 

I’m trying and doing things I never would have. The course has significantly exceeded my hopes and expectations. And although I remain a skeptic as to the overarching lofty course goal, I would gladly pay for this course again – and highly recommend it – as a method to stretch a meditation habit and launch it into overdrive.

How to MICRO-DOSE on meditation

Until now, I’ve been following the advice of most meditators: focus on extending practice times, and you’ll make progress. But what if you went shorter?

Over the last few months I’ve been trying to extend my writing sets and condense my larger daily routine. The trend of microdosing on psychedelics is thought to boost productivity throughout the day, but not having access to a bag of drugs, I thought meditation could be a poor man’s equivalent. If I tried meditating between word sprints, the logic was that it would help recharge me, and I’d be able to write longer.

My old, formal meditation sessions ranged anywhere from 20 - 40 minutes, cycling between techniques. At some point in the practice, I’d feel an internal shift. For compassion meditation, I get the blissed out relaxation that comes from generating affection for people. For tantra, it’s energy and hope, for gratitude it’s a sense of luckiness and freedom. It’s a specific feeling for each, but some days I just don’t get there.

But when I changed my schedule and tried compassion meditation for 2 minutes between writing sets, what happened surprised me.

After 2 weeks, I could sense that internal shift occurring stronger, faster, and more consistently. I switched to 1 minute, and got the same results. Then, I successfully tried it with other techniques like single-pointed concentration, vipassana, selfing, and faster EFT.

Why did this work?

ACCELERATED LEARNING

Research out of Johns Hopkins University suggests that slightly changing up practice results in significantly better performance. 86 volunteers were trained to use a “force transducer” - essentially an electronic mouse you move around the screen by squeezing rather than sliding. The volunteers were separated into groups. One group had a second training session before a final test. Another group’s second training session was altered so the squeeze was slightly different every trial. And the third was a control group with no second training session.

The group with the changing grip improved almost twice as much as the first group in both speed and efficiency.

What’s crazy is that this might even work with visualization alone.

In a 2019 study baseball players were asked to practice visualization techniques to improve their practice (there’s been research that shows that mental rehearsal can improve performance). The players were divided and instructed to practice combinations of slow motion, normal speed, and faster than normal visualizations of hitting a baseball.

While all groups improved, the largest improvements came from the players that visualized all speeds. 

Although this last study had a small sample size, to me this suggests that the mind learns by gauging and practicing relational differences.

And that’s not the only reason why this may work.

EXPECTATION

I think the element of expectation plays a huge subconscious role in our behaviors and mental adaptations, even if it’s on a subtle level. If we are expected to do a certain amount of work, we figure out a way. And when we come up against a border, especially a shortened one, our mind naturally adapts.

An artist friend of mine once challenged himself to create a sketch a day for 30 days. He said it helped him get more efficient. People like YouTuber and music producer Andrew Huang undergo amazing challenges – for him it’s with sound production (here’s him making a music album in a day).  He not only thrives off of it, but I think it’s something that makes him a better producer.

I’ve always seen cross training as engaging in different types of activities - like a mixed marital artist training in ground fighting or boxing for a time.  But in this case, mixing times and expectations may work just as well. 

But beyond cross training, it feels like something even more odd is at play.

MINDLESS LEARNING

There’s been a lot of talk about deliberate practice - and I’m a big fan of it, especially when it comes to meditation.

But the quality of this type of adaptation felt different. It felt like I was improving despite myself. I wasn’t consciously flexing anything - in fact, I wasn’t even trying to get better at meditation  – my focus was on writing. Yet, I’ve still improved.

This practice is a potential method to effortlessly level up any skill. Perhaps just as importantly, it makes skills more agile.

In a Tim Ferriss Show podcast, Josh Waitzkin, polymath extraordinaire, describes training himself to enter a relaxed flow state within moments, an optimal mode for learning. For my artist friend, it helps him work on producing art faster. Andrew Huang can output like crazy. And for meditation, training to shift your mind in such a short period of time can be used in a myriad of real world applications.

—

Nowadays I try cycling quickly between 4 or 5 techniques in one minute, something I never thought possible. I want introduce meditation to more of my real life, rather than relegating it to a formal, calm setting in a closed room. This training immensely helps with that endeavor.

There’s great use in longer meditation sessions. But there might just be as much use in shortening them.

photocred: candle by Nina

A Very Tantric Christmas

I’ve always felt out of place during Christmas. I felt my immigrant Hindu parents were awkwardly pantomiming the traditions to entertain me as a kid. They dutifully bought me presents and put up a fake tree, and when I got older the excuse was over. The specialness of the season evaporated, and all I could do was look upon other families with sadness and jealousy. As an adult I still made the motions, but something was missing.

This changed upon reading about the shamanic origins of Christmas. In his New York Times op-ed, Santa is a Psychedelic Mushroom, Matthew Salton ties familiar stories of Santa with the ritual use of pscychoactive mushrooms amongst the shamans of the Sami people of Lapland, who would use them to act as intermediaries between the mundane and spirit worlds. In Shaman Claus: The Shamanic Origins of Christmas, Matt Toussaint describes how reindeer herders of Siberia used the hallucinogenic fly agaric mushrooms (which grow beneath evergreen trees) in shamanic practices. The mushrooms are round, bright red, hung on the trees or next to a fireplace in a sock to dry and reduce their toxicity.

Toussaint writes:

“Sometimes they would place a pine tree in their yurts for ceremonial purposes.  This symbolized the World Tree, and they would harness its symbolic power to propel their spirit up and out of the yurt – through the smoke hole, i.e. the chimney.  Once the journey was complete, they would return through the smoke-hole/chimney with the gifts from the spirit world.  They also believed that the North Star was the very top of the Upper World, and because the World Tree was an axis that connected the entire cosmology, the North Star sat upon the very top of the World Tree – which is where the tradition of placing a star at the top of the tree comes from.”

I don’t know how much of all this is accurate. But in the symbolic context of ritual the parallels matter more than the accuracy. And there are many parallels here - from the Kabbalah to Nordic mythology. But what strikes me most is its closeness to tantra.

TANTRA

Tantra has been defined by many people in many ways. In the West it’s popularly associated with spiritual sex. Academics sometimes describe it in terms of microcosmic metaphysics – the body as comprised of energetic channels and psychic focal points – and how that internal framework connects to the universe. I describe it as using ritual, visualization, imagination, and mindfulness to intensify meditation and do some sort of spiritual work.

As a long time skeptic of all this woo-woo granola nonsense, I discovered, quite by accident, that this works really well for me. In fact, one stripped down version of tantric visualization is my go-to whenever I’m having serious emotional problems.

The Christmas traditions – especially the non-Christian ones -  seem very tantric. A tree with branches and baubles look like the chakra and nadi system. The North Star looks kind’ve like a crown chakra. And in many tantric practices the self is dissolved and expelled out the body to embody a deity. What better symbolic avenue is there than a chimney and jolly old Saint Nick?

I recently attended a seminar on the Chöd ceremony. This Tibetan practice involves dissolving your sense of self into the central pranic channel and expelling it out the crown chakra to become a wrathful goddess. The goddess then dismembers the body you just left, summoning a group of hungry ghosts to feast on it.

All of this sounds quite gruesome, but having practiced it it starts to make sense. It rests upon what the instructor called a “double-bind”. You satisfy your personal demons through diminishing your body - what people most commonly associate with their sense of self. Either way you win - just calling them to the feast identifies them. Serving them food not only attempts to satisfy them, but is an ego diminishing act of compassion. 

FAMILIAR AND ALIEN

While I like the practice, I experienced a sense of disjointedness in the class. We were attempting to chant in a foreign language with difficult pronunciation, using a traditional drum (a damaru) which was tricky to use. A few students had a thigh bone trumpet (a kangling) used to call hungry ghosts to dinner, which also took a bit of practice to use. It was awkward.

There is something special about using sacred implements that are not of your own culture. One can make the argument an ancient language or a thighbone horn are more special because they’re alien. But in the East there is also great store set in using structures imbued with familiar meaning. They use deities ingrained in lore, injected from repetitive underscoring from generations of belief. As a Texan I would rather use a chuckwagon dinner bell than a thighbone horn because it has more cultural significance to my individual mind (I wrote a bit about updating the practice in this manner here).

In Christmas these structures already surround us and are reemphasize continually.

REMYTHOLOGY

Christmas has always been isolating. I’m not Christian and I’m not Caucasian. From Dickensian Carolers to nativity scenes, virtually every part of the iconography growing up felt alienating. My friend – an expat in China – has the opposite problem. And my girlfriend suffered the same way when we lived abroad. To her Christmas was special, so she attempted to draw her culture around her.

We’d throw parties and put up lights. We’d play Christmas movies and make mulled wine. I’d usually find a cheap Santa hat to wear around the house.

Folklorist Arnold Van Gennep described rites as consisting of the liminal, a no man’s land between two states, in this case the sacred and the mundane. We demarcate that naturally by taking time off, making special foods, traveling to meet family, and listening to specialized music. But for me it’s not enough. Somehow, these secondary elements can emphasize the hollowness at the center of the ritual. In America, it’s symbolized in the crass commercialization of the holidays. But personally, when you feel alone, when your family isn’t invested, or when you feel disconnected in a far off land, you miss the authenticity even more. If you want to hack the culture around you, you’ve gotta do it just right.

HACKING CULTURE

Creating your own ritual by hacking culture isn’t as weird as it would seem. You see bits of it here and there - electric prayer wheels, or this DJ priest who combines techno, projected visuals, and Buddhist scripture to emphasized mantra in a temple in Japan. At the turn of the century, Western occultists like Aleister Crowley traveled East and reverse engineered ritual, combining them with Western esotericism for secret societies like Thelema and Ordo Templi Orientis. And those eventually permeated down to college fraternities and sororities. 

We already use outdated tools and implements (and use them only on special occasions) - knives, chalices, candle, etc - because it charges them with the exotic. There is a validity to using another culture’s accoutrements. But what if you could take advantage of the tools of the trade here in America during the holidays? What would an American Christmas Tantra look like?

KRIS KRINGLE, THE ALL-COMPASSIONATE

A few weeks ago, I attempted this by visualizing myself as the Christmas tree. My central channel was the trunk and psychic balls of energy hovered around it like ornaments. I dissolved myself into the central line and visualized myself moving up to the glowing North Star, the crown chakra. I imagined myself exiting through the chimney  - out of my “house” and body to become Santa Claus. I then visualized myself giving and giving to all the other chimneys of the world.

I don’t think there is as much of a “double bind” in this “Santa Tantra” as there is in the Chöd. But the powerful act of totally giving felt like a super charged loving-kindness meditation, one that was fueled by the diminishment of the self. I imagined my bag getting lighter and lighter. I gave up my red velvet coat and hat, shed my own skin, and entered a state of faceless awareness. In some Buddhist traditions they talk about the Clear Light - a sensation of bare awareness that exists behind the mindstream. I didn’t feel like I was Santa at that point. I didn’t feel like I was any person - I just was. And somehow imagining it happening to another mythic being seemed to make it work better.

A TANTRIC MIRACLE

On December 24th I visited my family. Over the last few years we’ve been working on our shaky relationship to this adopted culture. My mom threw a Christmas party earlier in the month, though most of it was just an excuse for other Indian immigrants to get together. We got a tree (a real one!) and decorated it. My mom made an Indian feast on Christmas Eve. 

But at around midnight, when not a creature is stirring, I don the sacred vestiture: a necklace of manically blinking Christmas lights and a Santa hat. I pull up the “Classic Christmas” playlist on Spotify and softly pump Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer through earbuds. The lights are all off except a glow from the Christmas tree and the fireplace I sit cross legged in front of. In Hindu rituals, food offerings (prasāda) are blessed by the divine and consumed at the conclusion of the ceremony. Mine – milk and cookies for Santa – are within easy reach by the fire.

The actual meditation progresses well. I can’t say if the full ceremony makes it any better, nor if I gain some deep spiritual attainment, but I slip into that same state of pure awareness. It remains with me after I’m done, while I dunk my cookies and munch on them in the soft silence of blinking and flickering lights.

It’s not the meditation that has given me this deep sense of satisfaction. For the first time I don’t feel a sense of hollowness on this day. It’s like finding the last, long-missing jigsaw piece and finally sliding it into the surrounding puzzle.

Tonight I feel like I belong.

photocred: Santa carving by ahoi polloi, sapta chakra (creative domain), Tibetan ritual implements by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, Santa Coke ad by Insomnia Cured Here, chalice by wht_wolf9653, Christmas ornament by Nick Amoscato

Answer Bag: An Intro to Meditation

A friend asked:

“Where would be a good place to start with meditation in your opinion?”

Personally, I think starting out with single pointed concentration is best. Get a stop watch with a physical start and stop button. Choose a mental object to focus on, something that's simple and clear - I used to visualize a candle and flame. Start the timer when you visualize the object, stop when there's any minute flicker or change in concentration on that object - the average for beginners is like 8 seconds. Be honest, anal retentive, and harsh. Record your time. Repeat twice. Stop for the day.

Give it a few months. It's like weight lifting - once you establish this base, you'll have the "muscles" to do other practices.

The key is really just consistency across time. Here's an article I wrote on just that in Tricycle.

To summarize the article, I advocate:

• Recording practice sessions on a spreadsheet. Recording is another means of adherence, getting you back to the habit when there’s an inevitable interruption. It’s also a way to track data - like how long you can sustain concentration. The Quantified Self Movement talks a lot about how beneficial this is for improvement. And if you think about it in terms of video games and learning, it makes more sense - the regular feedback lets you know where you are, which makes trying to beat your last record more addictive.

• Using implementation intention (a specific if-then protocol for when the habit is done - “after I take a shower I will immediately meditate”. A habit is a fold in the mind, and making that fold razor sharp has been proven to increase the efficiency and likelihood of habit formation.

• Writing out a mental contrasting exercise. Describe the emotional weight of what it means to succeed meditating, what it means to fail, and stumbling blocks you’ll likely encounter in making meditation a habit. Thinking things out in both a negative and positive way has been proven to increase the likelihood of the habit sticking.

• Starting with incredibly tiny sessions - like a minute a day. You can always expand it once it’s established as part of your routine. It also makes you more likely to perform the task on bad days until it becomes normal - then you’ve got a solid base to expand.

Addendum: I think this is a great place to begin meditation as a practice for the long haul. If you’ve got psychological issues, like depression or anxiety, this isn’t going to magically make things better in a way that other techniques can. There are tantra visualizations that can make you feel better fast. Focusing on the body and methods to ground yourself can also help right now.

I also advocate clear visual objects of concentration like a candle and a flame. Why? Because things like the breath are vague. Does breath mean the feeling above your lip, the movement of your chest or the feeling in your nose? There’s not as much of a clear delineation between doing the practice well and fudging it. The same goes for conceptual objects, like compassion. I think they can be great later on, but not in the beginning when you’re just trying to establish deliberate practice. Simple visual objects are also good because there are a lot of other techniques that involve visualizations. If you’re starting, you might as well kill two birds with one stone.

photocred: candle and flame by webhamster

Recent Progress in Meditation

As far as I can tell, I can consistently get up to 3rd jhana.

I have also been able to enter 1st jhana through Vipassana - this happened about a week ago while going to sleep. I was totally not expecting it, but luckily Lydia happens to be reading the MCTB, and confirmed that Ingram says it’s possible. I’ve repeated this in formal practice.

At night I usually watch some shows, and while watching them I’ve been able to enter into first jhana and extend it for the duration of the show. A few days ago I did this for two 45 minute sessions. 

I’m beginning to understand why meditation teachers warn against this - jhanic bliss is incredibly addicting, especially knowing you can get into it in informal moments through vipassana.

BUT, it could tie in to being very useful for relaxing at the end of the day. Before starting the project I was looking into hobbies and things that could get me to de-stress - I talk about this a little bit here. Some meditation guy theorized “wouldn’t if people, instead of going out for a drink or whatnot to relax, came home and blissed out in jhana for an hour?” Well…that’s completely within the scope of my skill at this point.

                                                           –

In the last few weeks I’ve dredged up old ideas on this blog that have connected anew with what I’m doing now, and this is another example. At the very beginning of this project I started a habit I called “dynamic meditation” - where I used specific techniques to counter any instance of negativity I felt during the day. Here’s a post where I discuss this - I say that it “feels like cheating.”

That’s not quite detailed enough - it felt good -really really good. There was this feeling of immense freedom and I was grinning all the time with a pleasurable sensation in my heart. It actually felt really similar to 1st jhana accessed through vipassana, and in fact I think it was very close to it - which is pretty cool!

My old protocol was very close to what I’m doing now. My theory then was that moods were static - if depression welled up, I’d have to counter it. Buddhist meditation theory, however, suggests that simply not feeding the emotion will allow it to pass if it’s treated skillfully, as all mental phenomenon do. And this is something I now understand in my own head as I do vipassana these days.

The other thing I’ve been working on is trying to penetrate the mindstream. I’m trying to accurately and specifically note physical, mental imagery, and emotions. I’m attempting to go further to pinpoint when a thought begins and when it ends. And I’ve also found a different category of phenomenon - thoughts before they fully coalesce. Back when I was doing “dynamic meditation” I got good at observing negative emotions before they crystalized and got good at nipping them before they manifested (also noted in the previous link).

This is really good, and I’ve read about this in some of the advanced Buddhist books I’ve been scouring lately.

The problem I feel right now is that I don’t know the progressions for Vipassana - everyone basically says to keep noting more and more rigorously, and that will result in Stream Entry. Samatha Jhanas (single pointed jhanas) are clearer in term of progression right now. Keep concentrating, and you’ll hit these jhanic stopping points. The problem there is that I can’t seem to progress past 3rd Jhana. 

But I’m in a good position - meditation is a regular habit, which I’ll continue as I search for the answers.

Thoughts on Dynamic Meditation (so far)

Today’s 20 minutes got me really sensitive to the subtleties of this. I could feel a sliding crystallization of tension in my mind and in my shoulders. I used a specific technique to counter it - relaxation through anchoring. A thought I had day before yesterday was that I should get really technical about it - I should know tension and anxiety like eskimos know snow. Not only will the delineation of different categories of it help me focus, but it acts as Vipassana noting - separating my mind from being entangled in the feeling.

This type of dynamic meditation is very interesting in comparison to Vipassana and other schools of Buddhism. Vipassana is all about the controlled observation of the mindstream in order to gain visceral knowledge (jñanas) that change its (the mind’s) quality. In Vajrayana, visualization and ritual are used for the same purpose, and for some versions of Tibetan Buddhism mucking about with the Bardo - transitory states of consciousness like before death or dreaming - changes the state of the mindstream.

What I’m doing is purifying the mindstream through habit in order to prevent the arising of negative emotions. The more I think about it, the more I think I’ve stumbled on another school of Buddhism…if it works. I’ll have to come up with a name for it…

Either way, that purifying action is an important metaphor to keep in mind while proceeding.

Dynamic Meditation Revisited Party IV - Last Notes

I just did a 20 minute session while doing some work. It was pretty easy to track some of these things. Here’s what it looked like:

biting lip - anxiety - R
x3 minor anxiety arising - R
minor anxiety arising - x4 shoulders - R
x4 fingers - picking, flicking
x2 lip picking R
x2 caught minor anxiety
X5 laughing

As you can see a lot of these things happen in groupings. And a lot of these things have very clear physical markers - lip picking, picking at my fingers, shoulders tensing up.

The “R” was just my short form for Regular - as in I didn’t use any sort of specific technique - I just stopped it - these were all minor tensions in the mind stream.

“X2 caught minor anxiety” referred to catching it as it formed in the mind. And “X5 laughing” referenced that feeling of cheating at life, that true happiness that seemed to arise as I felt how easy it was to change this.

That feeling is really what I’m after - and it IS easy, but like the rest of this project, extending even the simplest things out across months (or in this case over the course of a full day over time) is very very difficult.

Buddhism and Dynamic Meditation

I’ve been reading a lot on Buddhism lately, and it seems as though some people view Nirvana as getting into this state of equanimity - of completely uprooting the possibility to have these negative emotional arisings at all.

In Vipassana, this uprooting occurs through visceral knowledge of the state of the world through repeated meditative practice. Through just observing the mindstream, you’ll gradually come to realizations - like realizing that we are not angry - anger has just visited us momentarily. This eventually (as far as I understand) will get us to this uprooting. 

There are other ways there - in Rinzai Zen you break the bonds of logic to attain sudden illumination, in Vajrayana you use visualization and ritual to get there (again, I’m still researching this stuff so please excuse my lack of understanding - and feel free to correct it). 

My method of dynamic meditaiton through habit formation is the “quit smoking” version of equanimity - that if you counter the urge enough times, the urge ceases to arise at all. The urge has to be countered minutely from second to second in the mindstream, but as far as I understand it, this might just be another avenue to Nirvana. Which is kind’ve cool.

Now all of this is theoretical - I’m very curious to see how (or if!) it will work - especially next to these thousand-year traditions.

Dynamic Meditation Revisited Part III- Implementation Intention & Mental Contrasting

The first step is Implementation Intention. This is kind’ve weird because it’s not a discrete task - rather it’s one that needs to be performed in life. But hey, why not apply it to something I’m really nervous with? Is that good or bad? I don’t know, but let’s try it

Implementation Intention:
I will perform 20 minutes of dynamic meditation at the beginning of the day when I do my first real task - my work habit on weekdays, and my writing on weekdays. I will start by putting up a word file to record things on the side of my computer screen to list out when the emotions arise and what I do to counter them. I will record this on my blog as well.

Mental Contrasting:
1. What positive changes can occur in my life if the habit is fully a part of my daily routine?

If dynamic meditation is a part of my daily routine I will be able to not be ripping myself up to accomplish my goals like I have been recently, and do so constantly in my life. So much energy gets wasted on just trying to maintain, and doing so has me barely able to do anything during a day. To be able to recover that would be amazing.

I want to be someone like Ari from Entourage, who is never ever really broken, like Vince, where every day, positive or negative is all good. I want to be like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who always looked forward despite overwhelming odds. For him, being weird was a positive - not being at the cool kids table wasn’t something to feel beaten up over - it meant he got to create his own damn table.

I want this so that I can accomplish all my wildest dreams without feeling ripped a part in thinking that I’m not accomplishing anything at all. I want this so I can accomplish all my goals, this project, and beyond. I want to be a force to be reckoned with, unshakeable, to uproot all this negativity from out of myself. I live a life that is fantastic, that people would kill for, and there’s no point in living it without enjoying it fully.

2. What could go wrong in forming this habit?

I could not do other habits - writing or work - that could cause me to therefore not do my 20 minutes of dynamic meditation. I could feel lazy and not want to get started on it. I could get bogged down on what the correct perfect formation of this habit is instead of just STARTING. I could forget to not write down my list of arising emotion in that 20 minutes - I got lazy about it last time around and it resulted in fewer and fewer results. I could not have access to my computer and not have a pen and pad to jot all this down - or just be too busy and forget to bring it with me, like when I’m traveling. I could abandon the habit in my breaking points or in the quarter mark period, where sustaining the habit becomes difficult to endure.

Dynamic Meditation Revisited

I’ve been feeling really down the last few days.

I feel the usual sensation - like I’m running in mud, like I’m drowning in too many tasks, like I’ve got 50 things I had to do yesterday, like I’m in a forest without a map. It’s “usual” because I feel this way every single time I get to these breaking points in this project.

Negativity seems to attract negativity - I find myself having negative thoughts about particular events that seem to multiply and expand to all parts of my life, such that it’s so difficult to do any work.

I’ve thought for a long time that I need to nail my mood because it affects everything. It’s a formative skill, and I think I’m ready to start it. Again.

So I’m going to start my dynamic meditation habit again. I think if I do a Tiny Habit I can begin it along with my malformed work habit. 

So what’s a TinyHabit for dynamic meditation? In my book on meditation that I wrote for my mother  I detail the steps for this:

Step 7: Implementation Intention and Mental Contrasting for Dynamic Meditation
Perform both Implementation Intention and Mental Contrasting exercises for Dynamic Meditation. This should fix exactly when you’ll perform it - ideally right after your daily fixed meditation or other reliable daily habit.
It should also prepare you for what you need. For me, jotting down a list of mental states for Dynamic Meditation is easy because I’m sitting in front of the computer all day for work anyway. But if you have a more active lifestyle, you’ll need to get a notebook and pen that you use regularly.
Step 8a: Adding the Second Habit
At the halfway point, when your fixed meditation SRHI is in the 60’s, it should be ok to add the second habit - dynamic meditation. You’ll now be taking the SRHI twice per day.
We’ll be progressing slowly with this, like the previous habit.
Start with the simplest act of dynamic meditation: Noting your mental states.
As an anxious person, you probably have very intense anxieties that would not arise in the normal person. But for you it’s a way of life, and you will be unaware of it - remember the progression of mastery of a task - you are trying to get from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence. You need to know when you are doing something wrong (worrying) so that you can recognize how it arises within you.
So, a first exercise is to take 20 minutes in your regular day and note down negative emotions. I want a brief note on what you are feeling, and a brief description of it.
As a worrier, you will probably find  yourself stressing about absolutely nothing. Really be aware of the moment to moment fluctuations in your mind.
Example:
-Tension in shoulders - naturally just got nervous/tense for no reason
-Tension in shoulders
-Tension in shoulders
- (X4)Worrying about a work problem
-(X2) Regret - remembering the past and wishing that things could have gone differently
- (X3) Sadness - about opportunities not taken.
Just do this for 20 minutes. As a worrier you will have plenty to write down. But you must be aware of yourself and realize when negativity arises. You’ll be tempted to justify your worry. This exercise is not about justification. Just write it down. The point is to get you monitoring yourself from a distance - don’t punish yourself, don’t add any additional commentary, just recognize the emotions from a distance, and note it down as though it was a non-emotional scientific note about a distant phenomenon.
Start with 20 minutes. If you choose do note for longer, then by all means do so. But don’t force it. The creator of TinyHabits has a saying:
“A well planted seed will grow on its own accord”
You’ve planted the seed, now let it grow.
Step 8b: Adding additional exercises to fixed meditation
At this point you should be ready to rotate exercises in fixed meditation. So far you might have been only doing one exercise. Try others.
If, for example, you have until now only been working on the Anchoring progression, do the Anchoring progression one day and the Tantra progression another day. If at any time you feel too stressed, or have to much to do during the day (or if you just feel too exhausted) it’s ok. Fall back to your basic exercise and do that.
Step 9: Superhabit Status and Expansion
At some point your fixed meditation habit will achieve Superhabit status and will be solidly ingrained as a part of your daily routine. This is an excellent time to start pushing the envelope - if you’ve only been doing a few mental exercises, push the envelope. You’ve done a great job forming a habit, but this doesn’t mean you will not fall into a plateau, where actual progress stops. If your habit hasn’t been naturally expanding, expand it by practicing additional exercises.
You should have the additional endurance and willpower to push dynamic meditation. Expand from 20 minutes, to 30 minutes to a full hour of self moderation and note taking.
Step 10: Arising and Quelling of Negative Emotion
This half step is an important progression to the full usage of individual techniques in your real life. The key here is to practice as close to real world situations as possible. In Fixed Meditation begin by selecting negative memories to bring about negative states like anxiety and worry. You can do this either by just summoning a memory or by writing it down to act as a guide.
Once you’ve summoned up the actual negative state, then practice the various techniques to control and transform the emotion to positivity.
Step 11 Expanding Dynamic Meditation
The last phase of the entire process is continued expansion of dynamic meditation. After slowly expanding your self monitoring note taking you will begin to use the arsenal of techniques that you’ve practiced in fixed meditation in real life.
Now when you feel the arising of anxiety or worry, practice the fixed meditation techniques to quell the emotion. This is very difficult to do in real world conditions so, again, start slow. Start with 20 minutes or an hour depending on how you feel, then slowly expand.
You will very quickly find yourself catching and neutralizing negative thoughts as they crystalize, and then before they even form.
Step 12: Continued Expansion & Dynamic Meditation Superhabit
By this time your dynamic meditation - no matter how small it is - should have reached superhabit status. At this point simply continue the practice of expanding and using techniques as though it’s a game in your life.
There is a quote from a book I read (The Lightbringer - Find Quote) about how warriors spend hundreds of hours of practice so that the first moment of conflict the natural biologically set response of flight is changed so that in those first few seconds you go towards the conflict and fight.
This is exactly what we are training - the automatic response to execute a meditative technique immediately in response to negative emotion.
Step 13: Uprooting
At some point in the expanding of your practice, after the execution of a meditative technique following worry is automatic, the negative emotions become less and less frequent. What would have bothered you immensely before just don’t phase you. You become more and more unshakeable. And as you continue it becomes easier and easier. And at some point, the feelings cease to arise at all.
This is the fulfillment of the buddhist concept of uprooting. To tear out worry and anxiety from the roots.

Thoughts on Training Mindfulness/Dynamic Meditation/Equanimity

As I have mentioned before, I am not convinced of the efficiency of carryover in meditation. Most books on meditation discuss practicing it one time during the day, and letting carryover continue - your individual practice carries over to regular life.

I believe that training as close to “war time” conditions as possible is the best training you can get. A continual habit, like posture, is something that bridges the gap. And in my research, I’ve found Buddhist literature talking about it in this way - you first get into a state, THEN you focus on maintaining it.

Posture exercises may well work eventually, but it seems as though posture is something you have to continually practice throughout the day to get to your goal - being someone who has good posture. Similarly, there is a huge leap between someone who practices equanimity training for an hour a day and someone who is an unshakably equanimous individual.

I’m still researching and asking people for advice on how to best do this. After all, there are other continual habits I’ll want to induct in  my regiment later on. I’ve had limited success with one - noting every time I feel negative emotions (they tend to fall into common groupings) and using mental gymnastics that work to get beyond them.

This worked very well for a short amount of time, but the number of variables got to be too much for me to continue. And things slipped through. I could feel happy, I could bust pass pessimistic emotions, yet fear would fall through - I would continue to procrastinate like I always do. So:

1. The willpower required to do them all was too much because I was also doing fixed meditation as well. Fixed meditation is well on its way to habit formation, so I should try it again now.

2. The willpower required to counter all negative emotions is too much, so I need to focus on one at a time. Preferably a lynch pin, like tension/relaxation. Can you be angry or depressed if you are truly relaxed? Can you even be fearful?

3. I should use a timer approach and use spot checks throughout the day. 5 times a day, I do a spot check and relieve my symptoms and move on, increasing until it becomes second nature.

4. Another method is going from the gross to the subtle. Record, do all of the me negative emotion meditation throughout the day and later, once the method is established as a habit, push it for things that have slipped. After all, habits do not equal mastery. At some point you have to push past plateaus in a learning curve.

I’m guessing that for all of this, the SRHI has to be modified, omitting frequency questions. Presumably the further along the habit goes, the LESS you’ll have to do it.

Thoughts on Meditation Techniques

Way back in THIS post I mention a little bit about what meditators influence me. 

The difference between these guys and regular “single pointed” meditation is that I feel their techniques are more directly applicable to the real world. 

In the fantasy book I’m reading, one of the characters is part of an elite warrior group, whose teachers trained and trained her to go on the offensive when attacked. People naturally have the opposite reaction, so it takes hundreds, if not thousands of hours of practice to instill a new instinct. It becomes a muscle memory, you react before even thinking.

I want to practice the martial arts of meditation.

I mention a lot of people who are very unorthodox - Hypnotica, Steve Piccus, Shinzen Young, Ross Jeffries. A lot of these guys come to meditation in an incredibly unorthodox way. But all of them work in a method that’s more about changing mental protocol rather than having a bracketed time in which you practice gently focusing on a single thought.

What do I mean?

When I get depressed, as I am wont to do, I want my first reaction to be to do mood-lifting mental gymnastics. Shinzen Young advocates an old Buddhist technique to shift away from specifics, and focus on bodily sensations of emotions. In this way you step back and get a grip. Ross Jeffries goes further and talks about transforming that basic energy, transforming it, and taking it back in as an energy of positivity and transformation. I was very skeptical about this when I first tried it, and after a year of doing it more and more it has the ability to completely turn around my mood.

I am a fearful person, especially when it comes to writing endeavors. Steven Pressfield talks about procrastination as the loadstone by which you know what you need to do most. Hypnotica advocates a  program by which you immediately do the things that scare you for a couple of weeks so that you rewire yourself to be someone who faces fear.

Yoga has classically been defined by Patajanli as the “cessation of the fluctuations of the mind” - as such the end product of all this is to “bump back” - the instinctually turn around bad moods or fits of frustration in order to be a generally positive and unshakably calm individual. 

I’m still thinking about HOW exactly I’m going to apply all this - these are all varied techniques that need a lot of repetition to become a habit. I’ll discuss my thoughts on that in another post.

Meditation and Mental Wellness Gamification

I am a big fan of mental wellness, self confidence, meditation, and all that hippy stuff. When I was younger, I used to meditate everyday, but I didn’t really appreciate how I could use it practically until recently (after years of depression and self confidence issues and whatnot).

So I was excited to find that Super Better is a program that gamifies mental health.

Unfortunately, I find it kind’ve….Idunno….scattered. I’ve only fiddled around with the program a few times, but the game options seem very random. I like the fact that it is the only gamified program I’ve seen so far that gives users a choice.

Choice is usually something that’s used in games to get gamers even more addicted - rather than coming up with one situation, you give a player several choices, either implicit or explicit, allowing for more palatable options, and boom, then they’ve got you. So I liked that part.

I’ve found other routines for mental health on my own that I find work incredibly well. What I need is a software that incorporates a personal routine and gamifies that without the need for specifics, and I think I found one example with

Level Me Up - an iPad/iPhone app, that uses Malcolm McDowell’s (I think other people contributed to this, but he’s the one whose known for it) 10,000 hours theory - 10,000 hours is roughly the amount of time it takes to gain mastery over a skill. The program divvies up this amount of time and has a timer - you can set the program to be linear or more RPG-like - meaning level 1 will be easier to complete, level 2 slightly more difficult, etc.

So far I like this, but I can see it getting really old really fast. There are no badges, no community, just levels that take progressively more and more time. I’ll post a full review on each of these programs later.

I am very curious to see how these small differences in game mechanics affect long-term habituation. The goal is to get addicted to a skill over a longer period, so I’m assuming that having badges and the ability to socialize the game will help to make a habit stick long-term. We’ll see.