Meditation Styles
for Our Modern Times
Part I: Health Through
the Gates of Breath

Author’s note: This is the first of a series of articles on meditation and its connections to sciences of the nervous system, the body, and their high counterpart, the psyche. Gratitude is for the generous sharing by students of meditation who have contributed insights as they successfully progressed in their work.

Introduction

This paper is first of a series that explores meditation science, dedicated to those individuals seeking insights on meditation training, who are experiencing a quest for developing awareness, and wish greater access to meditation’s secrets. There is a growing desire for finding ways to make meditation personally relevant by discovering - at least one - meditative style that will resonate positively with oneself. Explored are some notions of meditation’s effect on the nervous system and all the body organs that dynamically interact and depend on it. Proposed is an intuitive road map to the art of choosing among meditative techniques so that a chosen one may become inspirational for one’s personal unfolding.

Increasingly clear is that meditative practice not only assists, and bolsters, the functioning of bodily organ systems, but also harmonizes the flow of emotions and the balance of psychological functions. This enhanced mind-body entente moves the entire organism to yet loosely defined higher mind-body conditions that are generally seen as states of “well-being,” or “activated well-being.”

Conceptualizing meditation needs adjustment to today’s times. We do not live in high mountains nor are we ensconced in monasteries. We live in a vibrant global society whose salient features are rapid change, sustained adaptation and ongoing social challenges. In this milieu, meditative practices need not change one’s current lifestyle. Meditation will ultimately do that for you. It is suggested, however, that your meditative practices be invited into your ongoing current living mode, at a comfortable, steady and dedicated pace.

Meditation’s essence.

What are the active ingredients in meditation that makes it a health enhancer for the body’s organs, a facilitator of nervous system plasticity and a catalyst for the development of its prize product, the mind? And what lies behind meditation‘s reputed possibilities said to lead to modes of experiencing described as transcendent, or even spiritual?”

One approach to this understanding lies in a unique ability, so acutely developed in humans, to determine the direction of consciousness. At work is an undervalued mental force: Personal volition. Indeed, the mind has the capacity to willfully direct its awareness beam anywhere it desires, from the reliving of some childhood memory or the imagining of a voyage to a distant land, as it can on the rhythm of one’s respiration or, in heightened body sensitivity, on the primal pulse of one’s heartbeat. Willful attentiveness is omnidirectional. Very importantly for meditation, awareness is even capable of centering on itself.

The mental force called volition lost much respect when psychoanalysis demonstrated how so much individual comportment is determined by forces beyond or “below” our awareness, hidden from view. Yet, conscious volition remains one of the fundamental engines driving effective meditation.

Consciousness and awareness:

Although related in connotation and meaning there are differences. Consciousness emerges from the global ongoing activity of the nervous system, involving all its components, starting from the nadir of the spinal cord, upward to the centers for the regulation of vital signs - e.g., respiration, heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature – then on to the highest level of the cerebrum, the brain’s cortex and its secret enclave of awareness. As the general activation of the nervous system increases, so the output of its life energy and the corresponding spark of its psyche. Meditation is able to increase the baseline nervous system pitch of consciousness, kindling its ultimate creation: Awareness.

Consciousness, as the effervescence of nervous system’s global activation, is capable of generating awareness but not the other way around. Awareness does not generate consciousness. Awareness needs consciousness to exist. Awareness is a special condition of consciousness and meditation depends on it. Meditative focusing on awareness can be assigned a desired direction by volitional desire. In full consciousness, for example, it is possible to willfully focus awareness on the real (or even imagined) warmth felt in one’s hand as it touches the sun-heated sand of a glorious beach. Just as easily, awareness’ beam may be invited to follow air’s flow as it cyclically enters, pauses, then exits the respiratory tree. This gift sustains the delicate art of meditation.

Awareness neurons and awareness networks

While consciousness depends on the nervous system’s energy output, awareness depends on the added activation of specialized brain pathways. Ancient anatomists searched for the location of awareness in the body and, counter-intuitively came up with different organs, from liver, to heart and lungs. The brain was at one time even thought to be a cooling system. Today, there is little question that awareness’ locus resides somewhere in the brain, but where? And while now accepted that consciousness springs from the activity of all the brain’s neurons, how does meditative volition move it about to achieve meditative contemplation?

The reader is referred to a previous article: “The Neurology of Meditation” (Sunnen www.triroc.com/sunnen). This article posits the existence of neurons, which in their aggregations, become specialized in the generation of awareness. Also developed, is the idea, now shown by several studies, that sustained meditative practice is capable of changing the actual anatomy of the brain, via spawning the birth and growth of young neurons: Neurogenesis.

Taking these two concepts to their further limits, it becomes possible to envision scenarios where ongoing meditation - whose hallmark is the dedicated enhanced ignition of awareness – activates the genesis of new cells and the growth of neuronal networks specialized for the evolution of expanded states of mind.

Clarifying these points:

• While all neurons in the nervous system are cells specialized in enhanced electro-chemical reactivity, it is posited that, among the naturally occurring population of some hundred billion brain cells, will be those that are even more specialized to form aggregations capable of generating dimensions of mind called awareness. These cells could be named “awareness neurons.”


• How clusters of neurons bring forth the phenomenon of experiencing is a yet unknown process belonging to a perennial conundrum called “the mind-body problem.” Added to this mystery is the reality that while we can measure individual levels of consciousness, it is still impossible to measure consciousness itself, simply because science does not know what it is. Love, for example, can be an intense experience in the dimension of consciousness and even if we knew what neuronal networks connect to it, how would we explain how populations of physical cells can ever create love emotions?


• The sustained activation of brain networks involved in amplifying awareness, as seen in meditation, leads to the proliferation of cell network ramifications and interconnections: Neuronal branching. Another phenomenon, neurogenesis, is the process by which nervous system neurons divide and proliferate. Brain imaging studies have shown measurable thickening of some brain structures with meditation (Hölzel 2011, Lazar 2005, Vestergaard-Poulsen 2009).


• Meditation is a body of techniques whose common denominator is the practice of sustained awareness. As such, via the partnership of body and psyche, both the material nature of nervous system structures and the ineffable realms of consciousness are dynamically coupled and heightened, in meditative tandem.

Personal objectives for meditation

Motivations for meditation practice are several. Most motivations fall under the large umbrella questing for “well-being,” may it be physical, psychological, emotional, social and existential. Motivations for meditation in this group stems from wishes to dissolve distressing feeling states (e.g. nervousness, stress, loneliness, sorrow, anger), or from pursuits to bolster positive emotional states, such as relaxation, self-image and self-confidence. Others express desires to have more intricate knowledge of their bodies to attain excellence in performance.

Motives of a smaller group center on an innate and often long-felt tropism for the attainment of higher-order personal development, satisfying urges that are often labeled transcendent or “spiritual.” The presence of these deeply felt distinctive drives opens to a fascinating area needing much understanding and research.

Devoting some time to defining one’s objectives for meditative practice is time well spent. Clarifying meditative goals gives the logical mind a chance to attain a rationale that helps drive progress. As meditation practice unfolds, these early objectives are prone to undergo interesting changes.

Discovering a proprietary meditative style

A personal meditative style should not only fit seamlessly with one’s constitution and daily life configuration, but also contain elements of enjoyment. Indeed, meditative practice should even be contemplated with anticipated pleasure. The hallmark of a coveted meditation style is one that rather meeting resistance, easily adopts a fluid adaptation into daily living.

Discovering a personal meditative style may require some trial and error, which may mean exploring different disciplines, all exciting prospects. In this quest, the meditator may look into experiencing different types of meditation styles, such as those based on mantras and mandalas, on Zen philosophy, and even on moving meditations – which many prefer to “stillness meditation” - such as Tai Chi and Qigong, among others.

Opening the gates of breath

Reference to the importance of breath in mind-body harmony and development is noted as early as the second century BC, in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Extoled for breath’s ability to channel consciousness to the body’s world, this meditation technique has remained as its bedrock for millennia.

Breathing is the act of moving breath. Respiration, on the other hand, evokes the metabolic changes that accompany pulmonary gas exchanges. Inhaled oxygen, after all, is vital to creating bodily energy, and exhaling carbon dioxide is essential to ridding the body of gaseous by-products.

Since the common denominator to all meditation is awareness, and since the oldest and most universal meditation discipline centers on breath, how, we may ask, can awareness best be fused with breathing? Deep knowledge of one’s breath is the home base from which all meditation springs.

Many breathing formulas are proposed. Some are based on counting in-breaths, out-breaths, and the two pauses in-between. Counting works for some, but an important objection remains: In counting, awareness splits in two: One part goes to counting numbers and the other goes to breaths.

As an initiation to breathing awareness meditation, please consider the following practice:

• Take some time to find a body position such that you have little urge to move. You may be sitting or lying down. Close your eyes and relax all muscles, one group at a time, or all at once. Meanwhile repeat the word “Meditation” several times, vocally or mentally, with a sense of solicitation. This will define your purpose and eventually become a conditioned request to reach your personal meditative state.
• In breathing awareness meditation, the only consciousness in your mental space needs to be the awareness of your breathing. All thoughts are asked to keep away, and even better, keep out. Dedicate maximal contemplation to the feeling of the airflow as it enters and exists your respiratory channels.
• Increase airflow’s awareness, then prepare to designate an upcoming breath as one full meditation breath cycle. On your mental signal, take that breath as slowly as possible, deeply, comfortably to its maximum, all the while charging it with added intense awareness. During that cycle, become aware of all the body parts that move with each breath, for sure the abdomen, but also the pelvis and the spine among others. The cycle’s expiration phase is an opportunity to teach yourself to drain any and all tensions, muscular and mental, to reach the deepest relaxation levels.
• “Enhanced awareness” is, in this context, the conscious mind’s volitional intensification of experiencing. It may also be called “activated consciousness,” a state of mind that can, if sustained, be accompanied by pleasant sensory phenomena.
• Once you are comfortable with one full breath cycle, move on to two, then to three consecutive breaths. If, without mind’s wanderings, you succeed in navigating three consecutive breaths in full meditative awareness, you have crossed into the gates of breath.
• Continue your training with spirit. In one sitting, consider three sets of three consecutive breaths each. Then, with further progress, three sets of seven consecutive breaths each. Once the gates of breath have been consistently crossed, the meditator becomes primed to beckon meditative vistas that, it is hoped, will be as rewarding as they are luminous.

Summary of Part I

This series on meditation embodies two distinct yet complementary approaches. One perspective springs from contemporary knowledge about nervous system dynamics. The other derives from consciousness studies gathered over millennia by dedicated meditators. Both perspectives meet conceptually at the mind-body interface where they become partners in synergy.

Part I sets the stage for developing a personal meditation style by exploring a core foundation for all meditation: The art and science of breath awareness.

Part II will continue in the same vein, mining the energy of this core foundation to unfold the health potential of activated awareness.

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Dr. Sunnen has gratitude for an early start in meditative experience because both his parents were students of P. Yogananda, author of “Autobiography of a Yogi.” He met Yogananda shortly before his passing, and this experience had long-term influence on his work. Acknowledgement and gratitude must also be given to one of his teacher, Kreskin, a stage mentalist who, in Dr. Sunnen’s university years, showed him the vast potential of mental imagery to activate body and mind. Years later, under the tutelage of Dr. Herbert Walker, MD, Director of Bellevue-NYU’s Medical Hypnosis Training, he applied mind-body techniques to therapeutically assist the resolution of a range of medical and mental health problems. He has been practicing that approach ever since.

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