Inside Yoga 186 (28/11/2016)
Anyone who has travelled on London’s Underground network would have heard the announcement, “Mind the gap, mind the gap”. At first glance this might appear to have nothing to do with meditation, but when meditating we also mind the gap – between the thoughts.
Although there are several types of meditation the principle aim is to stop our thinking and to maintain a silence between thoughts for as long as possible… hence mind the gap. This is not as easy as it sounds, as many of us discover when practising meditation but it is achievable and practice is the key.
Here are some tips for stopping those unwanted thoughts.
While meditating the first step when we catch ourselves thinking is to simply drop the thought and turn our attention again to the breathing, both inhalation and exhalation. There can be a time lapse between the first point of self-awareness which realises that we are thinking about something and the action to stop thinking. With practice we learn to reduce this delay in taking action and eventually we aim to be able to catch our thoughts as they start, and not after we have followed a course of thoughts which has seen us plan the rest of the year or replay a memory that took us back to our childhood!
To stop thinking, take a deep breath and give more attention to what your breathing is doing. Also, we can focus on our body even more: in seated meditation it would be awareness of the body simply in the stillness of the seated position – which on closer viewing shows that our still body is not so still. If we are practising yoga asanas (postures or exercises) then the awareness of the body is different, because we are being active with it, but the awareness of body is still important. The process of doing yoga exercises also asks us to stop thinking and focus – on body and breath.
Some of our thoughts are very important! We can be very attached to our thoughts and their importance, from remembering something we need to do or we have a profound realisation about our life. In meditation the instruction is always the same: drop the thought.
If it is a nagging thought which keeps repeating, we can put this thought in an imaginary pigeon-hole to be dealt with later – if it’s important enough we will remember later on. If we have just answered the meaning of life and other such realisations, we acknowledge its importance and drop the thought – returning to silence.
This process of returning to the gap between our thoughts is what we do most of our meditation; in fact, it might feel like we spend most of time dropping thoughts than being silent, but don’t lose heart with the practice because this is normal. We all do this, thoughts keep popping up, and we keep dropping them. With practice and time, we do become better at spotting thoughts as they rise and returning to the gap between thoughts and perhaps the silent gaps last longer than they did in the beginning.
What meditators notice is that however challenging the meditation and even if we have numerous thoughts during practice by the end we feel lighter, clearer and better after meditation. We feel the benefits of meditation even when it doesn’t feel perfect because it is our effort to be silent and to concentrate which produces the benefits.
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