Meditation For MBAs: Train Your Mind, Improve Your Game — Part II

Finally, it also appears that meditation may promote breakthrough thinking and perception. Let me explain how. Mark Beeman of Northwestern University and Stellan Ohlsson of University of Illinois–Chicago have studied the neuroscience of insight.[ii] They observed that when people try really hard to solve a problem, their brains aren’t in a state conducive to generating solutions. There appears to be a link between relaxing the mind, generating gamma waves, and having insights. Beeman also noted that those he dubbed “insight machines” tended to have the ability to observe their own thinking and not be trapped by it, which is what I’ll be guiding you to do in the meditation instructions below. One of the leading neuroscientists studying the effects of contemplative practice, University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Richard Davidson, examined the brainwaves of power meditators (long-term Tibetan Buddhist monks) compared to a group of novice meditators.[iii] The monks showed off-the-charts gamma-wave activity compared to the novice group, generating a signal of up to five minutes compared to milliseconds for the novices. You don’t have to be a power meditator, however, to generate more gamma waves. Not long after starting to practice meditation, the novices in the study lengthened their signal. It seems that gamma-wave activity is a signature of neuronal activity that knits together far-flung brain circuits, creating an aha! moment. I draw from this that meditation could put our brains in a state in which we’re more susceptible to breakthrough thinking and perceiving.

Let’s Try It

In this installment, I’m going to provide instructions for shamatha, or “peaceful abiding,” meditation, which is a good mindfulness practice for beginners. (If you want to experiment with other approaches, I’ll be happy to talk to you about them.) Shamatha is particularly well suited for calming the mind and developing concentration. Essentially, you’ll be focusing on the sensations of breathing in your body. Picking a place in the body where the sensations of breathing are quite obvious for you—typically the nostrils, chest area, or abdomen—you’ll pay attention to the inhalation and exhalation, the rising and falling that naturally occurs during breathing. You’ll allow your breath to be exactly however it is. If it’s speedy and shallow, that’s what you notice; if it’s slow and deep, that’s what you notice. Whenever you realize your mind has wandered off into thought, you’ll gently bring your attention to the feeling of breathing in your body. If you find it helpful, when you notice you’ve been thinking, you can mentally label this by silently saying to yourself, “Thinking,” and then return your attention to the breath. If an emotion arises, you’ll just allow it to run its course, feeling the emotion while letting the breath be in the foreground of your attention. Sounds simple, right? I’d say this is a classic example of “simple, but not easy”!

You’ll find detailed audio instructions here, but before you give it a try, I want to explain how to approach meditation and address some common myths about the practice.

As I mentioned in my first article, I define mindfulness as “the art of paying attention to present-moment experience in a kind, open, and curious way.” I find it useful to approach mindfulness meditation like a child, a scientist, and a mother. Like a child, you see things freshly; you may encounter each breath, feeling, or thought that arises with a sense of wonder. There’s no right or wrong experience or right or wrong way to experience what’s going on inside you. You’re just playing, but you’re totally engaged. Like a scientist, you use your powers of observation nonjudgmentally (to the extent you can!). I often think of anthropologists who are studying an exotic culture. When noticing some behavior or practice considered quite unusual by our cultural standards, they’d respond, “Hmm, that’s interesting!” rather than “Wow, these people are really screwed up!” In this case, you’re going to be the exotic tribe being studied, and when you think for the twentieth time about how you’re going to tank on the Integrated Reasoning section of the GMAT, you’ll go, “Hmm, that’s interesting!” Like a good mother, you’re kind and gentle with yourself. When you realize your mind has wandered, be like the mom who takes her lost child by the hand and says, “Honey, come back over here.” While I don’t have any hard data to support this, I think that how we come back to the breath is perhaps as important as staying focused or recognizing we have drifted away. I can’t emphasize this enough.

I’d like to dispel two misconceptions that have led many beginning meditators to quit. Many people believe that having thoughts during meditation is a sign of failure. They also think that they should be in a blissed-out state the whole time. These are both myths. Minds generate thoughts, some of which are quite useful, and it’s extremely unlikely that this is going to stop. You may well experience some blissful states and there’s no problem with that. Enjoy them! What we’re aiming to do when meditating, however, is to pay attention to and be with what is actually going on as it is, rather than trying to make anything happen. This may include noticing that there are lots of thoughts and feelings streaming by, some of which may be irritating, negative, heavy, or utterly surprising. I realize this seemingly passive approach is completely counter to most of what seems to have made you successful to date, so bear with me for a moment.

The Tibetan word for meditation is “gom,” which means to “become familiar with.” In this case, we’re becoming familiar with what’s going on inside us without trying to change it; allowing thoughts and feelings to flow through us without suppressing them or acting them out; slowing down enough to see our reactive, habitual patterns, which start to unwind; beginning to have enough space inside to see more clearly what’s really going on around us and responding appropriately; and letting go of the ways we may have tried to control or manipulate our world or have maintained a rigid persona because we no longer feel the need to protect ourselves from feeling certain feelings anymore. This ultimately gives us way more freedom and the courage to live more fully. Perhaps surprisingly, when we attend to our experience in this way, our minds naturally quiet down and we can feel more peace and joy, but this is through allowing, rather than striving. If you find you’re making a project out of meditating, tensing up and trying hard, see if you can let that go. Never take yourself too seriously when you are meditating (or doing anything, for that matter!). At the same time, you aren’t just zoning out or being sloppy. You want to be relaxed yet alert and bring some precision to what you are up to.