Why Can't I Meditate?

You may eat right, take your vitamins and do water aerobics to keep in shape. But one thing you probably just can’t seem to do is meditate. Despite the obvious benefits that meditation offers for health and managing stress easily, most of us have trouble settling into the serene quiet that meditation offers.

The benefits of meditation are indeed numerous, ranging from the physical to the spiritual. On the physical side, it can reduce the stimulus that overloads our bodies with stress hormones and elevated blood pressure. On the spiritual side it can provide a place of quiet exploration, said to be basic for the spiritual quest.

Though meditation has grown significantly in numbers over the last several decades, it is still successfully practiced by a very small percentage of the population. Many of us know how it can benefit us. Yet if you are like most, sitting still feels like being put in irons and told to sit in the corner. Let’s face it, there is a reason it’s so hard to take that leap to quiet contemplation.

The answer may come in the biology of the brain. An increasing amount of research says we form our brains around our experiences. In other words, whether we like it or not, we become biologically tuned, possibly even addicted, to the lives we lead. As our lives become faster and faster it becomes harder to make the jump back to something as slow or as or beneficial as sitting quietly.

For high speed westerners meditation has other challenges. First it was created in both foreign and ancient cultures. We don’t have a modern western language for meditation and have to borrow the sights, sounds and rhythms of India and the Far East where the traditions were strongest. Put simply, when we are already trying something new it’s hard to relate to exotic languages, chanting and sounds.

Second is a complete blurring of the dividing line between the world of commerce and the world of hearth and home. In his pivotal book, ‘The Pattern Language’, architect Christopher Alexander, calls for the fundamental, almost primal need for a transition from “street life,” to the quiet security of a home.

Home was once a place where we could cast off the pace of the outside world and feel quite safe and secure. If you envision yourself proceeding to your front door through a small Japanese garden, or through the thick, cool walls of a Mediterranean courtyard and you may get a sense of how wonderful this can feel.

Inside the traditional home, people could act out different roles that centered on relaxation and simple pleasures like eating. Meditation doesn’t seem so far from the pace of this world. On the other hand, in the modern house, the world of commerce holds equal ground inside in the form of TV, radio, internet and cell phones. You never slow down, you never experience retreat and this gives stress no outlet.

There are a few things you can do to calm your household, even with modern and ancient technology. First, consider going on a quest for music that separates you from the day to day world. Experiment with classical music from the 16th and 17th centuries known as baroque. A lot of baroque music has a tempo close to one beat per second, the pace of the human heart. This has been shown to be beneficial to mood, focus and a sense of relaxation.

Other sounds, particularly those from nature, seem to be incredibly calming. After all, humans listened intently to the sounds of nature for signals of safety or threat.

Water fountains can provide a safe, soothing sound that bespeaks safety. Wind chimes have also been used for thousands of years enliven and change the sense of time in homes and temples.

Modern recordings of the sounds of surf, rivers and birds are also very effective calming devices. These are all accessible to anyone with a CD player or IPod. Electronics extends the range of calming sources of sound and can change our entire perception of our environment. We provide an example of how this works on our web site.

A powerful but less known sound that can change our state of mind is drumming. This is not your 15 year old on a new drum set, but the soul-satisfying, rhythmic drumming of ancient, native instruments. These sounds were refined and improved over millennia. Is it any wonder it is hard to keep still when we hear a great African beat or Tahitian drum? In fact, Ayruvedic medicine teaches that certain drum tones break up stagnate energy thereby preventing disease.

Whatever audio selections you choose, play these recordings at low volume most of the time. Music and drumming is actually very stimulating to the nervous system. The lower it is played, the more likely it will be calming, centering and not ultimately fatiguing.

However, any music that calms, relaxes and creates a positive state of mind is worth trying. Specialists in the field say that non verbal, non choral music is best. Vocal music engages the active, critical and logical part of the brain, so it should be avoided as a relaxation tool.

If any of these methods help clear your mind of the day’s events, it has brought you closer to meditative calm. In fact many spiritual practices in both the east and west claim that all of life is a meditation. The essence of meditation is being aware and clear headed.

With moments of clear headedness, if you ever choose to meditate in a more traditional and quiet form, you will find it much easier to do so. The jump from the sounds of your home to actual meditation won’t be too far to take.