Two weeks ago I began a five week More Than Meditation Course and I wrote about my experiences in the blog post Discovering the State of Stillness.

Last week, we had our second session and I felt a lot more comfortable and open to learning how meditation can help me.  The session was facilitated by Dr Daniel Lewis who also explained some of the questions I had racing around my mind about the true benefits of meditation.  One of things I didn’t truly understand is this concept of the “collective” as it was mentioned a few times through the evening.  In my mind, I had my own doubts of doing a seated group meditation with 49 others in the room but I came from the position of not knowing otherwise.  All my meditations have been “half-arsed” attempts at listening to meditation apps before I go to sleep on some evenings or at the end of a yoga class and used as a wind down.  All lying down and all with misguided thinking that meditation was there to induce me to sleep.  I was wrong.

Dr Lewis mentioned that as a group, or a “collective”, the state of the meditation is more intense.  He mentioned the concept of “mirror neurones” which I hadn’t heard of before.

“Mirror neurones are a special class of brain cells that fire not only when an individual performs an action, but also when the individual observes someone else make the same movement” (Susan Perry: Mirror Neurones, Brain Facts)  This immediately got me thinking about its applications with my work in social learning within workplaces.  Is this what is missing in corporate workplaces today – the idea of “collective learning” and indeed, if we were to change the idea of how people work, connect and learn together in corporations (away from a hierarchical approach and more of a networked manner), is the answer in engaging large groups of people to work in this new way who can then, in turn, inspire others to role model and mirror their behaviours?

I couldn’t dwell on this idea too much as we had some more learning and meditations to do but I had a sneaking suspicion there has to be a lot more to social learning than just a new corporate fad – it’s the way we’re wired.

He then showed a short video of how some scientists had rigged up what looked like a shower cap with lots of electrodes on a Tibetan monk.  They wanted to measure the brain wave activity as he meditated.  My first thought was the resultant brain wave activity would have slowed down but it was actually the opposite.  While in a restful, meditative state, the brain is still working but there are different parts of the brain that become active.

Some of the meditation techniques we learned in the session was a ‘Senses Meditation’.  We assumed our restful positions on the chair and Dr Lewis guided us through a short meditation that involved our 5 senses: we had to look at a colour; hear a sound; feel the touch of our clothes under our fingers; taste something in our mouths.  It was followed soon after with a Mindful Walking exercise where we stood and walked around the room focussing on something for 10 seconds and then switching focus.  The intention was to provide us with some meditation techniques that we can incorporate into our day.  During my daily walks, I have incorporated this technique and it’s amazing how you can ‘zone out’ of what is happening around you and focus intensely on a sound, a crack in the pavement, a colour, a blade of grass.

My best meditation was the one with sultanas.

We each picked out a sultana in a bowl and we went through a meditation that involved feeling the sultana in our fingers, then putting it on our lips, and slowly then feeling its skin, and taste in different parts of our mouth.  I don’t know how long this meditation went for but I can truthfully say, that my mind was totally focussed on it and I don’t recall any stupid thoughts wander in throughout it.  I had completely zoned out of any meandering thoughts and I felt it was a ‘win’.  At the end of the meditation, I do recall thinking to myself, “I wish I had more sultanas in my life” if it meant that my crazy brain would just sit still for a moment!  The whole idea of this meditation was to teach us about mindful eating.

(If you’ve seen how our Greek family gets together and eats you’d quickly realise that mindfulness doesn’t enter anywhere into the picture).

So this week, our homework is to up our daily meditation practice to 10 minutes and to use any of the techniques provided.  So far, I’ve been successful in meditating every day and on my way to making it a daily practice (I’m trying to get to 50 and hopefully, something I just happen to do as part of my daily routine).

I also like the additional support material and references they provide via email through the week to explain mindful meditation practice.  One in particular, was this fantastic Ted talk by Andy Puddicombe who explains the transformative power of just resting the brain for 10 minutes per day.  It’s worth watching.

Some of the things I have noticed in the past week is that I have been more focussed when people are talking to me and I drop what it is I’m doing to focus on them without getting irritated that my train of thought was disturbed.

What was really interesting was that yesterday, while in the kitchen making some shortbread, my focus was totally on the task itself.  The way the butter and flour felt in my hands, the way I prepared the dough into the dish, the way I pricked some holes into the biscuits.  My mind was zoomed in on this and not thinking about anything else.

I’m looking forward to more next week and already seeing some positive changes.

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