To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be

Miguel De Unamuno

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted and part of the reason why is that my meditation practice for the past month has been “off.”  I don’t mean that I haven’t been meditating.  To the contrary, I’ve been meditating every day since I began this blog.  I just haven’t been getting much out of the practice.  I no longer feel positive energy I used to get while meditating and I don’t get that awesome buzz I used to get after meditating.  I’m back on an emotional roller-coaster, and I definitely feel work stress more and more.

In my previous post, I recommended not to judge yourself while or after meditating, and I’ve taken that advice to heart.  Even though I’ve sensed that I was “slacking,” I’ve been patient.  I don’t judge myself as much as I used to and I try not to admit to myself that a meditation session was subpar.  But it’s been long enough that I now realize that something has to change or else I might just be daydreaming every day for 30 minutes for the rest of my life.  And those thoughts that I used to have before I started meditating have returned with a vengeance – what am I doing with my life, is this the right job or should I be spending my time doing something else, what have I accomplished lately and why haven’t I accomplished anything?  You know, those thoughts, the ones I thought meditation was supposed to cure me of forever.

So two days ago, I was walking to get donuts and ice cream with G (it’s hard to resist Dynamo Donuts and Humphrey Slocombe if you live nearby, and yes, just one of these desserts is not enough), and he brought up that he wasn’t feeling the effects of meditation as strongly as before either.  The quality of meditation for both of us have decreased concurrently, and we both feel fewer benefits from meditation.  I wondered why we were not getting better at meditating.  After all, aren’t you supposed to get better at things that you make a habit of doing?

So after our discussion, I decided to do some light research.  What I discovered was equally insightful and obvious.

Habits are useful because they enable us to develop a practice with reliability and consistency.  This is because we take away the decision to do something and simply do it.  So in beginning to meditate, I didn’t have to decide to meditate or to find time to meditate.  I just did it after a couple months, and it was natural.  This is a good thing. 

However, there’s something else that happens when you develop a habit.  You stop thinking.  When we practice something continually and it becomes a habit, like parallel parking or locking the front door after leaving the house, we don’t have to think about doing them.  That’s why, you often can’t remember if you locked the front door or not.  It turns out, habits are great for turning your mind off.

In my research, I discovered there’s also a biological mechanism for habitual behavior.  Neuroscientists have discovered that habitual behavior is generally activated in the basal ganglia, which also helps with cognition, pattern recognition and voluntary motor movements (people who suffer damage to the basal ganglia often have disorders such as Tourette’s Syndrome, Parkinsons’ Disease, or OCD).  Decision-making, however, is activated in the prefrontal cortex.  When behaviors switch from being active decisions to routine decisions, the prefrontal cortex is no longer activated.  It essentially shuts off.  This allows your brain to do complex behaviors with very little neural activity or effort.  

While this helps us to cook dinner or brush our teeth, I’m realizing that habit formation can be very counterproductive for something that takes a large amount of active mental control, such as meditation.  What this boils down to may be obvious – yes, I need to remember to focus more. But, this research helps me to approach this challenge with more than just self-judgment.  I now realize that I’ve gone on auto-pilot during my meditation because I’ve made it a habit.  I need to recognize that meditation is the continual decision to focus and to remain engaged.  Complete and utter awareness means that you can’t rely on habit.  Meditation does not follow the rules of other activities. In routine daily activities, we can improve our efficiency and quality without actively engaging our minds.  With meditation, if we so much as relax our mental control, we lose our focus entirely.  So in essence, deciding to meditate every day is a great habit.  However, practicing meditation and focusing on an image can never become a habit, and if it does, you’re no longer meditating. 

Photo credit: Jaina