- Image by dullhunk via Flickr
On Fridays, after a regular practice session, our shala is open for quiet meditation. This is a new experience for me, even as I’ve read much about the mental and physical health benefits accrued by experienced practitioners. As someone who is totally exhausted after practice – indeed, I couldn’t move another muscle even if I wanted – I always think it will be easy to settle in, and pass 30 minutes in quiet stillness.
Sure enough though, even as my body is spent and motionless, my mind starts to wander, and wander, and wander some more. “Damn”, I think, “here we go again”. Just a few minutes in, and I’m losing a battle – with myself. “This is going to be the longest 30 minutes of my life!” What to do?
Some experts say to simply LABEL your thoughts and feelings. Just find a word to place on the thought or feeling – and then – let it go. Does this really work? How does this trick work?
Recent brain imaging studies seem to show that when a word is applied to a negative emotion, the brain changes how it processes that emotion and shifts processing to neural systems that avoid centers of the brain (the amygdala, in particular) that send neural projections to our face, gut and heart (areas where we tend to physically “feel” our bad feelings). It seems that our ability to use words is an important tool in how we cope with emotional experience. Either we succumb to the storms of negative emotions that can well up inside us from time to time (and feel lousy inside), or we can manage these feelings – using our words – and feel less lousy inside. Apparently, the use of words, alters neural processing – leading us to experience less tightening in the chest, clenching in the gut, etc., etc. than we would otherwise feel when negative emotions come over us. One of the researchers, David Cresswell, remarks: “This is an exciting study because it brings together the Buddha‘s teachings – more than 2,500 years ago, he talked about the benefits of labeling your experience – with modern neuroscience.”
But this is easier said than done.
How do I label a thought? How do I label an emotion? I mean, “I feel, um, um, frustrated, lousy, anxious … crap … I’m not exactly sure how I feel? What’s the word I’m looking for?”
Indeed – the words – the words – as in, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” WORDS. Do I know enough words? How many words are there anyway to describe all the possible feelings that a person can feel? How many do you know?
Check this list out. There are more than 3,000 words in the English language to describe various feelings. Thank you Peter Mark Roget (who, ironically, worked on the first thesaurus as a means to cope with negative feelings associated with depression). I will bring my thesaurus – full of these tools to help me label my feelings – to meditation practice from now on!
Genes 2 Brains 2 Mind 2 Me 
hahahhahah John! I love you! This is exactly how I feel while faced with the seemingly relaxing task of “sitting quietly with my breath”! It sounds like you’ve got the same kind of rapid-fire, constantly thinking and over analyzing… thinking, thinking in circles… mind as I do. I recently started taking a Meditation class here in Maine, and it was quite interesting. While I don’t bring my Thesaurus (although that might help!), I find it REALLY helpful for me to visualize my breath coming into my body (explicitly) and out again. Focusing my mind with thoughts and images like that is the only way I’ve found success (so far) with meditation. Unfortunately, I had to stop going to the Meditation class because it conflicted with Maddie’s bedtime (she was NOT handling my absence), but I have the book and cd “Insight Meditation”. I plan to work through it at some point in my future 🙂 All the best, and I can’t wait to hear about your vastly expanded vocabulary the next time I’m at Alluem 🙂 Namaste.
Great post, John. Some interesting research here and some important implications for teaching students how to write. The link to the 3,000+ feeling words speaks to the fact that we have the tools to describe incredible subtleties of emotions. While it’s easy to say “I feel happy” (or even less specifically – “I feel good”), you (and I) have a much clearer understanding of what I’m feeling when I use words like “content” or “joyful” or “energized.” But it requires more awareness or more mindfulness to find these words.
responding to your post on my blog-thanks for the thought-provoking post! It was fun to think about-
[…] Image by dullhunk via Flickr On Fridays, after a regular practice session, our shala is open for quiet meditation. This is a new experience for me, even as I've read much about the mental and physical health benefits accrued by experienced practitioners. As someone who is totally exhausted after practice – indeed, I couldn't move another muscle even if I wanted – I always think it will be easy to settle in, and pass 30 minutes in quiet stillne … Read More […]