As I answered the door to the Amazon delivery man he gawked in shock. “Damn” I muttered, pulling off the strange-looking EEG headset that was on my head. “Sorry”. I said grabbing his package and closing the door. As a ‘human guinea pig’ for a ground-breaking experiment with Cambridge neuroscientists I wore an EEG (electroencephalography) headset that recorded my brain activity every time I meditated. And sometimes I forgot I was wearing it. For three years I experienced ten different ways to ‘train my mind’ and improve my life — all in the name of science and self-exploration.
Millions do it worldwide and the health benefits are widely reported, but could meditation really unglue me from my phone and stop me yelling at my kids? Ten years ago I would never have thought I’d have a regular meditation practice, or that meditating would have a beneficial effect upon my life. Yet in 2012 when a rare illness left me blind and paralysed for almost a year I needed new ways to manage the trauma I suffered. That experience opened up the spirituality doors and in 2017 I began a meditation experiment that changed everything. The study was a gateway to meditation and compared techniques such as mindfulness, mantra practices, visualisation, breath and movement techniques and even self-hypnosis and psychedelics. I was curious to see which methods lowered my stress levels, connected me to others and helped me sleep. My discoveries resulted in a book called Finding My Right Mind: One Woman’s Experiment to put Meditation to the Test, which is a companion for anyone curious to explore which meditation style best suits them.
After practising each technique for eight weeks each I had meditated for over 600 hours. The neuroscientists were testing a new way to capture and measure my subjective experiences as a continuous flow of information. By recording how I felt — like how emotional, bored or distracted I was on a moment-by-moment basis they could compare my subjective experiences alongside my EEG data. If successful this new model could help patients in the future with significantly improved mental health diagnoses and monitoring of chronic illness. My curiosity to find new ways to take care of my mental health was informing science in an exciting new way.
As my experiment progressed I realised that meditation was not a panacea. Learning to meditate didn’t eliminate stressors from my life, but it did help me manage them better. Meditation is not one-size-fits-all and I learnt I to take a bespoke approach to helping myself. Each method had subtly different goals and intentions. Transcendental Meditation (TM) used a sacred word repeated silently inside my mind to evoke deep relaxation and stress relief. Zen required me to spend weeks learning Buddhist teachings before I could join a class. Here I learnt the seated practice of Zazen in order to quieten my emotional reactivity. In contrast, a Tibetan tantric practise called Green Tara for which I visualised a feisty green goddess and chanted ancient texts, guided me down a more altruistic, spiritual path. Each practice brought new challenges and with that — new insights. By exploring breath and movement practices like Transformational Breath and Kundalini yoga, along with the religious practice of Christian meditation, I was exposed to a wide variety of ways to ‘train my mind’. And meditating, I learnt, really was training my mind.
There are hundreds of ways to meditate and while the effects of a practice aren’t always attributable to one technique, I learnt which methods worked for me. I found new, deeper ways to connect to my family and be kinder to myself. I improved my sleep habits and one technique eliminated anger in a way I could never have imagined. As I improved my mental health I provided the scientists with valuable data. Meditating didn’t always require me to sit in a room silently by myself. I meditated while walking, dancing, lying down or standing up. I focused on my breath or someone I loved. I repeated one word over and over inside my mind, all of which had different effects upon my brain. I brought meditation (and particularly a sense of mindfulness) into my life by adapting things I was already doing — like the washing up or gardening. Formal meditation can be practiced in almost any safe environment — and it can be fun. I even adapted some practices to do with my children, spreading the benefits further. The scientists discovered what went on inside my mind when I meditated. I discovered what made me tick.
Vanessa Potter is a meditation advocate and author of Finding My Right Mind: One Woman’s Experiment to put Meditation to the Test (Welbeck Publishing) priced £12.99, available online and from all good bookstores.
