The problem of concentration during meditation has always interested me. In the past, I suffered so-called attention deficit, so with concentration during meditation I always had problems.
To each experienced meditation teacher I met in my life, a layman or a monk, I inquisitively asked the same question: "how to improve concentration during meditation". And received a lot of answers.
That is why the set of techniques and methods for improving concentration, which you will see here, will be impressive and detailed.
Stability of attention, concentration - important components of the practice of meditation. A more stable concentration will allow you to get a much greater effect from the practice and a result without the hard need to increase its duration.
Many people often run into a certain limit, they stop feeling that practice brings them new benefits. Then it's time for them to think about improving the quality of meditation, that is, concentration.
I studied literature, tested for myself various approaches to improving attention. And now I am ready to boast of success. My concentration improved significantly and, accordingly, the effect of the practice increased. And in this article I will talk in detail about what techniques and methods will help you to achieve a better focus of attention.
Why develop concentration during meditation?
Before continuing the article, it is necessary to answer the question "why", let it seem obvious to someone. Concentration improves the quality of meditation, allows you to dive deeper and get more benefits from meditation. Our attention is one of the most important qualities. It determines our peace of mind, our ability to achieve goals and achieve success in life, to overcome ourselves, to cope with our weaknesses. Where our attention is directed, our life goes. That is why it is so important to develop.
When I traveled around India, I met there a person with whom I took a Vipassana Goenki course in the Moscow region. He told me that he began to meditate for 4 hours a day and he feels how much the effect of practice has increased. I asked him if he had tried to improve the quality of meditation? Followed by a response from which I realized that the guy did not think about it.
Of course, the duration of the session plays a role, but you can not only close on it. One of my personal internal "complaints" about Goenki courses is that they make almost no emphasis on improving concentration during the sessions. Sleepy students at 4 in the morning are driven to the meditation hall, where they without any body preparation and workouts, still sleepy sit and meditate. Sitting sessions last up to 11 hours a day without a break for "walking meditation." Practitioners take an exhausting "amount", but the "efficiency" of such practice is not so great for such a volume, especially if we compare it with the experienced tortures.
Other traditions, such as the tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, pay more attention to the quality of the session, trying to give recommendations and conditions for good concentration, and also provides for the preparation of the body for long sessions.
I believe that improving concentration is an important component of development in individual practice, no less important than increasing the duration of a session. This is especially true in the context of lack of time, when there is no opportunity to lengthen the meditation. Improving the quality of meditation will allow you to feel at a new level, to increase the level of calm and awareness, to increase your efficiency. You will notice that situations that have previously put you out of yourself are now easily taken under control.
So what techniques allow us to increase the time of a clear focus of attention during practice, when the mind is concentrated and does not hover in thoughts? From the beginning, I'll start from the very, in my opinion, effective way.
"Checks" attention. Work on anticipation
I present to you one of the most effective ways to improve concentration, which helps me very well.
I love to give the following metaphor, which describes the features of our attention. Imagine that you took a pencil in one hand and an eraser in the other. You put an eraser on a pencil and drag it off to the side, forming tension. Now you tilt the pencil a little, so that the gum begins to slowly slide off of it.
Imagine that you need to hold it on a pencil, while continuing to keep it tilted. You can notice when the gum slips off and return it to its place every time. But it is much better to watch her continuously and correct her when she has already begun to slide.
You can also do with attention when it is distracted. As a rule, people notice that this happened when they were already stuck in their thoughts, but you can act with pre-emption. One can notice when the attention began to lose its “sharpness”, “slipping” from its object and, as it were, “correcting” it, transferring it to its initial state.
To do this, there is an approach that can be used in "soft" and "hard" forms.
Hard form
The rigid form was perfectly described by I. Budnikov in one of his articles. It suggests with every breath how to check your attention and “correct”, “freshen”, “sharpen” it, if it began to “slip”. Just inhaling, “evaluate” your attention, and if you notice that it has started to lose its “sharpness,” thoughts began to appear that your mind wanted to think about, just calmly transfer it to its original position.
That is, it turns out that you do not follow the breath discretely and only post-factum when it is distracted, but continuously and proactively check it, warning you of attempts to distract.
This is one of the best ways to strengthen concentration during practice, which helps me a lot, and I strongly advise you.
If you feel that this causes tension, relax with each exhalation, and with each inhale, continue to "refresh your attention." Or you can try the soft version.
Soft version
This is the same thing, only here the "check" of attention is used, not with every breath, but from time to time. This approach is offered by the teacher of meditation in the tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, Gen Lamrimp, arguing that attention may be "tired" if you test it with every breath. Therefore, he proposes to do this from time to time, simply, when you see it necessary, to inspect your attention during inhalation and “correct” it, if necessary.
Personally, I'm a hardliner. I do not feel fatigued if I "check" attention with every breath. But, again, experiment and see what works best for you.
I remind you that the "check" of attention should occur gently, relaxedly, without much effort and acceptance, like everything else during meditation.
Clarity and relaxation
According to the Tibetan tradition, correct meditation has three conditions: concentration, clarity and relaxation. Concentration is the subject of this article, and the other two components deserve separate detailed consideration. But here I will touch them briefly, since all these aspects of the practice are interrelated. Clarity must accompany concentration, and without relaxation the mind will not be stable.
Clarity is the ability to clearly observe the object of concentration. If you observe the sensations that arise when breathing, then they must appear before your attention clearly and not "zamyleno". I will give an example.
Some people during meditation are immersed in such a state of “half-asleep,” “drowsy oblivion,” and may begin to think: “here it is! In fact, this state is the opposite of clarity, and there is no need to meditate in it! During meditation, the mind must be clear, clear and vigorous. If you feel that you are losing clarity, open your eyes a little, correct your position and with the next breath “renew” your attention, make it sharp, not dull.
Also maintain relaxation. If you feel tension in your body during meditation, which prevents you from concentrating, begin to relax your body with each exhalation, as if mentally driving a wave of relaxation all over your body.
Immersion and continuity
As Victor Shiryaev wrote about meditation: "value the distance between inhalation and exhalation." And it is right. If you follow the sensations that arise when breathing, try to catch not only those sensations that occur during inhalation and exhalation, but also between them. Sensations are always and everywhere, it is just a question of how keen your attention is. Try to follow the breath continuously, and not discretely, just inhaling and exhaling.
Dive into the observation process. Our brain is such a thing that it quickly gets used to everything: after a while it ceases to observe the process of breathing with interest, starting just to mechanically mark it: "here is a breath and a breath." Try not to lose this interest, watch your breath as if you feel it for the first time, notice its nuances, differences, catch the most subtle sensations. Western mindfulness teachers say: observe it as a curios scientist, that is, watch as a curious scientist who sees some phenomenon for the first time.
Watch the breath continuously and immersed, and at each breath, “renew” it.
Breath count
This is the most popular advice given by many meditation teachers. He was also given to me by a nun from Taiwan. Nevertheless, personally this method does not really help me, although I have to help someone. It consists in the following: on the first inhale, think "one time", on the second one "two" and so on until ten, and then back.
Finish when you feel that the attention is more or less stabilized.
Only you need to concentrate not on the account, not on sensations when breathing. The score is like posts indicating the distance along the road, they just help you, but all your attention is still on the road.
Object of concentration
Teachers in the Tibetan tradition recommend choosing a part of the body to concentrate on the sensations of breathing, depending on the “type of personality of the meditator”. If you are rather phlegmatic, your mind calms down well, but quickly sinks into "drowsiness", losing clarity, then you are advised to concentrate on the area under the nostrils. The sensations there are more subtle and the mind seems to “sharpen”, waking up, concentrating on them. But if your problem is lack of attentional stability, as your mind is more agile and restless, it is advised to keep attention on the sensations in the stomach.
When breathing moves the diaphragm, the stomach inflates and deflates. These sensations are quite bright and noticeable, so it is relatively easy to concentrate on them. I myself have been following this advice for a long time and am seeing an improvement in concentration.
Body immobility
Body immobility is also one of the criteria for good stability. Surely, those of you who tried to practice "informal meditation" noticed that it is much more difficult to keep concentrating on the moment "here and now" during, say, running, than when we just sit in "formal" practice. This is because stillness and monotony soothes the mind.
But this is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, the intention not to move, not to scratch, can cause unpleasant sensations in the body, to which the mind will be distracted. On the other hand, if a meditating person succeeds in overcoming this distraction, then his concentration will be much deeper.
Compromise is to watch your movements, not to move a lot, and if there is a strong need to fix the body or to scratch yourself, then do it with full awareness and observation of sensations.
Session time
Of course, meditation is the thing in which quantity gradually turns into quality. The first 10 minutes of practice, as a rule, for many people (if they were not engaged in preparatory practices, which will be discussed in the next article), there is intense brainstorming. Only after some time the mind calms down a little and becomes more concentrated. And it is clear that the longer the session lasts, the more calm and stable the consciousness will become. But the truth is, this does not always happen.
I believe that it is necessary to find a compromise between quality and quantity, taking care not only of gradually increasing the time of sessions (which is also very good and useful), but also of improving concentration within a fixed-length session.
Remember, we are not monks!
I do not want concentration to become an end in itself and a hard criterion for successful practice. I do not want you to start torturing yourself after reading this article and reproaching that you do not maintain the perfect balance of attention.
Often I see the great importance that meditation concentration teachers attach to. Sometimes it even comes to statements from the category: "if you do not concentrate, then you do not meditate!" But life shows that there are people who are very easy to focus on, this is how their brain works. And it seems to them that the way they practice goes, it should go for everyone. But there are other people, for example, your humble servant, whose concentration develops in very slow steps, whose mind is quite “mobile” simply in its essence.
And the danger of the statements of the "fascists" of concentration lies in the fact that people who are not able to quickly teach their mind stability and silence will decide that meditation is not for them, that it does not work for them.
To create a counterweight to these statements, I say: do not bother much on concentration, especially at first. At least train yourself to sit every day. Even if during a 20-minute session you only manage to concentrate on a couple of 5-second intervals, this practice will still be of great benefit, believe my experience. Even if you do not concentrate, then you give your brain to "process" a huge amount of "not assimilated" information, which is expressed in the "internal dialogue".
Over time, simply apply the recommendations from this article, and your concentration will quietly improve. So you improve the effect of your practice. And most importantly, accept that your mind is such that it is worrying that it is constantly distracted. This is normal. So it is arranged. Love this mind. Accept him as he is now!
We are not monks, our every day is filled with affairs, worries, impressions that need attention. The load on our mind exceeds many times the load on the mind of a solitary hermit within the monastic walls. And even the mind of such a person sometimes “walks”, what can we say about you and me.
And one more thing to be warned about. Do not underestimate the power of habit! Our mind is getting used to everything, so at the beginning of the application of these tips you can feel a significant increase in the quality of the practice. But then the mind will get used to “check” attention, dive into it, will lose some interest in this process, and you may feel a slight pullback back (this does not mean that everything will return to the status quo, concentration with these techniques will still be much more than without them). This is normal, do not worry. Just calmly take it and further develop your attention.
Mind - helper or weapon?
Our mind is both a valuable helper and a weapon turned against us. In the form of an assistant, he presents us with valuable ideas, solving complex problems and situations. But, uncontrollable, it can also create a lot of problems: obsessive thoughts, mania, phobias, anxiety, etc.
This is especially true for people whose mind is very lively and lively, prone to fly into fantasy. In the absence of control, mobility, which is rather a positive quality, degenerates into chronic anxiety.
Almost all human suffering comes from our mind. The ability to control the mind is one of the most important human qualities if we want to suffer less. Therefore, it is important to engage in meditation. Therefore, it is important to increase mind control and concentration.
In this article, I talked about what needs to be done to improve concentration during the meditation itself.
In the next article, I tell you what to do before and after the practice in order to improve the quality of each session.
