A Meditation for Insomnia and Anxiety: The Positive Feedback Loop of Shamatha

By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of the Mindfulness+ podcast

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Imagine a wildebeest out in the savannah, eating grass. Everything is calm and peaceful — and then the wildebeest suddenly thinks it hears a snake rustling in the grass. So it gets spooked and starts to run, and the wildebeests around it get spooked and start to run. And the more those wildebeests run, the more the whole herd gets spooked, and before you know it you've got a stampede.

This is a classic example of a positive feedback loop.

Notice that the word positive here does not imply that the results you get from the feedback loop are desirable. Depending on who you are and where you are, a stampede may or may not be a good thing.

Here’s another example — one that’s more relevant to mindfulness. It's about a positive feedback loop that really changed my life early on in my practice. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was originally driven to practice mindfulness because of insomnia. On the rare occasion that I could fall asleep back then, I generally wasn't able to stay asleep through the night. The next day I'd feel like a zombie. But before I knew it, night rolled around again and I felt even more anxious about falling asleep. I was facing a positive feedback loop with very negative consequences for me.    

When I started a mindfulness practice, I noticed something spontaneous happen: my breath dropped. I went from experiencing anxious, shortened breathing up in the chest to feeling my breath migrate deep into my abdomen. And the more I breathed from my abdomen the more relaxed my body became. And the more relaxed my body became, the easier it was to keep breathing from my belly.

In both instances, I experienced a positive feedback loop. However, the results were far more desirable after I started practicing mindfulness. I felt so much more relaxed throughout the day, more so than I ever had in my life. I couldn't believe it. I'd discovered this thing that seemed to be a cure all for everything that ailed me. I approached the night with a totally different attitude: breathing from the belly, soft in the body, relaxed. Over time I would actually look forward to going to bed.

I'm not here to claim that mindfulness is going to take care of your insomnia or any other problem. It may or may not. What I have found, though, is that mindfulness helps everything work better. Whatever issues you're struggling with in life and whatever challenges, mindfulness generally helps us meet those challenges more optimally.

So, how can we practice with a positive feedback loop? How can we use this natural mechanism to develop our mindfulness practice?

Here's one way that people have been doing it for literally thousands of years — because they’ve found it to be incredibly effective. It goes like this: we sit still and focus on restful states in the body.

When we focus on restful states in the body, our attention amplifies the pleasant sensation. The stillness and restfulness in the body actually becomes more pleasant the more we focus on it. The more pleasant it feels the easier it is to focus. The easier it is to focus the more we’re able to focus on the pleasant sensations. The pleasant sensations then become more pleasant, and we enter nature’s feedback loop.

In the Buddhist tradition this kind of meditation is called Shamatha. Shamatha often gets translated as "calm, abiding meditation.” But the word also has connotations of high concentration because as we're in this feedback loop we become more and more concentrated. The more blissful we feel, the more rewarded we are to continue concentrating more and more. That is the basic theory.

As we get ready for practice, there are a couple of things that you can be on the lookout for.

First, know that the longer you practice, the deeper you practice. So if you'd like to really explore the depths of this Shamatha practice or the positive feedback loop practice, I'd invite you to extend the time a little bit. You might go from five minutes to ten and ten minutes to twenty and so on just to see where that takes you.

Second, know that just because we're focusing on pleasant sensation it doesn't mean for a moment that there aren't unpleasant sensations. The body may feel uncomfortable at times and the mind may be racing, and that's okay. None of those things have to go away, and none of those things have to be problems. When we do this kind of meditation we're simply focusing on the pleasant sensations and letting everything else be in the background of awareness.

Meditation Practice: Shamatha

Go ahead and find a comfortable place where you can sit still for a moment without being disturbed or interrupted.

Start by letting the body settle in to the posture — the posture that allows the spine to be naturally upright but without excessive effort. Take a moment to settle in to a posture that allows you to be both relaxed and alert. Feel the ground beneath you, supporting you and see if you're able to relax a little bit more. How can you sit in this moment with even greater ease.                         

At this point I'd like you to bring awareness to the breath, particularly the breath as it shows up through the torso, feeling the expansion and contraction of the torso and just joining your awareness with the flow of sensation. Breathing in, you can clearly sense the feeling of breathing in. Breathing out, you can be clear about the sensations of breathing out. And I want you to focus specifically now on the out-breath. Notice with each out-breath through the torso there's a natural wave of relaxation of letting go. All of the muscles that work so hard to create space for the breath to enter the lungs and enter the body, when you breath out they just soften and let go. and as you focus on this sensation of relaxation and letting go, you may notice that it wants to spread beyond the torso, out in to the limbs, through the head, through the entire body and if that's the case you can just let it do that. Let the relaxation spread. Or you may notice that this feeling of relaxation wants to remain local and concentrated in the torso. If that's the case, that's great, too. You can just stay with this area of focus in the torso sill focusing on the profound ease and restfulness, the letting go that comes with each out-breath.

Good. After doing this for a few moments you may start to notice even when you're not exhaling and letting go, there’s still a quality of softness and restfulness in the body that you can actually stay in constant contact with through your awareness. Even if the body is not one-hundred percent relaxed in this moment or the mind completely calm, you can let any discomfort, any unpleasantness in experience fade in to the background for the moment. While in the foreground you stay with this quality of rest and relaxation.

Notice that focusing on this calm and rest in the body is intrinsically rewarding. The more you focus, the more pleasant it becomes. The more pleasant it becomes, the easier it is to focus.

You can stay here as long as you would like, softening and surrendering to this natural feedback loop that is always here, always available to us.

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I hope this lesson benefits you, and I hope you were able to get a taste of Shamatha meditation: an abiding that involves deep concentration and blissful calm.

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Don’t Forget to Look Up: A Lesson in Mindful Awareness

If you’re local to Utah, you know about Zion National Park and a famous hike called the Narrows. It's a gorgeous slot canyon that people travel from all over the world to see.

I once got a permit with a friend of mine from Norway to hike this slot canyon. I'd heard about the dangers of flash flooding, and I went into the ranger’s station feeling nervous. I had all these questions running in my mind — Did I have the gear I needed? What if it rains? Do I need a helmet? — as I asked the ranger, "Do you have any final advice for me?”

I think the ranger could sense my nervousness, but she just smiled at me and said, "Yeah. Don't forget to look up."

I thought this was funny advice. It might have been the very last thing on my mind to actually remember to pay attention to the beautiful scenery for this hike that I had gone to great lengths to do and that people come from all over the world to do.

But sure enough the next morning when I got into the river with my friend, I noticed that the path was really uneven and the further down the canyon we got, the quicker the current got, the deeper the water in some points, and it was hard to keep my footing. At a lot of different points along the ten-hour hike I noticed myself staring down at my feet. And I remembered this ranger’s advice. Don't forget to look up.

It's occurred to me since then that this is very good advice for living a mindful life as well.

In a similar way as hiking the Narrows in Zion, there are different things going on in life moment to moment that can trip us up. Things that can absorb our attention and cause our attention to collapse. This is one of the great challenges in human life. We tend to collapse around a challenging event, and we lose the perspective of the whole, the entirety of what's going on around us.

Another simple example of this is when you stub your toe. All is peachy and dandy, and then your attention absolutely collapses into the throbbing pain in your toe. It’s like there's nothing else happening in the world but this throbbing pain. Suddenly, anything you're aware of in previous moments is collapsed in to the problem.

At this point, I want to say that it's wonderful that we're actually wired to pay attention to problems, right? if we didn't, we wouldn't survive life in the city. We wouldn't pay any attention to the horn of a bus that's blaring and it would flatten us as we blithely walk out in to the street. So it's very functional and adaptive that our attention is wired to pay attention to problems.

The downside is that we can spend our whole lives attending to problems.

Moment to moment we can get caught in this state of collapse that's ongoing. And that's what I noticed vividly on my hike in Zion. If I didn't remember to slow down and take a breath — get my footing and look up — I would've missed the spectacular scenery that was the whole point of being there.

Similarly, as we practice mindfulness we can remember to slow down, take a breath, soften, and look up, so to speak. It doesn't mean that the ground isn't still uneven. It doesn't mean that there aren't still obstacles and challenges in our environment.

What it means is that when we're aware of ourselves looking down or in or collapsing in to the problem that comes up moment to moment, we can remember that ranger’s advice.

Look up. Relax. Let awareness start to sprawl. As we do that, the challenges of the moment are still here, but they're held in the context of the whole: all of life. The experience of the experience of the totality of this moment which if you allow your awareness to relax in to it, you'll find is inherently rewarding to pay attention to.

We are going to practice noticing the way that awareness collapses into a problem and we're going to notice the natural ability of awareness to open back up. To take in and more fully appreciate the whole. So I invite you to find a comfortable place to sit down and to settle in.

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Start by bringing awareness to the physical body, feeling sensation flowing through you.

Notice the rise and fall of the breath — and the sensation of breathing. Notice that on each out-breath the body just naturally softens and lets go, making way for the next breath.

Now, I want you to bring attention to the most challenging aspect of your experience in this moment. It might be discomfort in the body, it might be emotional discomfort, or it might be a thought in the mind about a condition in life that's challenging that you. Just allow your attention to be absorbed in whatever it is in this moment.

If your attention is drawn to a sensation in the body or an emotion, you can just observe it very closely, noticing its texture, quality, and shape. If it's a condition in your life that you find your mind returning to again and again, you can notice what impact that thought has on the body, what emotion it brings up and what response, fully allowing it to be present. Not pushing on it or struggling with it, but rather enveloping it in awareness in this moment.

And you can let the contracted muscle of awareness start to relax a little bit, start to let go. Feel the spaciousness of awareness even as the challenge may persist.

Notice the physical body in this moment. And you can be aware of emotional activity coming up in awareness in this moment. Letting it rise, linger, and pass — letting awareness fully envelop and surround and permeate all emotional activity.

And you can be aware of thoughts coming up in the moment, thoughts rising in awareness. You don't have to latch on to them or dive in to them or think about them any further. You can just notice thoughts rising in awareness. Awareness, like the wide open sky — letting it all be present.

Notice that the world itself is also rising in your awareness. Feel the vastness, openness, spaciousness of awareness itself and the way that experience naturally arises in the space of this awareness. There's room for it all and room for more.

Staying in contact with this spaciousness, you can notice again the challenge we started with. And notice that this challenge — this stone in a river — is just one element in an infinitely beautiful landscape full of other stones. The river flowing, trees hanging off the canyon walls, the scenery towering over us, all about us.

This moment and every moment is an invitation to look up, look in, to experience the fullness of this moment. We're reminded to open back up in to this spaciousness of awareness that is always already the case.

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Want to deepen your practice? Download the Mindfulness Essentials course.

Concentration, Clarity, and Equanimity: Three Mindful Skills

By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of the Mindfulness+ podcast

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Why do we hear so much about the breath when we talk about mindfulness?

There's a good reason for it. The breath is with us all the time. In this moment wherever you are and whatever you're doing, you're doing it in a body, and that body is breathing. Because of this, virtually all meditative traditions make use of the breath. It's a ready-made object of meditation.

Focusing on the breath is also an intuitive way for us to contact our awareness. The breath moves slowly enough that most people are able to track it immediately, without years of practice. When we pay attention to the breath, we open up different opportunities in awareness. It can be a really powerful tool in developing mindfulness.

In addition, breathing makes it easier for us to develop basic meditative skills.

My experience is that virtually every teacher talks about these skills in one way or another, and you see them in the ancient texts as well. But I've never come across a clearer framing of it than a framing from Shinzen Young — an American born teacher who has really influenced my practice. I feel a lot of gratitude for him.

Young talks about mindfulness as a skill set. He says any time we practice mindfulness we're practicing concentration, clarity, and equanimity.

Concentration is just what it sounds like. Most people intuitively understand that concentration means focusing on one thing while letting other things be in the background, out of focus. There are more details to cover, but for the time being we can leave it at that.

Clarity helps us notice what’s happening moment to moment. This is really important because when we're able to get clear on what's happening moment to moment, we become free from it. Rather than being totally buried and lost in an experience, we take a step back and witness it. We're able to see it clearly from a slight distance, and this allows us to come back in to experience with a certain level of spaciousness and freedom. Clarity improves our objective behavior in life.

Equanimity is about acceptance. It’s our ability to just accept what's happening moment to moment — to not interfere with the flow of experience. Often, the moment I introduce this concept, hands shoot up in the room and people say: "Woah, what if it's appropriate to interfere? What if something's going on that I don't want to see happen? What if there's injustice, violence, and my job is to act?" Those are great questions. The point here is that when we're deeply accepting, when we cultivate this quality of equanimity and awareness, it doesn't mean we're not still passionately engaged in the world. What it means is that we're not in denial of what's happening. We're open, present, and receptive. We allowing the fullness of experience moment to moment to inform us. Fully informed, we're able to act more appropriately and skillfully in life.

Now, let’s take a moment to practice these skills, using the breath as the foundation of our practice.

Wherever you are, I encourage you to find a little perch or somewhere where you can settle in. Allow yourself to come in to a posture where you can relax and also be alert.

For a moment you can just allow your awareness to fill the entire physical body. Like water soaking into a sponge, you can allow your awareness to totally soak through the physical body.

You can bring awareness to the torso: notice the expansion and contraction of the torso as you breath in and breathe out.

I'd invite you at this point to breathe in a little more fully than you usually do on the in-breath, filling your lungs with oxygen and feeling the stretch through the torso as you breathe in more fully. And likewise on the out-breath you can breathe out a little more fully than you normally would. Pushing the air out and feeling the collapse. The emptying of the lungs and torso. Feeling this contraction. Letting that go, you can come back to normal breathing.

Just letting the breath move through you naturally, not trying to control it in any way. Notice at this point the top of the in-breath. Breathing in as if you were a photographer on an expedition trying to take a photograph of a rare species. I want you to pay special attention to the top of the in-breath. See if you can notice the point at which the in-breath becomes the out-breath. The exotic creature rears its head, the out-breath.

You can do the same at the bottom of the out-breath: see if you can notice the very moment at which the in-breath appears. As if you were trying to capture a photograph of that very moment that the in-breath appears.

Notice that however closely you look, you'll never find an actual line or moment when the in-breath becomes the out-breath. In-breath and out-breath are just words and ideas. When we plunge into the actual territory, we experience that the in-breath and the out-breath are seamlessly intertwined.

So you can let go of in-breath and out-breath and let go in to simply breathing. Neither in-breath or out-breath; just the organic whole. The unbroken flow of breathing.

As you stay with breathing, you can allow the out-breath particularly to soften you even more. With each out-breath you feel the body let go even more, riding the breath like a wave into deeper and deeper relaxation.

As you soften in the body you'll notice a natural quality of acceptance arise, an ability to just allow the body to be as it is. Allow this entire moment to be as it is. The body might not be perfectly comfortable, and that's perfectly okay. There's a part of you that can just allow it to be exactly as it is.

Thoughts continue to flow through the mind, and there's no need to do anything about them. You can allow thought to flow through the mind as naturally as blood flows through the veins. Whatever's happening in the body and mind and the world around you, you can allow it. You can hold it with this quality of acceptance, with equanimity.

You can stay in contact with these flavors of awareness, having a natural settledness of focus and concentration in life. You can allow things to be as they are and deeply enjoy the flow of life that we're always immersed in as long as we're breathing.

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Transcribed by Seth McConkie, edited by Jon Ogden

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Tricycle Feature: Latter-day Zen

Enjoy the most recent feature of Lower Lights in Tricycle, a publication focusing on the independent voice of Buddhism in the West.  Read here

Webinar - Parenting: Mastering the Art of Ongoing Growth

In this call, Thomas speaks with master teachers Dr. Terri O'Fallon and Kim Barta about how a developmental perspective can help Parents and children in their journey of growth and flourishing.

•Explore what is meant by both child development and adult development
•Consider fascinating examples of how child and adult development interact
•Offer simple practices for cultivating greater compassion and understanding toward both parent and child