12.03.09
Newborn Concentration
I’ve had problems with concentration for years. Not a good thing for a writer. So as a former ADD candidate, I’ve explored ways that yoga aids my and other writers’ concentration. Only recently have I experienced concentration in a deeper way. Call it “newborn concentration.”
I’m fascinated that neuroscientists have been able to measure the brain wave of concentration for over thirty years (although yogis have experienced it for thousands of years). So, for instance, when most of us are chatting on a Blackberry while checking our daily planner and eating a panini sandwich, the brain waves in our frontal lobes would probably look like sharp jags on an EEG, bouncing at a rapid 13-36 oscillations a second. These busy brain waves are called beta brain waves.
What happens when yogis harness their breath and meditate? Brain waves in the frontal lobes of many of them slow down by half or more to a cool 6-13 oscillations a second. Alpha brain waves they’re called, and they mirror a brain on concentration.
Woe to us who live in the world of Twitter and Blackberries, right?
Consider another study whose results have long held my envy. In this study, scientists dipped a subject’s fingers into a glass of cold water or made loud clacking noises to monitor any shifts in the frontal lobes’ brain wave patterns. They didn’t shift. Or if they did, not by much.
In other words, these yogis can concentrate even when the phone rings or the dish clings.
That capacity has eluded me. For years, I tried to shut out all external distractions. I moved to quieter regions of
The problem? The slightest sound – a dish clanging in the sink, a neighbor’s leaf blower – threw off my concentration, and I’d become an agitated nutjob. I remember my first wife saying, “I just wonder what kind of spiritual practice you have that makes you so irritable.” I’m sure any alphas I mustered quickly jagged to betas.
But for several years, I have worked with a more inclusive form of meditation. Whereas Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutras encourage practitioners to withdraw from their senses and to shut out external stimuli in order to concentrate, the Tantric Kashmir Shaivism – and the text the Siva-Sutras – encourage practitioners to include random external stimuli as part and parcel of their meditation. The leaf blower becomes part of my focus – or it becomes the background to whatever my imagination centers on that morning for my writing. It’s not unlike my practice with zazen, or Zen meditation.
Dahlia, my five-month-old daughter, has become my glass of cold water. On most mornings, I now get her up early and let her mother sleep in. I hold her in my arms while I make a cup of tea and then bring her into my study and place her in her favorite “giraffe chair.” She watches as I light incense and situate myself on the mat. I then glide through a sequence I designed years ago – my writer’s concentration sequence. She gazes or crunches up her plastic baby “book” or gurgles or groans. I may be in a forward bend, my inner witness honing in on refining an idea for an essay or story, the contour of a character’s face just coming into the light of my imagination, and – then – Dahlia’s groans start amping up a notch or two.
I don’t ignore the babe or try to tune her out (woe to me if I did). I pop up, check on her, smile at her, say a few words of assurance, hand her a toy, and, once she seems satisfied, return to my forward bend – all without agitation. Who knows? The texture of her gurgle or the morning light across her pink cheek might find its way into a piece of writing some day.
Without agitation. That’s a key to this layer of creative concentration. I receive the sudden clack instead of blocking it. It’s an addition instead of an interruption.
I know that as Dahlia reaches the toddler stage, I’ll have a baby downward dog running barking beneath me on the mat, but Yoga As Muse for me is about discovering how to play with the world’s surprises and weave them right into my creative process.
As an old writer and a new papa, I’m trying to ride this (alpha) wave of concentration in a fresh way. Call it “newborn concentration.”
Peace,
Jeffrey
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