Getting Good at Meditation

We spend a lot of time on meditation in our chronic pain group sessions and often talk about the importance of regular practice. It is a core element of our program and we feel it is an essential part of developing skill in the self-management of pain.

Most of us find meditation a difficult practice but over time it becomes easier to sit still, relax the muscles and calm down if we stick to it. It’s fair to say then, that meditation is a skill that improves with practice. But can we ever say that we’re good at meditation?

Well, one problem with this question is: how could you tell? I suppose you could you use an EMG to measure muscle relaxation, an EEG machine to measure alpha waves and a functional MRI scanner to look at brain activity in general but what would all this really mean? Such measurements say very little about the actual individual experience of meditation.

Our practice is to sit quietly, relax, pay attention to the breath and simply notice whatever else is going on, inside of us and out. In this we do not differ from Mindfulness meditation or the Vipassana tradition of practice in Buddhism. Even long time meditators experience churning thoughts, emotions and sensations while sitting. Does this mean they aren’t very good?

In our practice there is no effort to calm the mind. Instead we practice noticing or being mindful of what is going on in the mind and body while staying as relaxed as possible. We do our best to notice but not judge or react to the thoughts and feelings that happen in us all when we meditate.

If you have a troublesome thought or sensation while meditating, you do your best stay relaxed and calm, returning your attention to your breath. If you think you aren’t relaxed enough, still enough or calm enough, those are simply other troublesome thoughts and you just do the same thing with them: go back to your breath and stay as relaxed as you can.

The paradox of all this is that the easier it gets, the less sense it makes to talk about being good at meditation. That would involve making exactly the kind of judgment about our meditation experience that we practice avoiding when we sit. Nevertheless, you could still argue that we get better at being non-judgmental and that is a good thing. This is true but the fact remains that during practice all of us will feel good or bad, tense or relaxed to varying degrees no matter how long we practice or how good we think we are.

If you are meditating because you have chronic pain it is important to understand that research has shown that meditation practice is good for you but it has not been able to characterize what you experience during practice as good or bad. It is the practice that is important, not whether you think you are having a good or bad session.

We can all get better at meditation but to get better we have to forget about getting good at it. We just practice.