Meditation Time | New York Times
Time is arguably one of the greatest currencies I know of. Like money, it offers opportunity, choice and the potential for exponential growth.
Time is one of meditation’s most veiled and salient currencies
In this article the New York Times looks at how Heartbeat May Shape our Perception of Time.
New meditators often fear having enough time. One woman I know used to argue that she couldn’t find two minutes a day to meditate. Now, seven years later, without changing her job, her family, her health or any other significant life attribute, she meditates for 40 minutes a day and can’t imagine her life without meditation.
When we enter a state of meditation we invite our body rhythms to slow down—stress response markers such as blood pressure, heart rate and respiration lower. In essence, the humanness of our beings, the physicality of what makes us, us, moves into a different rhythm within itself AND with the world around us.
“Our experience of time is affected in ways which mirror, generally, our well being.” Ruth S. Ogden PhD Liver Pool John Moors University.
High school physics teaches that time doesn’t actually exist outside of perception. Einstein’s theory of special relativity reminds us that time does not pass identically for everyone.
“Two identical twins find that they are different in age if one of them has traveled at speed.” Carlo Rovelli PHD Centre de Physique Theorique of Aix Marseille University.
Time, wellness and speed are interrelated aspects of the body-mind-soul experience. Since time doesn’t exist on its own, another way to describe it is as a by-product of inner and outer events. An inner event might be a full bladder, a hungry stomach, an elevated heart rate or racing thoughts. An outer event might be a medical appointment, taking your car to the garage or meeting a friend for coffee. Both inner and outer events are factors that affect our perception of time AND the way we approach these events is a determinant of speed and wellness.
Since all outer events stem from inner events and thoughts are a big component of meditation, let’s focus on thoughts. The average person has apx 70,000 thoughts, or inner events, per day Cleaveland Clinic. This is about two thoughts per second. To illustrate the complexity of inner events consider that thoughts are only one aspect of being human. We are also dealing with emotions, feelings and trillions of other physiological events per second. And all these inner events such as enzymatic functions, hormones, cellular repair, digestion, heart rate, feelings, emotions etc are related to thoughts. In fact, thoughts are related to each and every inner event we experience. While a single fleeting thought may not be internally measurable, most thoughts are not single or fleeting. Most thoughts are made up of categories and repeating patterns. It is this totality that then becomes measurable. The inner world we are all made up of is beyond complex, it’s literally mind-blowing.
Meditation is an activity that changes your relationship to thoughts.
Meditation is an act of focus that changes our relationship to thoughts. For example, if we are focusing on the breath and we keep coming back to the focus of the breath then we are not engaging with our thoughts during that time. If we meditate for 20 minutes a day (1200 seconds = 2400 thoughts) and we do that for 365 days (255,550,000 thoughts) x 10 years (255,500,000 thoughts) we are effectively changing our relationship to the inner events we call thought and their corresponding physiological markers. Since time doesn’t exist outside of perception and changing our relationship to thoughts changes both internal markers of wellness AND perception, meditation affects time. Sometimes in meditation, we cease to have any thoughts at all. Anyone who has experienced this “meditators gap” knows that it feels amazing and that its perception becomes one of timelessness. As far as I know, “the gap” has not been measured yet, but there are numerous studies focusing on the brain state differences between long-term meditators and control groups such as in this article PNAS. From a place of perception the meditator’s gap feels as though the weight of the world has left your body-mind and you have entered the beingness of your soul. It is a vast perception of no time and internal and eternal spaciousness.
Thoughts change our perception of time | Time doesn’t exist outside of perception.
To feel the value of this, imagine placing your hand on a hot burner for 1 minute versus sitting comfortably in your favourite chair for 1 minute; Do you think you will have the same thoughts, internal markers of wellness or that 1 minute will be perceived the same way?
Meditation is a mental exercise with physically measurable attributes. It tones down stress markers and allows stress to leave the nervous system which invites a sense of peace and calm. Meditation boosts wellness (and there are thousands of research papers on this) and decreases stress. Through a continued focus, meditation allows the random firing of the brain to settle. It fosters neuroplasticity and invites new neuropathways and patterns of thought which correspond to measurable markers of wellness. In the meditator’s “gap” all thoughts cease. As the activity of the mind quiets, wellness increases and we change our perception of time.
Time is perception | Meditation changes perception | Meditation makes time
The concept of time, like meditation is one of the grandest paradoxes there is. Ironically, unlike most tasks in life, creating more time does not come by trying harder, going faster, setting new goals or crossing more off your to-do list. The proverbial hamster wheel most of us run on is one of life’s biggest cosmic jokes. While we all feel the pressure of “getting stuff done” insight arrives when we realize that in that moment of pushing to do more, or go faster, rather than hammering our body-mind-soul with more speed or perceived efficiency our time will be better served to sit down and breathe.
Time past and time future allow but a little consciousness; to be conscious is not to be in time. T.S. Eliot
