Meditation in academia

I recently ran a poll to see if meditation is popular for academics. We've seen the research that it's good for us, so it seems, as slightly more than half of the respondents meditate at least every now and then. I used to have a good habit of meditating daily, but momlife has made this more difficult - I need to find how to get organized in a better way (but let me first get through the toddler years).

Here's the wake of the poll:

Stop, Breathe and Think app

I recently was notified about a relatively new app for meditation and mindfulness, called "Stop, Breathe & Think".

The app is a perfect tool for both beginners and people with a steady meditation practice. The meditations are short, and the app has the lovely feature of selecting the right meditation for you depending on your mood, which you can select from a menu of options.

The visuals of the app are lovely, as you can see from the sketch above, which is used on the website of Stop, Breathe and Think to explain the benefit of meditation.

With the light visual, and the open approach of the app, Stop, Breathe and Think is a lovely little tool for people of all ages. It comes with the neat feature of earning "stickers" for each time you meditate, which is an excellent way of building up the habit.

As I'm currently struggling with my schedule, and lost my good habits of exercising and meditating, I am planning to start small again, with meditations that are short enough to help me grow the habit once more.

The meditations on this app are all just a few minutes long - enough to help me build up the meditation habit again.

In short: this cute little app is a great tool for meditating - cordially recommended!

Happy PhD: Using your Physiology to your Advantage

This week, I have the pleasure of hosting Amber Davis, who is sharing her knowledge on 3 important aspects we need to take care of to facilitate the process of writing the dissertation. Amber is a political scientist and PhD coach, who studied at the London School of Economics and Leiden University, and holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. She teaches stress-management and productivity seminars for PhD students and created the HappyPhD Online Course to help you write your PhD (almost) effortlessly in a couple of hours a day. On her blog, she is giving away the online course twice to celebrate the New Year. Click here to enter the contest.

What if writing a PhD could be easy? Granted, easy may be too much to ask. But easier it can be. That is, if you get yourself in the right zone for doing academic work physiologically, mentally and emotionally. I know it can be done – and you can do it too - but I found out how to do it the hard way. I spent quite some time thinking I would never finish my PhD, when health issues forced me to drop out of the PhD programme and the rest of life for several years. Even after the worst was over, I was left with a fraction of the energy I had had before I fell ill. I decided to finish my PhD anyway. Why not? I had nothing to lose. In the process I discovered that writing a PhD can be easier, and a lot more fulfilling. I also discovered I had to radically changed the way I worked to be able to succeed.

My old working habits - which included a lot of worrying about my PhD instead of working on my PhD, stressing over deadlines, and much time spent in a mental twilight zone in which the PhD was always sitting on my shoulder telling me off for ‘being behind’ – were not exactly conducive to finishing my thesis. Let alone do my best work and finish it with a smile on my face (was writing a PhD with a smile even possible?) There had to be a better way. Against all the odds, I set out to find a more productive and kinder way forward. Long story short: I devoured everything I could find on stress-management and productivity, and set out experimenting. The experiment was a success. I finished my PhD working an average of 2-3 hours a day. I made all my deadlines, and rather astonishingly my PhD was selected the best of its year. Although it wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination, it had been easier than I could have envisioned. I now teach PhD students to do the same.

Eva has kindly asked me to write a couple of blog posts to outline how you too can write your PhD more effortlessly. In my search I discovered three levels or aspects of productivity that, when addressed, will significantly improve your focus, output and mood. You can work on them independently, but if you manage to address all three, the rewards will multiply. The first is the level of physiology: or how to create the right physiological conditions to do your best academic work, and keep your mental energy high over time. The second is the level of working habits and structure: or how to organise your day to be most productive. The third level is that of attitude: or how to work from a place of ease and flow instead of forcing yourself forward.

Today’s post will be about level 1: Physiology. When we think of academic work, we mostly think of our minds as somehow independent from our bodies. But our brain, the home of the mind, is an organ. It is physical and has physical needs. If you take care of it well, it will reward you with those three things academics need most: the ability to focus and do challenging mental work, the ability to be creative and come up with new ideas and arguments, and the ability to switch our attention to other things when we choose to do so. With these three in place we can solve complex academic puzzles, using both rational logical analytical thought and creative intuitive insight, and (very important) be able to switch off and do something fun (or useful…if we really have to) once we decide to call it a day.

There are a number of strategies to help your brain function optimally, and the two most basic ones, which I believe should be priorities for every academic, are exercise and meditation. I find it amusing that the activities most beneficial to our mental performance are traditionally thought of as belonging to the physical and the spiritual realm. Going to the gym and sitting on a meditation pillow is for gym bunnies and hippies, not for scholars! Except they are. Very much so. I believe every academic should have a so-called ‘take-care-of-your-brain’ routine in place, consisting of these two activities. Exercise and meditation are the best ways to keep your brain healthy and stress-free. The difference in mental clarity and focus will astound you.

How to do it: To start with exercise: 20 minutes 3x a week is the absolute minimum. It’s important to get your heart rate up for this amount of time. It will help your brain recharge and renew. The activity you choose is up to you, just make sure it’s cardiovascular activity to at least a certain degree. Walking is not intense enough, jogging (elegantly or not) is fine. Or sprint if you want. Do something you enjoy doing. That way you’ll have a better chance of succeeding at all. If you really hate exercise, you can comfort yourself with the thought that 20 minutes really is enough for positive changes to occur, if that’s all you want to do. Turn the music up. Jump around, sing, and dance for a couple of songs and exercise is done.

Meditation is the more difficult habit to learn, mostly because of our beliefs around it. Some people have to get over the ‘spiritual’ nature of meditation first. If that is you, just drop it (I say that in the kindest way). See it as a brain exercise, much like you would see solving an intellectual puzzle. It’s just a different way of exercising the brain. Secondly, we think that meditation is about ‘emptying our mind’. We should be Zen, chilled out and blissed out, which is a very nice idea, until we try to sit still for 5 minutes and find out how difficult it is. Our busy minds won’t shut up. So many things to do today, so many things to worry about, so many distractions! The most important step in meditation is to realise that ‘emptying the mind’ is not something we can strive towards. It is something that just happens, if we create the right conditions for it to occur. And if it doesn’t happen that is also OK. You can’t really force anything. But you can practice just sitting (with a busy mind, if need be). That’s where the beauty lies. If you sit for 10, or 20, or 30 minutes in stillness every day, the mental (and other) rewards will show up. That’s a promise. But they will come unannounced, not when you are willing them into being. The practice of meditation is simple: sit in silence and focus on your breathing (there are many other techniques, but this is the most basic one). Whenever you notice your attention has wandered into thought, bring it back to the breath. Do it for your chosen length of time. That’s all. It’s very simple. Meditation done.

If you are interested in creating your own ‘take-care-of-your-brain’ routine as discussed above, have a look at the HappyPhD Online Course. It will walk you through it step-by-step, day-by-day, for 6 weeks. That is, until it’s a habit and has become a part of your daily routine. To celebrate the New Year (it’s still January after all), I am giving away the course for free twice on my blog.

Silver Linings: Creativity and Meditation

Flickr image under CC license by HaPe_Gera

I've frequently written here on the benefits of meditation for your brain and your heart, how you can make meditation a habit and my personal explorations.

In my opinion, meditation is the necessary exercise for your mind, just like you would work out your body, and a must for all knowledge workers such as researchers.

When I stumbled upon this heartfelt speech of David Lynch on what meditation means to his life, and his creativity, it resonated with how I feel much clearer in thinking thanks to meditation.

You can watch his speech here:

Silver Linings: Getting started with meditation

He often joins my meditation

Over the past two years, I've regularly written about my explorations in meditation and mindfulness on this blog. By now, I consider meditation as important for my mind as exercise for my health. Over time, I've developed this habit, and by now I simply meditate every single day.

The practice of meditation has made me calmer and more focused and productive, and it has had tremendous benefits for my research.

I understand that you might think that you don't have the time for it. But believe me, the additional mental clarity you build up will help you regain those 10 or 20 minutes that you spend in meditation very easily.

My path towards daily meditation has been on and off. Many times I've fallen of the wagon, but I've always come back and tried again. If you want to get started with meditation, these are my five essential points:

1. Try out different times during the day

Different people prefer different times of the day to meditate. You might like to try it out as first thing in the morning, during your lunch break, right when you get home or at night before you go to sleep.
It took me quite some time to understand that for me, meditating first thing in the morning (after brushing my teeth and washing my face to wake up), is the best way to make sure I make it a priority.

2. Try out different styles of meditation

Don't say "I don't like meditation, it's not for me". For sure, there will be some kind of meditation that you enjoy. Try out different styles (gradually, don't try to master everything at once), such as: body scan, breathing meditation, mindfulness meditation, walking meditation, visualization, guided meditation, meditation using binaural audio,... There are so many varieties that I am sure there will be something out there that suits you.

3. Start small

If you want to get started without getting discouraged, start small. Leo Babauta advises you to build the habit by starting tiny: 2 minutes a day. As long as you start building the habit, you will improve and start to enjoy. If you practice a sitting meditation without guidance nor mindfulness bell, then listen to your inner urge to get up. Resist this urge twice, and get up at the third time the urge surfaces.

4. Log your progress and process

Whether you make a wall chart to track your progress, tick it off from your to do list in your planner or use a habit-building app, tracking your progress and journaling about your observations and the entire process will help you ease into your new habit.

5. Be gentle on yourself

If you fall of the wagon, don't beat yourself up. Just start over and over again. I did my first meditation trials 13 years ago. Ever since then, I've been picking it up, trying to make it stick, and lose it again. It's an iterative process in the end, and its purpose is not to stress you out, but to help you grow into a more focused version of yourself.

Do you meditate? Would you like to start? Share your experiences in the comments section!

Silver Linings: Loving Kindness

Whenever you need a little pick-me-up, you might like to do a loving kindness meditation. This type of meditation is part of the online mindfulness course.

When I went through difficult times some months ago, I found peace and solace in the loving kindness meditation.

What I mostly appreciate about loving kindness is that it helps you to focus on all compassion and love and positive that you have within yourself. It helps me to see the little silver lining in my heart when all else looks dark and gloomy.

Here is a guided loving kindness meditation:

Silver Linings: Meditation, your Brain and your Heart

Two months ago, I shared a podcast that shows the beneficial impact of meditation on the brain.

Along the same lines, I am glad to be able to share this GoogleTechTalk with you. It shows some very interesting research on the reaction of the brain and heart to compassion training.



You can sign up for a mindfulness course online here - I recommended it wholeheartedly. Thanks to this course, I now get up early in the morning to meditate.

Silver Linings: Your Daily Checklist

I recently came across The Daily Checklist on Zen Habits.

These are the most powerful ideas in the article:

A good tool for learning to trust yourself to do all the important stuff is to make a daily checklist. Put 5-7 things on there. Try to get almost all of them done each day, but know that it’s not always fated to happen. Often things that aren’t in your control come up and change your plans.

Notice that social media, reading news, watching TV, checking email, browsing my favorite sites, sharing photos … none of these are on the list. If I’m doing one of these things and not one of my daily checklist items, I’m probably not doing the right thing.

For the past years, I too have been writing a few things in my planner every day, and gradually these have evolved into My Daily Checklist, to use Zen Habits terms.

The following items are on my Daily Checklist:

1. Meditate
Meditation is simply every day in my planner. Whatever happens, I try to find at least 5 minutes to give my brain its necessary exercise.

2. Exercise
Going to the gym, biking to work, or simply squeezing in 10 minutes of yoga - after an entire day of thinking and researching, my body needs its share of attention too.

3. Write
So Important. At the office. I track my progress with the PhDometer, and I try to write at least 500 words each day. Even on days that are dedicated to research, meetings and other non-writing activities, I try to write a few lines in a report, paper or summary.

At home, I spend some time writing every day as well: poetry, blog posts or CD reviews.

4. Journal
After using 750 words consistently for some time, I switched back to journaling longhand - and I use an extended form of journaling that also incorporates gratitude lists, success lists and my dreams.

5. Fresh juice
I've had my juicer for almost a year and a half now, and I try to make fresh juice every day. Previously, I mostly used it to make fruit juices (or my beloved orange - carrot - ginger combination), but since the beginning of 2013, I've added green juice to my toolkit.

6. Reflect
Whether I work on my Life Handbook and check my progress towards my goals and purpose, or simply ask myself if I give the best of myself today, I try to make some time and space every day to reflect.

7. Learn something new
Every day, I try to learn something new, outside of my research. There's so much information freely available online. from this vast sea of knowledge, I try to learn something new. I watch TED Talks, Google Tech Talks, enroll in MOOCs, listen to podcasts and generally try to keep an open and curious attitude towards life.

What is on your daily checklist? You can share it in the comments, or reply with a post!

Silver Linings: Meditation and Your Brain

While randomly browsing across interesting courses on iTunes university, which I enjoy listening to while cooking or doing random housework, I discovered Stanford's 'How to Think Like a Psychologist".

The third lecture of this series is titled "Meditation, Anxiety and the Brain", by Dr. Phillipe Goldin who masterfully blends neuroscience, psychology and Eastern meditation practice.

Not only is it very interesting to see how meditation actually influences the patterns that can be seen in the brain, it also can work as a motivation for you to get started on meditation.

Consider meditation the necessary mental training your body needs, just like it needs exercise. I previously discussed how you can make it a habit, and a recommend all (PhD) students to use meditation to bring more clarity and focus to their minds.

Treat Yourself to Relaxation: Silva Relaxation App

Silva Relaxation is a free app that can be used as part of your meditation practice.

If you enjoy these recordings with headphones, you can use them as a means to relax and shut out the outer world while you are on-the-go.

The relaxation exercises guide you through an extended version of a body scan, and then help you to be centered in your breathing.

After a stressful day of thesis writing, or an overly busy conference or meeting, I've used these recordings to let go of the day and get some quiet time.

Pranayama iPhone app

It's been a while since I wrote about mindfulness and meditation, and the reason is that in all the thesis stress, I've been slacking off.


However, I recently started doing some breathing exercises, based on the instructions from an iPhone app. It is called Pranayama by Saagara and -of course, as a cheap graduate student- I use the free, lite version of the app.


Here's what I really like about the app:

1. Guided with just two sounds

The app uses a sound for inhaling and one for exhaling. As a result, you can simply close your eyes and focus on the breathing meditation.

2. Different levels

The free version offers two breathing schemes, and for each scheme you have 5 options for the length of breathing. So, even though it has way less options than the full version (of which I read in the comments that it still has ads in there, so probably it's a bad buy!), it does have enough material in there to keep you entertained for quite some time.

3. Time

You can chose from different options between 5 minutes to 60 minutes to time your breathing meditation session.

4. Automatic tracking

The app also has a log, that gives an overview of what you have exercised so far. However, I just checked my own log and apparently the memory is cleared...

More mindfulness

Roughly 3,5 months have passed since my last post on mindfulness.

Facts

I try to practice daily, but in reality I practice roughly 1 out of 2 days. By now, I'm able to sit in silence and concentrate on my breathing for about 10 minutes, without even noticing the time. While it used to feel like a terribly long time in the beginning (is it time yet? is it time yet? is it time yet?), it now feels very natural.

Results

I am starting to feel the benefits (finally) and my concentration is in fact improving. It's been taking my quite some effort to take the time to meditate, but it starts paying off now.

Progress

One of the major advantages which I am experiencing now, is that I can switch to a more focused state of mind easily. All it takes is to sit back in my office chair, focus on my breathing for 3 to 5 counts to 10, and my head clears up.

Since I've been very busy lately with finishing up some deliverables of my project, I've been applying this method, and the results have been great. I've been steaming through stacks of work with such a sharp concentration that the hours were flying by without my noticing.
It's been a great way to tackle the afternoon dip, too.

Links

I haven't been using guided meditations that often, but here are some more links I've collected:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFvelHlN9Rw
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2S9YKY/www.adaringadventure.com/life-coaching/how-to-be-confident
http://mindbodyexperience.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diBGtabwDaQ&feature=grec_index
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jyy0ra2WcQQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svzll1ywBkk

Mindfulness - an update

One of my resolutions for 2011 was to start meditating and practicing mindfulness. Soon, one quarter of 2011 will be gone already (time flies!) and so I thought it was time for an update on my trials.

Facts

The first 1,5 months of my trials, I was practicing roughly 4 evenings per week. I first followed some online guided meditations, then I started focusing on my breathing in silence for a set amount of time, and now recently I started to listen to guided meditations on my Ipod.

Results

As I've been trying out different styles, I think different styles of meditation have their pros and cons.

Guided meditation:
+ Help me to focus on the voice
+ Can guide me to very deep relaxation
- Less "active"
- I tend to fall asleep

Focusing on breathing:
+ More active, I cannot relax and follow a voice
+ Makes me feel very "aware"
- My mind wanders terribly
- I don't have a good timer, setting my cell phone stopwatch for 10 minutes is not the nicest way to have a meditation ended

Progress
The positive progress is that I've started to live more mindfully, or at least I'm trying to. I'm trying to point my focus on one thing at a time. I try to focus more on what I'm precisely doing when I'm eating or biking and I try to give my undivided attention when I"m talking to someone.
The negative progress is that I've been slacking off with the meditation practice for the past few weeks. These past weeks have been quite stressful and overly busy, so it would be great to clear my head with a short mindfulness exercise, regain focus and then get my work done. Unfortunately, old habits die hard and in my most stressful times I tend to slack off, procrastinate and panic.

Favorite links
Here's a collection of websites with guided meditations:
http://portlandpsychotherapyclinic.com/mindfulness_and_acceptance_exercises
http://quietmindcafe.com/sympathetic-breathing.html
http://www.the-guided-meditation-site.com/index.html
http://integraleric.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-to-learn-to-meditate.html (although I"m still not getting the point of their audio file at all)

First steps into mindfulness

To tame my ever-wandering mind and try to find focus and concentration, I've decided to try out mindfulness and meditation.

In the PhD course which I am currently attending, every session involves a mindfulness exercise. Initially I was a bit surprised to find mindfulness to be part of a course for PhD students, but now all the participants of this course agree that they look forward to the guided mindfulness sessions in the course.

Outside of this course, I have never practiced mindfulness. Today, I decided to look on-line for a guided mindfulness exercise. I came across this exercise and enjoyed it very much.

Since this is the first time I practice such an exercise with guided audio, I've noticed a few differences between this and a guided exercise in a group setting. I need to practice more, but I am inclined to think that solitary exercises suit me more. This, however, is completely my personal experience and I am sure many people benefit from mindfulness and meditation courses offered by skilled instructors.

The observations I made are the following:

- My thinking, now while I am writing this post, is much clearer. I did not navigate away from this site yet to go and click around on other websites, even though I see new Twitter and Facebook alerts.

- I have a cold, and I could clearly feel how this impairs my breathing. I'd like to think that it's just a cold and can work through like normal, but with my body doing a little bit more effort with every breath I take, I realize I should take it easy the coming weekend and focus on conquering this cold.

- The position of my head and shoulders mattered. Hanging shoulders and a hanging head made my breathing speed up and feel less free. I clearly felt how much better my body and breathing feels when I sit up straight, with straight shoulders and my head upright and proud. While I sometimes go into a position with hanging shoulders and a curved back to "relax" or show my respect/inferiority to another person, it feels as if my natural relaxed position is upright and proud of myself.

- I need to practice more to get my thoughts under control. However, I am hoping that regular practice (I am scheduling time for this in my planner), will result in a clearer mind.

My next planned session is scheduled for Sunday, and I hope I will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed this exercise.