I just finished meditating for approximately 10 minutes. Dr. Gabor Mate, in his book Scattered, says meditation is good medicine for ADHD. I had a therapist recommend it to me once back in 2007 as well. I tried it for a brief period.
Meditation is antithetical to everything the ADHD person stands for. It is probably anti-thetical to a lot of things in modern American culture, what with the instant gratification and all.
It is just hard to sit still and not do something for ten damn minutes. It is hard for my brain to just keep going in one direction like that. It is hard for me to meditate like it is hard for me to write. Because in my mind I do not write coherently and linearly. Probably no one does, but I choose to believe I am particularly afflicted with that problem.
Like as I write this, I just want to write "Meditation! Ohhhhmmmm.... Gabor Mate... Scattered... says meditation good... I ... struggle... no likey... I sit on cushion, want to... don't want too... would rather not... really don't feel like... ummm, uhhh... scattered... tough to sit still like this... impulse striking... impulse... must adhere to the impulse... must... must... must reply to impulse... oh, wait, I am supposed to be meditating right now... concentrating... wait, not concentrating, just breathing... ohhhmmmm... Ocean. The word "Ocean" is my mantra. A mantra is not a motto. I think the two get confused. A mantra is not supposed to mean anything. It is just one word or phrase that you can focus on. When your mind wanders, you can just calmly bring it back to your mantra."
See there! The above paragraph is how my mind operates and how it eagerly wishes to operate. Impulsively, in the moment, flitting about and responding to whatever external or internal stimulus stimulates my brain.
I sit on that cushion and I just breathe, and barely a minute passes before I am stricken internally with this urge to get on the computer... or go get food, or re-arrange how I am sitting, or do push-ups, or... do something! Stimulate me! Get on the blog! Write babble!
Lack of structure is paradise to my brain. It just seeks out whatever immediate stimuli is available and hovers in its direction. Food, roller-coasters, TV, whatever's there. I am sure this is somewhat the case for everyone, but, again, the theme of this blog is that I have ADHD, I've had more than one medically-trained professional endorse this label for me, and so I choose to operate with the belief that I am somehow specially afflicted. This means that my brain will actively resist structure. Again, all brains do, but mine does actively. I tell myself "I should go for a walk," "I should practice my guitar," "I should read some of this book," and sometimes those things sound stimulating enough to my brain that I actually do those things, but often my brain says "NOOOOOOOOO!!! YOU DON'T HAVE TO!!! NOT NOW!!! IT IS NOT WHAT I WANT RIGHT NOW!!! IT SOUNDS UNSTIMULATING!!!! LET'S WATCH TV!!! TV!!!! TV!!!! INTERNET!!!! FACEBOOK!!!! NOW!!! NOW!!! NOW!!! DO IT NOW!!! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MAN, YOU CAN!!! NO EXTERNAL FORCE IS FORCING YOU THROUGH THE RIGOROUS BOREDOM OF IMPROVING A MUSICAL SKILL OR GETTING EXERCISE JUST FUCKING GET IN FRONT OF THE COMPUTER AND VEDGE, BABY, BECAUSE YOU FUCKING CAN!!!! YEAAAAAAAAH!!!!! BASEBALLLLLLL!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! CHECK ESPN.COM!!!! DO IT, DO IT, DO IT!!!!"
Of course I am not crazy, I do not hear loud voices in my head. My point is, as I sit there meditating, trying to do nothing, I feel a compulsion in my body as if I am indeed being entreatied by some external force to, for the love of god, do something! Something other than what I am doing!
I suppose my goal with meditation is to learn to progressively live with this feeling and fight it. Of course it all feels so pathetic and sad. As if this is very basic living with delayed gratification, something which we all must live. RIGHT THERE!! IT HAPPENED RIGHT THERE!! Right after I wrote that, I felt a compelling impulse to not continue with that thought. My mind wandered off for 20 seconds or more and I lost my train of thought. It was as if my thoughts were a fish in water and my brain just hurtled a lightning-fast spear at the fish and yanked it out: no more swimming in that direction! Go somewhere else!
What was my thought? Delayed gratification. We all have to learn to live with it. But.... but.... what is the rest of my thought?? Shame... pathetic and sad... I do live with delayed gratification. I don't just do any goddamn thing I want. If I did, I'd be even more broke than I am and I'd probably be trying to book a flight to China right now and being denied the purchase after attempting to pay for the impulse flight with one of five different credit cards.
No I am not doing that. But my brain responds to impulse. It has done that as I write this blog entry. The impulse is simply to seek some sort of immediate stimulation. And it seriously is an impulse over which I feel little total control.
I am a well-known night owl. I can stay up late until the most ungodly hours. I have had periods in my life where I stay up until 6 in the morning or later. Recent periods, in fact.
Nighttime there are less external stimulants. It is easier to concentrate. Easier but still not always accomplish-able. I just made up a word.
My left foot is shaking in that nervous-leg kinda way right now. I get that too. A lot.
I feel like the membranes in my nostrils are a little swollen. I am not entirely satisfied with how I breathe through my nose. I do not think I suffer from any allergies, and maybe I am just crazy. But I feel pretty strongly that air should pass more smoothly through my nose than it does. I have a mildly nasally voice, I think. Sometimes I actively try to conceal it when I am speaking.
So, yeah, meditation is difficult.
That's why I do tai chi.
ReplyDeleteGets my body involved in the meditation too so it becomes more of a whole person thing for me and not a sitting here trying to be open and empty where I start to wonder where is the point that it transitions from acknowledging all the noise in my head and not passing judgement on it to oh shit I have spent too much time on it and I can feel my feet tingling from sitting here how do those monks do this for fucking hours on end it feels like I have been sitting for an hour already and I bet it has been like 5 minutes is my breathing too shallow because when I think too much about it it does feel like I should be breathing deeper and maybe slower but now all I can think about is my breathing and all this time I have been having all these thoughts and perceptions ricocheting like that steel ball in a pinball machine and about as noisy too when the whole point is to find some quiet...
Which is to say I understand, and I agree. It is hard. And 8 plus years into my practice I am acutely aware of how worthy, and for me necessary, the process is.
All the reasons why it's hard...double as the reason to continue to practice meditation.
ReplyDeleteI've noticed that people that made meditation part of their lives always call it practice. If I take it as a practice then I no longer struggle with the idea that it's not working....it's just practice. If my mind wanders it's all good...because like that great monk Iverson said, "we talking about practice".
Your post reminded me of Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Eat, Pray, Love. "I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the 'monkey mind' -- the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl."
ReplyDeleteI don’t think it’s unique to her. It’s hard to make your mind still. It goes against your brain’s natural impulses. Your brain won’t even shut up when you’re sleeping, what with its insistence on REM for dreams and memory consolidation.
The well-documented health benefits of incorporating meditation into the daily routine has compelled me to try it, but like you I find the challenge of chasing down a quiet mind state intolerably frustrating. The closest I come to meditation is that place you get when you’re writing and your thoughts - initially spastic and disjointed - abruptly fall into place and flow quietly from head to hand. Sometimes that never happens, but when it does, it’s bliss.
It’s not just writing. It could be something physical, like throwing a basketball over and over and over. It could be driving and realizing just as you pass your exit that you missed it. Often I think the mind finds its own quiet rhythm without any intentional effort on our part.
Let your monkeys swing and just quietly re-focus again and again and again until one day they shut their little monkey mouths and wait for you to finish what you’re doing before making their demands.
As far as how you feel being awake in the wee hours of the night… I feel better at night as well, though I’d hesitate to attribute that to less external stimuli. I’m as apt to cruise around on the internet at 3 AM as at 3 PM and I even have friends I can text at both hours and actually expect a response. But there’s something about it being dark and knowing that most people in a 10 mile radius are sound asleep that somehow makes it easier to breathe. For me it’s a welcome break from the obligation to dedicate energy and effort into all those things that matter so much in the daytime but won’t mean anything when we’re on our death beds.