Can We Really Empty Our Minds?
Meditation: It’s something many will advise you to do when you want/need to empty your mind.
One week during group therapy, one of the therapists recommended we try some meditation to better control our anxiety. Along with controlling our breathing, we try some mindfulness — focusing on our senses rather than on our anxious thoughts.
Anyway, many people think that meditation = completely emptying your mind. But, after that group therapy session, I talked about it a little with my grandmother, and she says it’s impossible to empty your mind. I thought about that for a few days, and I’m starting to see where my grandmother’s coming from.
Can we really empty our minds?
There have been many studies showing how active our brains are, but did you know that the brain is always active? The brain is particularly active between 10:00 A.M. and 2:00 P.M., but what about nighttime or when we’re asleep? When we’re asleep, some of us think that the brain is no longer active. After all, if we’re not entirely conscious, then how can our brains be?
If that’s the case, then how do dreams occur? How come we wake up while we’re in the middle of sleeping? That’s because the brain is still active — even at our least active moments.
A study from Harvard claims that the brain’s level of adenosine triphosphate (which supply our cells with energy) are constant while we’re awake, but they increase the moment we fall asleep. Ironically, the brain is at its most active phase while we’re at our least active one. Crazy, isn’t it?
So, what does the brain do while we’re asleep? For starters, sleep helps our brain learn better and stay flexible. Ironically, it also helps us unlearn recognizing sounds when they were exposed during deep non-REM sleep.
Most importantly, and this is the whole reason why I brought up meditation earlier, sleep is the reason why dream. We don’t remember most of our dreams when we wake up, but some dreams do stick with us; some stick around for years afterwards. Dreams are just proof that our brain is always active — even when we’re physically not.
It’s kind of like wondering whether we’re really able to run out of ideas. Did you know that Terminator and Inception came from dreams? Yeah, and so did Frankenstein and some of Stephen King’s novels. It’s fascinating to see and hear how the brain comes up and remembers some of these things from the dreams we have at night.
“Emily, what does any of this have to do with meditation and emptying our minds?” you might be asking. That’s a good question. Since our brains are constantly active, it’s impossible to completely empty our minds. So, what are we supposed to do when we meditate?
Like I said earlier, when we tried meditating during an earlier group therapy session, we focused on our senses. How did the floor feel against our feet? How did the chairs feel against our skin? What did we hear? What could we smell? Focusing heavily on our senses is an excellent way of soothing ourselves and controlling our anxiety. These grounding techniques can also help people with other mood disorders (like depression), PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), and dissociation.
In meditation, it also helps to let the anxious thoughts pass by as you ground yourself. That way, you’re getting them over with, and you can spend your time doing something you actually enjoy.
Many people tend to think that meditation = completely emptying your minds, but that’s just simply impossible. Our brains are constantly active — even when we’re asleep. So, how can we empty our minds if our brains are active?
Instead, we should make meditation about grounding ourselves in reality — using our senses and letting our anxious thoughts pass by. Like I’ve said before, our brains are constantly active. We might as well use our minds to meditate with our senses and get our anxious thoughts over with.
