Meditation is a mental phenomenon that, through various techniques, is usually used regularly to obtain states of relaxation, in processes of self-knowledge or in the field of spirituality. It is based on focusing thought attentively to the consideration of something and is associated with concentration and deep reflection.
In the field of psychology it is used, among other objectives, to analyze and generate cognitive changes and, where appropriate, relieve stress, anxiety and other physical symptoms that allow obtaining a certain state of psychophysical well-being through the control of thoughts and emotions. If you want to know what the benefits of meditation according to psychologyWe recommend that you continue reading this article on Psychology-Online.
The usefulness of this meditation therapy is encourage introspection, understood as a mental process based on the observation and analysis that a person makes of his thoughts and of himself to know their mental states, interpreting and qualifying their own cognitive and emotional processes, in the words of psychologist Philip Johnson-Laird (1988):
“Being able to be aware of yourself is like becoming your own observer of your actions, thoughts and emotions, in a way that allows us to modify our way of doing, thinking or managing feelings".
Following the idea of the German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt that introspection is a reflective means of self-knowledge to explain the etiology of experiences current, it is a practice that can be applied to the experiences of daily life that generate emotional disturbances and attack our well-being psychological. It would be about observing ourselves how we live the disturbing situation.
At some point in our daily life, an event that alters our state of mind may arise unexpectedly and unpredictably. psychological well-being and it becomes a disturbing experience (a personal conflict, an unfortunate event, a sentimental breakup, etc.).
The knowledge of this experience, how we experience it and the way to face it is a fundamental step to face it properly, as it is difficult to solve a problem if we do not know the basic elements of the same. One of the benefits of introspective meditation is that it allows us to know the following elements to face the problem:
- What are the annoying bodily sensations that I perceive and make me feel bad. We become aware that we are suffering a psychological disturbance when we notice certain bodily symptoms (that our heart beats faster, our mind becomes confused and clouded, stomach shrinks, etc.) as a result of the activation of physiological processes (thus reflecting a direct relationship body-mind).
- What is the cause of me feeling this way. Why does an external or internal stimulus (an event, a thought) become a source of disturbance and trigger a series of unpleasant and annoying bodily symptoms?
- What should I do to regain psychological stability. It is about deciding how to deal with it, that is, choosing the appropriate behavior to follow in such a situation.
To find answers to these questions, meditation relies on two cognitive capacities: metacognition, defined by John Flavell as “the knowledge of oneself concerning one's own cognitive processes and products or everything related to them ”; Y the meta-emotion, pointed out by the American psychologist John M. Gottman, like "The ability to exercise higher cognitive functions that human beings possess to identify, understand and adequately express our emotions."
From a psychobiological approach and taking into account that with meditation we take ourselves as subjects of analysis (in addition to the role of observer or researcher), a basic question is to define the concept of the self used here, without prejudice to the great diversity of concepts used in other areas:
"The Ego is the psychological entity that is altered in its state of equilibrium when it is affected by a stimulus that disturbs that state."
It can easily be seen that three factors intervene in a psychological disturbance: bodily sensations unpleasant, a emotional charge and a subjective knowledge of the disturbing experience.
These factors are the result of three processes: a physiological activation, an unconscious mental processing and a conscious processing. By virtue of this distinction, the psychological ego can be unfolded into three dimensions that fulfill a different function and can be attributed to three distinct psychological structures, each directed by its own mental program (in this sense, the psychologist Viktor frankl and the philosopher Max Scheler, when they speak of the person and his authentic confrontation with suffering, recognize the human being as a three-dimensional being in the various modes of being, such as the biological, the psychological and the spiritual). We can distinguish:
- A biological dimension related to the physiology of the internal environment:the physiological self, which tells us what I feel, what happens inside our body, but does not make value judgments.
- An unconscious psychic dimension: the emotional self, which gives a meaning and a generic and quick assessment to what is perceived and reacts accordingly, activating the emotional system that will promote the appearance of bothersome bodily symptoms.
- A conscious psychic dimension: the self-conscious self (Yo A in abbreviation) that evaluates in a broad and concise way how I am living the situation and its consequences, and chooses an appropriate response. This is the dimension responsible for meditation, metacognition, and meta-emotion.
Following this approach, we would try to analyze the three dimensions mentioned:
1. The physiological dimension
Provides information on the physiological processes that take place in our body through the mechanism of interoception, which through the representation of the organs of our body detects the bodily symptoms unpleasant: mental disturbance, heart rhythm disturbance, nervous tics, sweating, discomfort stomach, etc. that originate from the disturbance. The brain structure that is responsible for this function is in the diencephalon (hypothalamus, pituitary, etc.). Interoception is a neural system that favors homeostasis that performs an analysis of visceral information (digestive and genitourinary tracts, cardiovascular and respiratory), vascular pressure, temperature and chemical solute receptors, and nociceptors located in deep tissues (muscles and joints) and superficial (skin) (Craig, 2002).
2. The unconscious psychic dimension
Our mind quickly, spontaneously and unconsciously processes the perceived information of the situation, interpreting it and qualifying it as unfavorable, offensive, harmful, unfair, aggressive, etc. and whose consequence is the activation of the emotional alarm (the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system structures: amygdala, hippocampus, insula, etc.) that causes the appearance of bodily symptoms unpleasant. The relationship between perception and emotion is unquestionable, something that W. James (1884): "Emotions are linked to physiological perceptions produced by a certain event. In the event that such somatic perceptions do not exist, the main consequence would be the absence of any affective reaction ”.
This process is carried out quickly, taking as reference the patterns of interpretation and behavior based on the neural networks of implicit memory and using as the main method of job intuitive reasoning. It acts quickly, but it does so without specifics, without evaluating all the available information (speed is the priority over attention), which increases the probability of making mistakes. In this sense, the fast-track processing of LeDoux (1996) or the hypothesis of effective primacy of Zajonc (2000) affirm the independence of the cognitive system and emotions, and suggest that the affective content of the stimulus can be processed in a unconscious.
3. The conscious psychic dimension
The Self, through meditation, focuses on the experience of the moment, processes the information with precision and detail, paying attention to a greater number of factors involved. Uses reasoning (logical, heuristic, etc.) and working or working memory to find out the circumstances surrounding the event, its future effects and consequences, having objectivity as a fundamental basis, that is, assuming that things are as they are, not as we are. we see.
This will allow us to know why the emotional alarm system has been activated, why we "perceive" ourselves as sad, afflicted, anguished, disturbed, embarrassed, melancholic, irritated, etc., and why by virtue of that emotional state we have decided on a concrete response to this situation (submission, revenge, I forget). According to neurologist A. Damasio, our emotions are at the base of our decisions, one behavioral option makes us more desirable than another.
The Ego works preferably through the prefrontal cortex, which is the only part of the brain in which information about the internal world of the organism converges with information about the external world, becoming an elaborate machinery to represent our internal states (Goldberg, 2001).
