lowstimulation

Low stimulation meditation is best reserved for the times when you are calm. One of the worst things you can do is attempt sitting meditation while in high-dvar. It’s akin to lying in bed and trying to force yourself to sleep immediately after a fight.

But when your dvar is low enough - 0.25 or less - it can be very pleasant indeed. Sitting meditation forms the foundation of the low stimulation regulation methods, but slow walking is a good moderate-to-low intermediary step.

Sit in whatever position is comfortable for you. Don’t worry too much about scratching itches: our aim here is to train ourselves to release from compulsive latching. Until you are very calm, you will find yourself focusing on an itch and agitating yourself; this agitation increases dvar. If something annoys you, calmly deal with it, and get back to sitting.

A key point is that your mind is just another sense. Remember this always. Your eye interacts with visual objects, your skin with tangible objects, and your mind with mental objects. Just as you have no choice but to hear things with your ear, you have no choice but to cognise things with your mind. Thoughts, memories, imagination, words. This is all well and good; your aim is not to prevent thoughts from occurring but to allow them to wash over you like the breeze over your skin. If you try to crush the thought down you will just embed it deeper into your psyche; let it be and let it move on.

Sit, get comfortable, let the tension leave your face. Do not worry about whether you breathe fast or slow, deep or shallow, but *gently* place your attention on your breath wherever you feel it the most: your nose, your chest, your diaphragm; anything is fine.

Do not aim for singlemindedness and do not aim for an empty mind. Just allow all sensations from all six senses to wash over you while you keep a gentle awareness of your breath as a touchpoint. Sounds will arise; that is good. Thoughts will arise; that is good. They are all passing phenomena.

Sometimes you will get stuck on a thought. This is natural, it is dvar and craving for stimulation that causes it. Whatever thought it is, you are getting something out of it. Sometimes it can be a positive thought but more often it is a negative one.

In this case you can instigate a slightly more stimulating meditation at the same time as sitting. You can start a gentle subvocal hum, or you can sway ever so slightly forward and backward. You can rub your finger and thumb together in circles and focus on that. Anything goes. There is a reason why monks chant and use vocalisations; you can use them too. Do not try to force the thought away (this is a latch to having the thought gone) and instead just focus, loosely, on your new movement or vocalisation.

Do *not* set a timer, unless you need an alarm to ensure you don't overshoot. If you do set an alarm, do not view it as a finish line. This will become another latch; another way to drive yourself into hell while seeking nibbana. The only aim is to be, to observe, to settle down.

Remember: you are establishing a constant drip of dopamine while reducing dvar. Dvar is attachment to ideas and formations at this level of granularity, and one of those mental formations is that there is a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way to meditate. There is not. There is no right or wrong way to exist; we merely exist in our present form and that is that. The job in meditation is just to observe that current form and let it pass.

Negative emotions and sensations will drift by easier if you practice letting go of the positive. Dvar is global. Dvar is craving; craving for the pleasant to last and the unpleasant to not. You need to let go of one to let go of the other. If you try to cling to the positive then you will never release the negative.

Over time you will find parts of your body you can dial in to easily. My hands are a good one, and I can tune in to their sensations and vibrations at any time of the day now. Find yours. It will become a touchpoint in trying moments.

You might find yourself tuning in to the microsecond-level vibrations that are present throughout your entire being at all times of the day. If you can carry this kind of awareness, even loosely, throughout your daily life, then you are as aware of bodily sensations as the most accomplished meditator.

You will see how the wavepool is calmed by these activities, and how - if you try to sit and meditate like this while in a high-dvar state - you will be jolted around and almost physically pulled from your seat by the waves of phasic dopamine. 

And then you can start to see how different behaviours affect the size and violence of these waves, and learn how to keep them under control. They will always be there; your aim is to keep them manageable.

Remember: there is no right or wrong, and sometimes you will sit and latch onto an idea and need to step back up to a moderate or even high stimulation meditation. This is good. It means you have found something to work through.

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