What caught my attention in his talk was the notion of working at deep levels in Vipassana meditation vs making surface changes in some other meditative techniques.
It brought to mind the kinds of techniques people are often initially fascinated by when they start exploring ways of training their brain for better performance.
These techniques may include entrainment or "forcing" the brain to go to specific frequencies to create a specific state or effect (e.g., for enhanced sleep--delta, concentration--low beta, relaxation--alpha) by using sound and/or light to create a mimicking response in the brain. I'll have more to say about entrainment methods in a different post, but here I just want to point out that these techniques are pre-deciding where your brain needs to go and then trying to hold it there -- not much different from taking some medications really (uppers to get going; downers to relax, sleeping pills to sleep...).
There are also techniques that people learn to be able to more consciously direct their brain activity. These are the type more often associated with neurofeedback. People use their brain's activity to learn how it feels to be producing the kind of brain activity associated with a real world activity. (For a review, try my website.)
Open Focus is a tool developed by Dr. Les Fehmi that most closely helps people to create the kind of awareness that they experience during mindfulness work (for a personal description, go here), but it also is creating one specific kind of brain activity -- alpha synchrony. Open Focus can be learned without neurofeedback equipment or there is the option to learn to produce the alpha synchrony using equipment that gives you feedback about how you're doing at generating the right activity patterns. Keep in mind that the goal of learning Open Focus is not to wander around all the time in a state of bliss, but to be in control of your attention, so you can open and narrow focus as necessary.
Then, there is the kind of EEG neurofeedback that I use and talk about more on my website -- the CARE model. In the CARE model, the goal is not to produce any particular frequency of brainwave activity, but to allow the brain to learn about itself and increase its resilience/decrease its turbulence. What this means is you (or your trainer) aren't deciding "what's best" for your brain, that you aren't trying to "hold" it in any particular place, but that you are giving it information it needs in a way it can understand to self-regulate and self-organize in order to take itself (and that means you
) to a more adaptive level of functioning.So, with that brief description, let's get back to Goenka's talk.
Goenka makes an interesting distinction between doing work at a "deep level" vs making surface changes. He suggests that although the surface changes of some other types of meditation may feel temporarily feel good (think entrainment), they can't produce the kind of deep-seated changes that have a ripple effect throughout the system.
The CARE work is definitely working at the deep level -- one can tell generally by the Stuff that can come up and that change can happen seamlessly - deep shifts that ripple through the brain to gradually create different kinds of awareness/consciousness -- at a pace and sequence that's right for your brain -- not based on your own or someone else's guesswork. And that deep change supports a brain that can more effortlessly shift to different states as and when they are needed - sleep when you need sleep, be alert when you need alertness, relax when you want to relax....
Interestingly, CARE work is synergized by vipassana. When a trainee also knows and practices mindfulness during a session, they seem to get increased or quicker changes from the EEG changing.
Open Focus work creates a specific kind of state -- useful for certain situations and generally useful for enhanced control/choice over attention (i.e., choosing to be open or narrow focused depending on context). A great tool for the day to day variations that occur while the deeper work is also going on, but not one you would want to use in any "forced" way that would prevent ripples of change emerging from the deeper level changes.
The entrainment techniques, in my opinion, are too much like using medications -- they push the brain where it may or may not need to go, based on your external circumstances and internal Stuff. I generally don't recommend them for long-lasting, personally meaningful change and personal evolution.
So please, go and watch and see what you think. And then let me know whether the distinctions and "mix and match" notions I've shared make sense to you.
Dhamma Podcasts: A Simple Path - Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSxVYp3X6YkEnjoy when you have a minute or eight. ;-)
For more on CARE and mindfulness, you might be interested in this presentation by Ed O'Malley on Psychoneurenergetics. (What a mouthful! -- but interesting ;-))
