What happens in your brain as you become more aware of how the mind works?

It’s perfectly normal to experience emotions such as anger, frustration and anxiety as you sit in front of your computer fielding work messages. The trouble starts when these feelings spiral out of control, causing chronic stress and harming your mental and physical wellbeing.

Meditations that involve open monitoring or “OM” (such as the guided meditation below) teach us to notice when negative thoughts and feelings arise – then simply let them go. We learn to become more aware of these mental events without getting involved with them.

Negative thoughts and emotions are like fires that, if we let them, can rage out of control. By practising OM, it becomes clear that if we refrain from adding more “fuel” to these fires, they die out. The fuel is our automatic tendency to get caught up in unpleasant feelings, thoughts and emotions.

Meditation can help us to break this lifelong habit. The latest research into how mindfulness training changes the brain shows that it boosts communication or “functional connectivity” between brain networks which, between them, control how and where we focus our awareness.

This enhanced communication allows us to direct our attention more flexibly, and in the process it also improves our ability to regulate our emotions.  

Networking

In particular, OM increases connectivity between a network that monitors internal and external sensations and a network that is implicated in rumination, worries and intrusive thoughts.

Three brain networks work together to determine the focus of our attention: the executive network, salience network and default mode network.

The executive network handles higher cognitive functions such as planning and decision making; the salience network assigns emotional significance to sensory signals; and the default mode network is associated with self-referential thinking.

Research has found that when the three networks fail to coordinate their activity effectively, the result is emotional dysfunction, poor control of attention, and harmful forms of mind wandering — such as rumination, worry and intrusive thoughts.

Key regions

Scientists have found that meditation reduces activity in a key hub of the default mode network, known as the posterior cingulate cortex. Overactivity in the default mode has been implicated in a range of mental illnesses, including depression.

In addition to reducing activity in the default mode network, mindfulness practices such as open monitoring (OM) increase activity in another important brain region, called the anterior cingulate cortex or ACC.

The ACC — one of two key nodes in the salience network, the other being the insula — detects when the brain is grappling with conflicting cognitive tasks. The insula, as we saw last week, registers internal and external sensory information.

Neuroscientists believe that the salience network helps us to flexibly switch between internally focused attention (the self-obsessed mental chatter of the default mode network) and externally focused attention (the task-oriented central executive network).

Neural workout

A recent study found that mindfulness practices such as OM increase communication between the default mode and salience networks.

What seems to happen is that meditation trains the salience network to detect overactivity in the default mode network, which then instructs the central executive network to reinstate control.

The ACC (in the salience network) also reduces the brain’s responses to emotional stimuli by damping down activity in the amygdala — the brain’s primitive emotional centre.

So you could think of OM as a workout for your brain networks. The more your practise, the stronger your ability to notice emotion-laden, self-referential thoughts — and then let go of them.

OM is also commonly known as “insight” meditation, because it helps us to get wise to the way our mind works. 

Activity: Open monitoring meditation

Unlike focused attention meditation, which involves a single, sustained object of attention, such as the breath, open monitoring allows awareness to range freely.

Whatever arises in consciousness — whether it is a positive feeling, such as joy or peace, or a negative emotion, such as anxiety, discomfort or boredom — is simply noted without ruminating on it, judging, or analysing it. In other words, we resist the temptation to spin out a story about the feeling. Instead, we just let it go.

Meditation teachers often use the analogy of uninvited guests for these mental events. We allow these uninvited guests in through the front door, but we don’t judge them or invite them to sit down for tea. We simply let them enter, pass through the house and exit through the back door.

A very effective way to start registering our feelings without getting caught up in them is to mentally label everything that enters the mind. Silently, you name the mental event — such as “thinking”, “pain”, “anger”, “contentment”, “calm” — hold it mindfully in awareness, then let it go.

You can repeat the note inwardly until it fades away or is no longer predominant.

The great thing about open monitoring meditation is that it gets us into the habit of mindfully registering strong feelings in ordinary consciousness, throughout our working day, without getting caught up in them or swept away by them.

So it is particularly useful during virtual and real-world interactions with colleagues. 

Guided meditation

Sit somewhere quiet and assume an alert but relaxed posture, with the soles of your feet flat on the floor and your hands resting in your lap or wherever is most comfortable. If you like, close your eyes.

Take a deep, slow breath in through your nose… and out through your mouth. And another… in… and out. In… and out.

Make a brief scan of awareness down through your body… From the scalp… to the eyes… the nose… the mouth… the shoulders… Notice any muscular tension as you go. Hold it in your attention for a moment without judging it in any way, either positively or negatively, and then imagine the tension slowly draining away, downwards through your body, until it reaches the soles of your feet, and sinks into the ground.  

Notice how you are feeling right now, in this moment, without looking for anything in particular. What do you notice in your consciousness? Whatever it is, pleasant or unpleasant, find the most appropriate label for it… Repeat the label slowly, silently to yourself…

Always remember that you are the observer, not the participant. You don’t have to do anything about what you notice in your mind at any particular moment in the mind, just hold it gently in your awareness…

Ask yourself, what is here in my mind right now… Acknowledge it… Name it… A thought, a feeling, a sensation, whatever it might be. There’s nothing right or wrong about it…

Whenever something arises in your mind, whether it’s an image, a thought, an emotion, meet it with kindness and acceptance. There is no right or wrong way to feel. Whatever comes up, simply name it silently. Let it come… let it be… and let it go…

If at any time you notice that your mind has been wandering… into plans for what you’re going to do, finding solutions to problems, imagining conversations… use the breath like an anchor to slow things down and restore your calm focus.

Direct your attention to the sensations of breathing. Just watch how it happens perfectly naturally, automatically… inflating the lungs and raising the diaphragm as you breathe in… and then breathing out, gently expelling the air again…

Hold your attention steadily on the changing sensations of the breath for as long as it takes to return you to the peace of this present moment. Don’t try to control the breath in any way, simply observe the changing sensations as the air moves in and out of body… in the chest, the abdomen, the tips of the nostrils…

When you are ready, rest once again in open awareness. Imagine you are holding up a mirror to the mind… a mirror that reveals everything that arises in consciousness. A mirror faithfully reflects whatever is there, without changing, or embellishing, or analysing… It simply shows what is there… Like a mirror, observe everything as it is, without judging, commenting, or creating a story about it.

Observing everything mindfully in this way helps you to notice, to know, and to let go.

Over time, with practice, your will be able to hold up the mirror to the mind whenever you need it, during meditation, or at any time during ordinary consciousness… to see things as they are, to let them be. With practice, the mirror will become cleaner, brighter… Always available to your mind’s eye whenever you need it to reflect things just as they are.

As the meditation draws to a close, slowly return your attention to the outside world. What can you hear? Notice the sounds without speculating on them or judging them in any way.

Take a moment to experience fully the sensations of sitting, the weight of your relaxed body pressing down on the seat of the chair… the weight of your legs, pressing downwards through the soles of your feet and into the ground.

Finally, take three slow breaths. In… and out. In… and out. In… and out. When you are ready, open your eyes.

This post was written with James Drever of Careful Digital for week 2 of his 3-week Intentional Technology course. The next post explores what happens in the brain during nondual meditation

Further reading

Brewer, J. et al (2011). Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. PNAS; 108 (50) 20254-20259. (This was the first study to show that meditation reduces activity in the default mode network, especially in one of its most important nodes, the posterior cingulate cortex.)

Zhou, H-X. et al (2020). Rumination and the default mode network: meta-analysis of brain imaging studies and implications for depression. NeuroImage; 206: 116297. (A roundup of brain-imaging studies confirms the central role that the default mode network plays in rumination, and hence in depression.)

Hölzel, B. K. et al (2007). Differential engagement of anterior cingulate and adjacent medial frontal cortex in adept meditators and non-meditators. Neuroscience Letters; 421(1): 16-21. (Imaging reveals that experienced meditators have stronger activation in a part of the brain that processes distracting events, known as “conflict monitoring”, and another that processes emotions.)

Rahrig, H. et al (2022) Meta-analytic evidence that mindfulness training alters resting state default mode network connectivity. Scientific Reports; 12: 12260. (This study found evidence that mindfulness training improves cross-talk between two important brain networks — the salience network, which monitors sensation, and the default mode network, which is involved in rumination and mind-wandering.)

Taren, A. A. et al (2015). Mindfulness meditation training alters stress-related amygdala resting state functional connectivity: a randomized controlled trial. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience; 10(12): 1758-1768. (Preliminary research suggests that even a brief course of mindfulness training can improve emotional control in people who are feeling stressed-out, by suppressing activity in the brain’s primitive emotional centre, the amygdala.)

“Introduction to open monitoring”, Contemplative-studies.org. 

Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana. (A great “how to” guide to mindfulness, informed by Buddhist teachings.)

Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World by Mark Williams and Danny Penman. (A secular guide to stress reduction through mindfulness practice, by one of the creators of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy.)