Adapting to a Changing Body

Research suggests that meditation may benefit people with Parkinson’s. The strongest evidence concerns reduced anxiety and depression, greater emotional balance, and improved quality of life. There are also promising, though less certain, findings concerning cognition, movement, neuroplasticity, inflammation, and dopamine (see related essay).

Those findings matter, but they do not fully explain the personal value of meditation after a Parkinson’s diagnosis. Meditation offers something more intimate: a way of meeting the body and mind as they are, even as they change in ways we did not choose.

Meditation is not a cure for Parkinson’s, nor should it replace medication, exercise, physiotherapy, or medical care. It is a complementary practice that may help us live more steadily within the life we have.

Stillness Does Not Mean Immobility

I have Parkinson’s. My left hand shakes, and sometimes the shaking distracts me when I meditate. This presents an apparent contradiction: meditation is commonly pictured as perfect stillness—a person sitting upright, motionless and serene—while Parkinson’s may bring tremor, rigidity, restlessness, dyskinesia, pain, or difficulty maintaining a posture. That traditional image can make meditation seem inaccessible just when it might be most helpful.

Yet meditation has helped me recognize that stillness does not require a motionless body. Stillness in meditation is primarily a quality of attention. My hand may shake while I observe the shaking. Sitting on a meditation cushion can also challenge my balance, especially during longer meditations, and I sometimes find myself leaning toward my weaker side. I use this as a gentle exercise: noticing the shift, recovering my balance, and gradually developing greater stability. It helps. The movement may continue while the mind becomes less agitated by it, and posture may be adjusted without the meditation having failed.

Parkinson’s affects movement, but it does not remove our capacity to notice movement. Even an involuntary motion can become part of the field of awareness.

Voluntary and Involuntary Movement

My meditation training has included Goenka Vipassana retreats, where periods of determined stillness—adhiṭṭhāna—are an important part of the practice. The meditator intends not to move and learns to observe sensations without reacting automatically.

Parkinson’s complicates this instruction in an illuminating way. There is a difference between choosing not to move and demanding that the body produce no movement. Tremor is not a failure of determination. Rigidity is not evidence of spiritual resistance. An involuntary movement does not break the intention to remain attentive.

The useful question is not simply, “Did my body move?” It is, “How did I relate to what happened?” Did I tense against the tremor? Did fear or irritation arise? Could I feel the movement directly before surrounding it with judgment?

Meditation may help separate the physical event from the distress we sometimes build around it. This does not mean that suffering is imaginary or that symptoms can be thought away. It means that symptoms and our reactions to them are related but not identical. Within that distinction, there may be room for greater ease.

Bringing Tremor into the Meditation

When my hand shakes, I can make the tremor itself the object of meditation. Instead of treating it as an interruption, I notice its rhythm, intensity, and location. I feel the movement in the fingers, hand, wrist, or arm and observe how it changes.

I also notice my mental response. There may be impatience, embarrassment, fear, or a wish for the shaking to stop. These reactions are part of the experience and can be observed without pretending they are pleasant.

At other times, attending directly to the tremor gives it too much prominence. I can then move my attention to something steadier: the breath at the nostrils, the movement of the abdomen, sounds in the room, or sensations elsewhere in the body. The shaking remains, but it moves into the background.

Neither approach is more advanced. Sometimes we turn toward a difficult sensation; sometimes we widen the field around it. Meditation allows for both.

Supporting the Body

Meditation should adapt to the body rather than requiring the body to conform to an ideal. On some days, sitting upright may feel natural. On others, a supportive chair, a cushion behind the back, or lying down may be more appropriate.

The hands can also be supported. Resting a shaking hand on the thigh, in the lap, or against a cushion may reduce its movement or make it less distracting. Gently placing one hand over the other can sometimes provide steadiness. The aim is not to suppress the tremor at all costs, but to find a position in which the body does not require constant management.

If discomfort makes movement necessary, I can reposition myself slowly and attentively. The movement becomes part of the meditation: the intention to move, the lifting of the body, the change in pressure, and the return to rest.

A short, attentive meditation may be more useful than a longer period spent struggling against pain or rigidity. Five or ten minutes can be a complete meditation, not merely preparation for a “real” one.

Meditation in Motion

Sitting is only one form of meditation. Walking meditation may be helpful when sitting is uncomfortable or the body needs to move. The practice can be as simple as feeling each foot meet the ground and noticing the sequence of lifting, moving, and placing it.

For someone with Parkinson’s, walking may already require attention. Meditation brings a different quality of awareness, but its purpose is not to perfect the gait or replace movement therapy. It is to inhabit the experience of walking without judging every step.

Gentle stretching, standing, and other deliberate movements can also be approached meditatively. Attention remains with bodily sensation, breathing, balance, and intention. The boundary between meditation and daily activity begins to soften.

Working with Difficulty

Meditation is sometimes presented as a way to become calm. Calm may arise, and reduced stress and anxiety are among its most credible potential benefits for people with Parkinson’s. But making calm the immediate goal can create another difficulty. If agitation, tremor, or fear continues, we may conclude that the practice is not working.

The first task is simpler: to know what is happening. If anxiety is present, we can notice how it appears in the body. If frustration arises, we can recognize it. If the breath is shallow, we do not need to force it deeper. We can begin by feeling one breath as it is.

This is not passive resignation. Clear observation can help us respond intelligently. We may recognize that we need to change position, rest, move, exercise, take prescribed medication, or speak with someone. Acceptance does not mean refusing to act. It means beginning with an honest perception of present conditions.

Self-compassion belongs here too. Meditating with a changing body can require patience and courage. Kindness toward ourselves is not a consolation prize for failing to remain still. It is part of the practice.

The Body as Teacher

Parkinson’s can make the body feel unreliable or even alien. Actions that were once automatic may require conscious effort. Symptoms can fluctuate, leaving us uncertain about what the body will do next.

Meditation may not restore our old relationship with the body, but it can help cultivate a new one. Sensations can be observed as changing events rather than as a single fixed condition called “my Parkinson’s.” Tremor changes in rhythm and intensity. Rigidity has location, pressure, and texture. Even discomfort is not entirely uniform when examined closely.

The purpose is not to make symptoms fascinating or pleasant. Close attention simply restores detail to experience. Parkinson’s is a diagnosis, but the body remains a living process, changing from moment to moment.

Meditation may also reveal what remains available: breath, sensation, sound, emotion, memory, and awareness. Some of these capacities may change over time, but the practice does not depend on performing a complicated sequence or meeting a physical standard. It can become simpler as necessary.

A Practice That Can Adapt

Meditation is a practice that can remain with us for life. It requires no special equipment or physical ability. At its simplest, all we need is our breath and the capacity to notice it.

Parkinson’s varies not only from person to person but from hour to hour. A durable meditation practice must therefore be flexible enough to meet the body of the day. As our circumstances change, the posture, duration, or method may change with them.

Some people may find it easier to meditate during an “on” period, when medication is working well. Others may find that gentle observation during an “off” period helps them meet discomfort with less alarm. Neither choice is more authentic. The best time is the one that makes a sustainable practice possible.

Fatigue, sleepiness, pain, medication effects, or cognitive changes may alter the practice. Guidance, recordings, group meditation, or the presence of a teacher may become increasingly valuable. The form can change while the heart of the practice continues.

Meditation can last thirty minutes in a quiet room, five minutes in a chair, or a few breaths while waiting for an appointment. Wherever we are and whatever the body is doing, the breath offers a way back to the present moment. Meditation can travel with us through the changing circumstances of a life.

Beginning Gently

For someone with Parkinson’s who is new to meditation, a modest beginning is usually best. Sit for five or ten minutes in a stable, comfortable chair. Let the hands rest wherever they feel supported. Bring attention to the breath where it is easiest to feel—perhaps at the nostrils, in the chest, or in the abdomen.

There is no need to breathe in a special way. When attention wanders, return gently. When movement occurs, notice it. If the tremor becomes overwhelming, shift attention to a steadier anchor. Adjust the body when necessary and then continue.

• Comfort and stability matter more than an ideal posture.
• Involuntary movement does not interrupt meditation.
• Tremor can be observed directly or allowed to remain in the background.
• Deliberate movement can be made slowly and attentively.
• Short, regular sittings are more valuable than occasional tests of endurance.
• Walking, standing, reclining, and seated meditation are all legitimate forms.
• Difficult symptoms may be observed, but they do not always need to be endured.
• Meditation should complement—not replace—medical care, medication, exercise, and social support.

Parkinson’s asks for many forms of adaptation. Meditation can help us adapt without fighting every movement, judging every difficulty, or abandoning ourselves.

Psychological, Motor, Cognitive and Biological Benefits

Research on meditation and Parkinson’s is moving beyond stress reduction. Studies report benefits for anxiety, depression, quality of life, motor symptoms and cognition. Emerging research also points to biological effects involving dopamine, neuroplasticity and inflammation. The evidence remains limited and sometimes inconsistent, but suggests meditation deserves serious attention as a complementary therapy for Parkinson’s.

Meditation is hardly the first therapy that comes to mind for Parkinson’s disease. Exercise, physiotherapy and medication have much more obvious relationships to a movement disorder. Meditation is more readily associated with relaxation, stress reduction and emotional well-being.

Those benefits matter. Parkinson’s is not only a movement disorder. Anxiety, depression, cognitive changes and other non-motor symptoms can have a substantial effect on quality of life. Stress can also exacerbate motor symptoms such as tremor and freezing. Meditation therefore has an obvious place as a complementary practice for managing the psychological burden of living with Parkinson’s.

But the research is beginning to suggest something more interesting. Studies have reported changes not only in anxiety and depression, but also in motor symptoms, cognition, inflammatory biomarkers and even brain structure. Research outside Parkinson’s has also found that meditation can affect dopamine release, a finding of particular interest in a disease characterized by the progressive loss of dopamine-producing neurons.

Psychological Benefits

The strongest case for meditation begins with its psychological effects. Anxiety and depression are common non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s, while the uncertainty and progressive nature of the disease create their own sources of stress.

A systematic review and meta-analysis by Yi et al. (2024), examining 12 studies, found statistically significant reductions in anxiety and depression among people with Parkinson’s receiving mindfulness-based interventions. The researchers also found improvements in mindfulness and quality of life. Notably, however, they did not find a statistically significant pooled effect on motor symptoms.

More recent research strengthens the psychological findings. A randomized clinical trial published in 2025 assigned 159 people with mild-to-moderate Parkinson’s to meditation, yoga or usual care. After eight weeks, both meditation and yoga significantly reduced anxiety compared with usual care. Meditation also significantly reduced depression (Kwok et al., 2025).

These may sound like the “soft” benefits of meditation, but they should not be dismissed as peripheral to Parkinson’s. Stressful situations can worsen tremor and freezing, while anxiety and depression can compound the difficulties of living with the disease (Pickut et al., 2015). Reducing psychological distress is therefore worthwhile in itself and may also influence how Parkinson’s symptoms are experienced.

Motor Benefits

More surprising is evidence that meditation may affect motor symptoms themselves.

Pickut et al. (2015) conducted one of the early randomized controlled trials of mindfulness training in Parkinson’s. Thirty participants were randomized to an eight-week mindfulness-based intervention or usual care, with 27 completing the study. Motor performance was assessed by a movement-disorders specialist who was blinded to the participants’ treatment allocation.

The mindfulness group improved by 5.5 points on the motor section of the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS-III), from 27.43 to 21.93—an improvement of about 20 percent. The usual-care group did not improve. The researchers noted that a five-point change had previously been proposed as a clinically meaningful improvement, although they also cautioned that their sample was small and placebo effects could not be excluded.

The evidence has since become stronger, although not entirely consistent. A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis of eight randomized trials involving 337 people with Parkinson’s found that mindfulness and meditation interventions improved UPDRS-III scores by an average of 6.31 points compared with control conditions (Jin et al., 2023).

The larger 2025 randomized trial produced a similar result. Participants assigned to meditation improved significantly in motor symptoms compared with usual care, with a mean difference of 5.35 points after eight weeks. Perhaps more interestingly, the motor improvement in the meditation group remained significant at the six-month assessment (Kwok et al., 2025).

There is reason for caution. The 2024 meta-analysis by Yi et al. did not find a statistically significant overall motor effect. The studies use different interventions, outcome measures and populations, and many remain relatively small. The evidence therefore does not establish meditation as a motor treatment for Parkinson’s. But neither can its possible motor effects be readily dismissed.

Cognitive Benefits

Parkinson’s can also affect attention, executive function, memory and other aspects of cognition. Meditation is itself an exercise in attention, making cognitive effects particularly interesting.

The 2023 meta-analysis of randomized trials found a significant improvement in cognitive function among participants receiving mindfulness or meditation interventions, with a standardized mean difference of 0.62—a moderate effect (Jin et al., 2023).

The evidence here is much smaller than the broader literature on meditation and cognition, and it would be premature to conclude that meditation protects against Parkinson’s-related cognitive decline. Nevertheless, cognition deserves attention as a separate outcome of future Parkinson’s meditation research.

Quality of Life and Non-Motor Symptoms

Ultimately, an intervention for a chronic progressive disease should be judged not only by clinical measurements but also by whether it helps people live better.

The evidence here is mixed but encouraging. Yi et al. (2024) found a significant overall improvement in quality of life across mindfulness studies. The 2025 randomized trial similarly found significant improvements in health-related quality of life after meditation, with the benefit still detectable six months later (Kwok et al., 2025).

Results for individual symptoms such as pain, sleep and activities of daily living are less consistent. The 2023 meta-analysis, for example, did not find significant pooled improvements in sleep, pain or activities of daily living (Jin et al., 2023).

This distinction is important. Meditation should not become a catch-all therapy to which every positive outcome is attributed. The evidence is stronger for some effects than others.

Dopamine, Neuroplasticity and Inflammation

Some of the most intriguing research concerns measurable changes in the brain and body.

Dopamine provides an obvious point of interest in Parkinson’s. The disease is characterized by progressive loss of dopamine-producing neurons, and many of the most effective Parkinson’s medications work directly or indirectly on the dopaminergic system.

Kjaer et al. (2002) used PET imaging to study experienced practitioners during Yoga Nidra meditation. They observed a 7.9 percent reduction in 11C-raclopride binding in the ventral striatum, corresponding to an estimated 65 percent increase in endogenous dopamine release during meditation.

That figure is striking, but it needs careful interpretation. The participants were healthy meditators, not people with Parkinson’s. The study demonstrated an acute change in dopamine release during a particular meditation practice; it did not show that meditation increases the number of dopamine-producing neurons, reverses dopamine loss, or slows Parkinson’s disease.

The appropriate conclusion is modest but fascinating: meditation can influence dopaminergic activity in the human brain. Whether that mechanism contributes to any of the motor improvements observed in Parkinson’s meditation studies remains unknown.

There is also Parkinson’s-specific evidence suggestive of neuroplasticity. Pickut et al. (2013) used MRI to examine people with Parkinson’s before and after an eight-week mindfulness intervention. Compared with usual care, the mindfulness group showed increased grey matter density in several areas, including the hippocampus, amygdala, caudate nucleus and thalamus. These regions are involved in functions including memory, emotion and movement.

The study was very small—27 participants completed it—and its statistical results were reported without correction for multiple comparisons. It should therefore be regarded as exploratory rather than proof that meditation reverses Parkinson’s-related brain changes. Nevertheless, it demonstrates that meditation-related structural brain changes can be investigated directly in people with Parkinson’s rather than inferred solely from research involving healthy meditators.

Inflammation provides another possible biological pathway. In the 2025 randomized Parkinson’s trial, researchers measured inflammatory and stress biomarkers. Both the meditation and yoga groups subsequently showed significant reductions in interleukin-6 (IL-6), an inflammatory marker (Kwok et al., 2025).

Again, this does not demonstrate that meditation slows Parkinson’s neurodegeneration. But taken together, the dopamine, neuroplasticity and inflammation findings suggest that meditation is associated with measurable biological changes as well as subjective psychological ones.

Limits of the Evidence

Meditation research in Parkinson’s remains young. Many studies have small samples, interventions vary considerably, and “meditation” may include mindfulness meditation, body scanning, yoga and other practices. Most studies have also concentrated on people with mild-to-moderate Parkinson’s rather than advanced disease.

There are also contradictory findings. One meta-analysis finds significant motor and cognitive benefits while another finds significant psychological and quality-of-life benefits but no significant motor effect. Such differences are not necessarily evidence that meditation does not work. They indicate that the evidence is not yet mature enough to determine reliably which forms of meditation help which symptoms, for whom, and by how much.

Most importantly, there is currently no convincing evidence that meditation slows the underlying neurodegenerative progression of Parkinson’s. Meditation should therefore be regarded as a complement to established medical treatment and exercise, not a substitute for them.

Meditation Beyond Relaxation

The safest conclusion from the research is also more interesting than I expected. Meditation appears to help people with Parkinson’s manage anxiety, depression and quality of life. There is promising, though less settled, evidence of benefits to motor symptoms and cognition. Small neurological studies have found measurable changes in brain structure and inflammatory markers, while research in healthy meditators demonstrates that meditation can influence dopamine release.

None of this makes meditation a cure for Parkinson’s. But it does suggest that describing meditation simply as a way to relax understates what may be happening.

The research is still developing. For people living with Parkinson’s, however, there is already enough evidence to take meditation seriously as a complementary practice—and enough unanswered questions to make further research particularly worthwhile.

See also, Practising Meditation with Parkinson’s

References

Jin, X., Wang, L., Liu, S., Zhu, L., & Loprinzi, P. D. (2023). Mindfulness or meditation therapy for Parkinson’s disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. European Journal of Neurology. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37158296/

Kjaer, T. W., Bertelsen, C., Piccini, P., Brooks, D., Alving, J., & Lou, H. C. (2002). Increased dopamine tone during meditation-induced change of consciousness. Cognitive Brain Research, 13(2), 255–259. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11958969/

Kwok, J. Y. Y., et al. (2025). Effects of meditation and yoga on anxiety, depression and chronic inflammation in patients with Parkinson’s disease: A randomized clinical trial. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40024243/

Pickut, B. A., Van Hecke, W., Kerckhofs, E., Mariën, P., Vanneste, S., Cras, P., & Parizel, P. M. (2013). Mindfulness based intervention in Parkinson’s disease leads to structural brain changes on MRI: A randomized controlled longitudinal trial. Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery, 115(12), 2419–2425. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clineuro.2013.10.002

Pickut, B., Vanneste, S., Hirsch, M. A., Van Hecke, W., Kerckhofs, E., Mariën, P., Parizel, P. M., Crosiers, D., & Cras, P. (2015). Mindfulness training among individuals with Parkinson’s disease: Neurobehavioral effects. Parkinson’s Disease, 2015, 816404. https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/816404

Yi, M., Zhang, W., Zhao, B., & Wang, Z. (2024). The effects of mindfulness-based interventions in people with Parkinson’s disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Clinical Gerontologist. https://doi.org/10.1080/07317115.2024.2314192

Attention and Discovery in Meditation

“I have a theory that the moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. I have tried this experiment a thousand times and I have never been disappointed. The more I look at a thing, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I want to see.”
— Henry Miller, Black Spring (1936)

The Boredom of Breathing

Boredom is one of the most common difficulties in meditation. The instruction to pay attention to the breath sounds simple enough. Air comes in. Air goes out. Then it happens again, and again. We have been breathing since the moment we were born, and reduced to its most obvious features, breathing is monotonous: inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. There appears to be very little there to hold attention.

Henry Miller’s blade of grass suggests another possibility. Perhaps the breath is not quite as simple as our idea of it. The mind is extraordinarily good at compressing familiar experience, and it has to be. We do not need to notice everything that happens every time we breathe. The single concept “breath” gathers an enormous amount of experience into something we can recognize and largely ignore.

Meditation gives us a chance to decompress that experience. Instead of recognizing a breath, labelling it and moving on, we can linger over it and allow the familiar package to open again. “Breath” begins to separate into sensations, locations, movements, temperatures and changes, some obvious and others barely perceptible. There is a small pleasure of discovery in finding how much was hidden inside something so ordinary. So let us take Miller at his word and try the experiment with a single breath.

Inside a Breath

At first there is simply an inhalation. Closer attention may reveal a faint sensation of moving air at the nostrils, perhaps clearest at the rim of the nose, slightly inside it, or across the skin beneath it. One nostril may be more noticeable than the other. Incoming air may feel cool. There can be a faint brushing or streaming sensation, dryness, pressure, tickling or vibration. The first trace of airflow appears, strengthens and eventually weakens; its location may shift and its coolness change as the inhalation proceeds. What appeared to be a single sensation already has location, temperature, intensity and duration.

Meanwhile, the breath may be felt somewhere else entirely. The abdomen expands, the chest rises, movement may spread around the sides of the ribs or into the back. Clothing shifts against the skin. A waistband changes pressure. The body’s contact with a chair or cushion subtly changes. These sensations have their own timing and intensity, not necessarily matching what is happening at the nostrils. What seemed to be one event is occurring in several places at once.

The inhalation also has a shape in time. Its beginning may be so faint that the precise starting point is difficult to locate. It gathers strength, continues for a while and then diminishes until it disappears. There may be a pause before exhalation, although not always. That apparent stillness can have sensations of its own: a heartbeat, residual movement in the chest or abdomen, perhaps the first suggestion of exhalation arriving so gradually that no exact boundary can be found.

Then the direction reverses. Air moving outward may feel warmer at the nostrils, and its strongest point may have shifted. Exhalation can begin strongly and trail away, or emerge gently and remain faint throughout. The abdomen settles, the chest falls, clothing changes its pressure against the skin and the body’s weight shifts almost imperceptibly against whatever supports it. The airflow weakens until it too disappears, and another breath begins.

It is similar, but not identical. It may be deeper or shallower, longer or shorter. Airflow may be stronger through the other nostril. The abdomen may move more while the chest moves less. One breath has an obvious pause; another seems to turn immediately from inhalation to exhalation. One is smooth, another catches slightly. A faint whisper may be audible at the nostrils or throat, or there may be the almost imperceptible sound of clothing moving. Sometimes sound is clearer than the sensation of airflow; sometimes it disappears altogether.

Across several breaths, still more variation may come into view. A heartbeat can briefly become prominent in the chest, throat or abdomen, several quicker beats occurring within the slower rhythm of breathing. Even the sense of control fluctuates. At one moment the breath seems to happen entirely by itself. Then awareness of it somehow interferes, making it slightly deeper or slower. A few breaths later, control relaxes and breathing again seems simply to happen.

But the accumulation of detail should not mislead us. Not every breath unfolds this way. Coolness that was distinct may become barely perceptible. The abdomen may dominate awareness for several breaths and then recede. A breath that seems extraordinarily vivid may be followed by one in which almost nothing stands out. Sometimes close attention reveals an intricate sequence of sensations; sometimes air simply seems to come in and go out. That variability is part of the experience too.

At low resolution, breathing is inhalation and exhalation. With closer attention it may differentiate into coolness and warmth, pressure and release, expansion and contraction, sound and silence. There can be location, intensity, asymmetry, beginnings, endings and transitions. Some sensations coexist; others compete for attention or disappear completely. Attention has not added anything to the breath. It has differentiated some of what was already there.

When There Is Less to See

Miller’s proposition has limits. Close attention does not guarantee endlessly increasing detail, because attention itself fluctuates and sensations vary in their accessibility. Focusing closely on the nostrils may cause the abdomen to recede; moving attention to the abdomen may make the nose disappear. Expectations can colour what seems to be present. Sometimes successive breaths really do seem very similar.

Boredom can therefore mean different things. Sometimes it arrives prematurely: the mind recognizes a familiar pattern, labels it “breathing,” and concludes that it already knows what is there. Continued attention may reveal that the conclusion was premature. Sensations begin to differentiate, and what looked like repetition contains considerably more variation.

At other times, closer attention stops revealing much more. The sensations remain faint. Successive breaths seem genuinely similar. Attention begins travelling over familiar territory rather than discovering anything new. That need not mean the meditator has failed to pay sufficient attention. It may simply be a natural limit of this particular object, at this particular scale, in this particular sitting.

The distinction is between having stopped looking and, for the moment, having looked enough.

There is no precise boundary between the two. Learning to recognize the difference may itself be part of meditation. Boredom is therefore neither something that must always be resisted nor an automatic reason to abandon the breath. Sometimes there is more to perceive. Sometimes there is not much more available just now.

The Breath Is Not Entertainment

Attending closely to the breath is not intended to make meditation more entertaining. That was never the point. The breath is an anchor. It could instead be a mantra, a candle flame, a sound, an image, or another object of meditation. The particular object matters less than the function it serves: it gives the busy, seeking mind somewhere simple and stable to rest.

Each time attention wanders into planning, remembering, worrying or daydreaming, there is something to return to. Something can gradually change as that returning continues. The effort required to stay with the anchor may diminish. Thoughts still arise, but they demand less involvement. Attention becomes steadier and the impulse to follow every interesting thought begins to weaken. The breath has not become more entertaining; the need to be entertained has become less important.

There is therefore no requirement to keep extracting ever finer sensations from the breath. Curiosity can reveal how much was overlooked in an apparently simple experience, but eventually continued examination may become another form of seeking: looking for the next subtle sensation, the next difference, the next discovery. At that point, the anchor may already have done much of what was asked of it. The breath can remain quietly in awareness without requiring continual investigation.

Beyond the Breath

This may be a natural time to change the object of attention. A body scan is one possibility. The same curiosity that distinguished coolness, pressure, movement and change within the breath can now be applied to sensations elsewhere in the body. “Tingling” in a foot may separate into individual points or pulses; pressure against a chair may reveal differences in intensity, warmth or texture. Or very little may reveal itself at all.

Miller was right that close attention can reveal surprising depth in something ordinary, though perhaps not quite without limit. A breath that initially seems repetitive can decompress into a changing field of sensations, and boredom may sometimes tell us more about the resolution of our attention than about the object itself. But there will also be times when there really is less to discover. Knowing the difference matters.

In meditation, discovery is useful, but it is not the destination. The breath gives the seeking mind an anchor and, in the process, can teach us something about how much escapes ordinary attention. When the breath has become familiar and the mind has settled, there is no need to keep searching it for more. We can stay with it, move into a body scan, or allow the meditation to take another direction. What began with Miller’s invitation to look more closely ends with a different possibility: knowing when we no longer need to look so hard.

A Simple Method for Observing and Strengthening Attention

One of the challenges of meditation is knowing whether we are improving. Some sessions feel calm, others seem filled with distraction. Over weeks or months we hope our attention is becoming steadier, but progress is often difficult to perceive.

Meditation develops through repeated cycles of attention, distraction, recognition, and return. A simple way to make these cycles more visible is to hold a counter in one hand while meditating. Each time you realize that your attention has wandered, you register one count and then return your attention to the meditation anchor, such as the breath.

Strictly speaking, the counter does not measure distractions directly. It records the moments when you become aware that you have been distracted. This places the emphasis on something positive: not that the mind wandered, but that awareness returned. The small action of making a count clearly marks this moment of recognition before attention returns to the anchor.

At the end of the session, the total is recorded in a meditation log. A single number says little on its own, but a series of counts creates a record that can be followed over weeks and months. As attention becomes steadier and distractions occur less often, the number of counted distractions should gradually decline.

Choosing a Counter

A counter should interfere with meditation as little as possible. Its purpose is not to become another object of attention, but to provide a reliable and consistent record of recognized distractions.

Mentally keeping a running total may seem like the simplest approach, but it requires remembering a number throughout the meditation. The number can become another object competing for attention. Writing marks on paper requires larger movements and may involve opening the eyes.

I experimented with counting on my fingers. Beginning with both hands closed, I extended one finger after each recognized distraction. This method works, although I occasionally lost track of which fingers I had already extended.

Digital counters are available, but I found them less suitable for meditation. The digital counters I tested, including some attractive rings, entered power-saving mode after periods of inactivity. During meditation, I could not tell whether the device was awake. If it had gone to sleep, the first press merely woke it instead of recording the distraction. Phones, apps, and smartwatches introduce similar problems, including screens, notifications, and uncertainty about whether a touch was recorded.

A Mechanical Tally Counter

I recommend a simple mechanical tally counter. It requires no batteries, never sleeps, fits comfortably in the hand, and registers every press immediately with a quiet, reassuring click. After a few sessions, operating it becomes almost automatic.

Before beginning, reset the counter to zero and hold it loosely in one hand, with a finger or thumb resting near the lever. Whenever you recognize that your attention has genuinely wandered, press the counter once. Then gently return your attention to the meditation anchor.

Do not look at the total during the meditation. Read and record it only after the session has ended.

Buttons on a String

A simple counter can also be made by threading several buttons onto a short cord. Leave enough space for the buttons to slide, while ensuring that they remain where they are placed.

Before meditation, move all the buttons to one end of the cord. Whenever you recognize a distraction, slide one button to the other end, always moving the buttons in the same direction.

At the end of the meditation, count the buttons that were moved. Large buttons with distinct edges are usually easier to feel and move than small ones.

The counter does not need to be decorative or elaborate. It only needs to perform one simple task without demanding attention. Meditation beads or a mala can be used in much the same way, moving one bead for each recognized distraction.

A Consistent Counting Method

Whatever tool you choose, use it in the same way from one meditation to the next. The goal is not to capture every small movement of the mind, but to apply a few simple guidelines consistently.

1. Allow the meditation to settle. Wait for about a minute before beginning to count.
2. Count only genuine distractions. Do not count every passing thought or momentary fluctuation of attention. If you still have a good connection to the meditation anchor, remain with the practice.
3. Do not count brief meditation instructions. A thought such as ‘return to the breath,’ ‘soften the body,’ or ‘relax the shoulders’ can be part of the practice rather than a distraction.
4. Count when you notice. When you recognize that your attention has genuinely wandered, press the counter once or move one bead or button. Then gently return to the meditation anchor.

When in doubt, do not count. Applying the same rule consistently is more useful than trying to count every possible distraction.

Keeping a Meditation Log

A single count says very little by itself. A meditation log can reveal patterns across many sessions.

After each meditation, you might record:

Date	Time	Minutes	Internal	External	Distractions	Note
2026-06-27	7:00 a.m.	30	2	1	12	Poor sleep; noise outside.

Internal refers to how distracted or unsettled you felt before beginning, rated from 1 for low to 3 for high. External refers to the level of distraction in the environment, using the same scale. The note can briefly mention poor sleep, unusual stress, noise, interruptions, or anything else that may help explain the session.

The purpose of the log is not to judge individual meditations or compete with yourself. It is to notice patterns over time.

You may find that attention is steadier at a particular time of day, that poor sleep is associated with more distractions, or that certain environments support your practice better than others. If you experiment with different counting tools, record which one you used in the note.

Counting Awareness

The mind wandering during meditation is not a failure. It is part of the practice. What matters is recognizing that attention has wandered and returning without frustration or judgment.

A counter makes that moment more distinct. Each click, bead, or button records the return of awareness. Over time, the meditation log provides a simple picture of how attention is developing and which conditions seem to support it.

The numbers should not become a score or another standard by which to judge yourself. Some sessions will naturally contain more distractions than others. What matters is the longer pattern and the growing ability to notice distraction sooner, release it more easily, and return to the meditation anchor.

Each count marks a moment when awareness returns. By recognizing that moment clearly, releasing the distraction, and returning to the meditation anchor, we strengthen the very capacity that meditation is intended to develop.

See a related essay with a research focus, A Standardized Method for Counting Distractions in Meditation

Rethinking Presence, Transmission, and Teaching

I offer meditation online. Many people love it. Others are surprised by the idea. Meditation, they tell me, needs to happen in person.

There are plenty of practical reasons people appreciate meditating online. It is convenient, accessible, and easy to fit into ordinary life. But the more interesting objection comes from traditional practitioners who believe something important is lost when teacher and student are not physically together. Sometimes they describe that missing element as transmission.

What Is Transmission?

Transmission has different meanings across contemplative traditions. At its strongest, it can refer to something almost metaphysical: a realization, spiritual energy, or awakened state being communicated directly from teacher to student. In other contexts, the idea is less supernatural. A student learns not simply from a teacher’s words, but from being in the teacher’s presence: observing how they sit, speak, breathe, respond, remain silent, and direct their attention.

There is something important in that second idea. But I am skeptical of the first, particularly when transmission becomes attached to the authority of a particular teacher, lineage, school, or physical place. I don’t believe meditation requires something mysterious to pass from an authorized teacher to a student sitting in the same room.

In fact, my approach to online meditation deliberately moves in another direction. People meditate in their own spaces, where they feel comfortable and safe. The teacher is physically decentered. I prefer a peer-centred approach in which I facilitate practice rather than position myself as the source of something that others must receive.

Transmission Has Already Left the Room

There is also an interesting precedent within one of the most traditional forms of meditation I have practised. S. N. Goenka died in 2013, yet Goenka Vipassana retreats continue to rely heavily on recordings of his instructions and discourses. Thousands of people have therefore learned meditation from a teacher who is not physically present.

A recording is obviously not identical to a live online session, but it complicates the claim that authentic meditation instruction requires teacher and student to occupy the same physical space. If voice, instruction, pacing, silence, and guidance can be carried through a recording, they can certainly be mediated through contemporary communications technology.

A Modern Meaning of Transmission

None of this means we need to throw out the idea of transmission altogether. Strip away the metaphysics and something recognizable remains. Human beings regulate and influence one another through voice, facial expression, rhythm, breathing, attention, silence, imitation, and emotional responsiveness. A calm person can help another person become calm. A teacher’s manner of attending can help students discover a different way of attending themselves. We might call this embodied transmission.

Chanting makes the idea especially clear. People synchronize rhythm, breathing, vocalization, and attention. Something really is being transmitted between people, but we don’t need a supernatural explanation for it. Co-regulation, entrainment, social learning, imitation, and shared attention give us perfectly plausible ways of understanding what is happening. And importantly, these processes do not suddenly disappear when people communicate through screens.

A voice still has rhythm and tone. Breathing can still be heard. Facial expressions can still be seen. Silence can still be shared. Attention can still be directed together. A group of people in different places can still settle into a common practice.

Presence Is Not the Same as Proximity

Perhaps we have confused presence with physical proximity. Being three metres away from a meditation teacher does not guarantee that anything meaningful will be transmitted. A student can sit in the same room while distracted, resistant, bored, or preoccupied. Conversely, someone listening through headphones hundreds of kilometres away can be intensely attentive.

Physical proximity provides information that online communication cannot completely reproduce. Bodies communicate in subtle ways, and a room full of people develops its own atmosphere. I don’t think we need to deny that.

But online meditation provides different conditions. Everyone effectively has a front-row seat. A teacher’s voice through headphones can be remarkably intimate. Participants can close their eyes without the self-consciousness that sometimes accompanies sitting among strangers. Most importantly, they learn to meditate in the place where they actually live. That last point may be more significant than it first appears.

A meditation centre creates a special environment for meditation. That can be powerful, but it can also unintentionally reinforce the idea that meditation belongs somewhere else: in the retreat centre, meditation hall, monastery, or teacher’s room.

Online meditation reverses this relationship. The practice enters your home.

The chair where you answer email becomes a meditation chair. The room containing the distractions of ordinary life becomes the room in which you learn to attend. When the online session ends, you are already where your life happens.

Transmission Without a Centre

This suggests another possibility. Perhaps online meditation doesn’t merely reproduce traditional transmission imperfectly. Perhaps it changes its structure.

Instead of transmission flowing primarily from teacher to student, something can emerge among the participants themselves. The teacher becomes one participant with a particular responsibility: creating conditions, offering instruction, maintaining rhythm, and protecting the space for practice. The centre of gravity shifts from the teacher to the practice.

That is closer to what I want from meditation anyway. I am not interested in creating dependency on a teacher, a room, or an institution. I want people to discover capacities that are already theirs: attention, stillness, curiosity, awareness, and the ability to return.

So I don’t think the interesting question is whether online meditation can perfectly reproduce meditation in a physical room. It cannot, and it doesn’t need to.

The better question is what kinds of presence become possible when meditation moves online. Something is lost when bodies no longer share a room. But something may also be gained: accessibility, intimacy, autonomy, a less hierarchical relationship with the teacher, and perhaps most importantly, the integration of meditation into the place where we actually live.

If transmission means something mysterious that can only pass from an authorized teacher to a student in a particular physical space, I am comfortable leaving it behind.

If transmission means human beings helping one another discover a different way of attending, I see no reason it cannot travel online.

A Bridge Between the Neuroscience and Experience of Meditation

I came to Iain McGilchrist’s Ways of Attending as someone interested in both meditation and neuroscience. This very short book distills one of the central arguments of his much larger work, The Master and His Emissary. Rather than presenting a comprehensive account of hemispheric differences and their consequences for Western culture, it offers an accessible introduction focused on attention. For me, it provides a compelling bridge between meditation and neuroscience.

McGilchrist’s central insight is that attention is not merely a cognitive function that selects parts of an already existing world. The manner in which we attend helps shape the world we experience.

McGilchrist distinguishes between the characteristic forms of attention associated with the brain’s two hemispheres. He rejects the popular idea that the left hemisphere is logical and the right creative. Both hemispheres participate in nearly everything we do. What distinguishes them is not so much what they do as how they attend.

The left hemisphere employs narrow, focused attention. It isolates objects, analyzes details, forms categories and makes the world available for practical action. The right hemisphere sustains a broader and more receptive awareness. It remains open to context, relationship, novelty, ambiguity and the living whole. We require both. The problem arises when the narrow, analytical representation produced by the left hemisphere is mistaken for the whole of reality.

This distinction immediately suggests a connection with meditation. Meditation often begins by selecting an object such as the breath and learning to sustain attention upon it. This focused attention develops stability, precision and the capacity to recognize distraction. Yet meditation does not end with tighter control over a narrowly defined object. As practice matures, attention can become more open and receptive. The breath is experienced within a wider field of bodily sensation, sound, feeling and awareness.

McGilchrist’s account helps explain this movement from concentration toward presence. Focused attention establishes stability, but receptive awareness allows experience to appear without immediately being divided, categorized or judged. The meditator learns not only where to place attention, but how to be with what is attended to.

It would be too simple to identify focused meditation with the left hemisphere and open awareness with the right. Meditation involves both hemispheres and distributed networks throughout the brain. McGilchrist’s more useful point concerns their relationship. Narrow attention should serve a broader awareness: we encounter the whole, examine something within it, and then return that understanding to its living context.

This is particularly relevant to my practice of counting distractions during meditation. Counting provides an objective measure and trains the ability to recognize distraction and return to the breath. But measurement is not the destination. It is a tool through which focused attention can become stable enough to support a less effortful and more unified awareness. In McGilchrist’s terms, measurement should serve presence rather than replace it.

Much neuroscientific research describes meditation through attention control, executive functioning, emotional regulation and changes in brain networks. Traditional meditation describes it from within, using concepts such as non-grasping, equanimity, absorption and insight. McGilchrist helps connect these perspectives. He begins with the organization of the brain but follows it into questions about experience: What does a particular manner of attending allow us to perceive? What kind of relationship with the world does it create?

Seen in this light, meditation is more than attention training intended to improve cognitive performance. It is a practice of changing the manner in which we encounter experience. We retain the capacity for precise, purposeful focus while becoming less governed by grasping, categorizing and control. Focus becomes the servant of awareness.

Ways of Attending therefore provides more than a neurological explanation of meditation. It offers a concise point of entry into McGilchrist’s broader thought and a vocabulary for understanding how brain, attention and lived experience belong together. Meditation trains not only the ability to remain attentive, but the capacity to meet the world with a broader, more patient and more receptive awareness.

A Personal Inquiry into Pain, Discomfort, Difficulty, and Growth

Suffering Imposed Upon Us

Suffering is one of those words that seems straightforward until we try to say exactly what we mean by it. Pain, discomfort, difficulty, stress, grief, and suffering overlap, but they are not the same thing. We may voluntarily endure considerable discomfort and not consider ourselves to be suffering at all. At other times, we may be suffering without fully recognizing it.

There is an easy place to begin. Externally imposed oppression or victimization causes genuine and undesirable suffering. War, abuse, exploitation, cruelty, and deprivation can overwhelm a person’s ability to simply choose a different attitude toward what is happening. There is little reason to romanticize such suffering, and certainly no reason to impose it on someone because we imagine it will make them stronger.

The more difficult questions begin with the suffering of ordinary life. How much of it can be avoided? How much do we create ourselves? Can difficulty contribute to growth without becoming suffering? And when suffering cannot be avoided, can changing the way we attend to it change the experience itself?

Suffering We Don’t Acknowledge

Sometimes a person is genuinely suffering but does not acknowledge it. I have done this myself. We push through, minimize what is happening, distract ourselves, or simply refuse to call it suffering. This may be a useful coping mechanism for a time, but as a long-term strategy it is a distortion. Not acknowledging suffering is not the same as being free of it.

There have been times when I mistook my ability to keep going for evidence that I was not suffering. Looking back, the suffering was quite real. Recognizing it was not giving in to it; it was necessary before I could respond appropriately. Sometimes the wiser response is not greater endurance but acknowledging what is happening and taking care of ourselves.

Discomfort and Growth

Growth often involves discomfort, but it may be a mistake to call that suffering when the difficulty is voluntarily undertaken. Athletic training provides an obvious example. We deliberately stress ourselves because we want to increase our capabilities. Fatigue, exertion, and even pain can be unpleasant without necessarily being experienced as suffering.

Much the same applies in ordinary life. Learning something difficult, creating something, caring for others, or working toward a meaningful goal can involve considerable effort and frustration. But when the effort is freely chosen and has purpose, we may experience it as challenge rather than suffering.

Attitude matters here. There is an old saying that if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. Few of us love what we do every day, but the saying contains an insight: the meaning we give to difficulty changes our experience of it.

Looking Directly at Suffering

Buddhism takes the investigation further. A common Buddhist formulation is that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. We cannot avoid unpleasant sensations, illness, aging, loss, and death. But Buddhism asks whether the suffering we add to these experiences arises partly from our resistance to them—our craving for things to be different from the way they are.

“Optional” does not mean that a suffering person can simply decide not to suffer. It points instead to something that can be discovered and developed through practice: our experience may change as our relationship to pain, loss, and adversity changes.

Some meditation practices make this question experiential. There are meditation teachers who teach an Hour of Stillness, in which you try not to move. Eventually something hurts. We quickly label a sensation pain and react: I don’t like this; I want it to stop.

But give the sensation your complete attention and something interesting can happen. What seemed like a single solid thing called pain becomes pressure, heat, tension, pulsing—sensations arising and passing. Sometimes what we had labelled pain diminishes or disappears. More importantly, the suffering surrounding the sensation can diminish even when the sensation remains.

This isn’t a trick for ignoring suffering. It is almost the opposite: looking so closely that we begin to distinguish the sensation itself from our reaction to it. Buddhism takes this insight deeper still. Much of our resistance is organized around a sense of self: I am hurting; I don’t want this; this shouldn’t be happening to me. Buddhist practice ultimately asks us to examine that “I” as closely as we examine the pain. If our sense of a fixed and separate self begins to loosen, so too may some of the suffering organized around protecting it.

The point is not that pain is imaginary. Pain can be present without necessarily becoming suffering.

Avoiding Unnecessary Suffering

There is also something to be said for not creating unnecessary suffering in the first place. At first glance, exercising without pushing yourself very hard can sound lazy. But slow running and low-intensity exercise are established approaches to building fitness.

Endurance athletes commonly do much of their training at an easy, sustainable intensity. The idea is not to prove your fitness on every outing but to build it gradually. Easy training allows longer and more frequent sessions, develops aerobic capacity, and reduces the fatigue associated with repeatedly exercising at high intensity. Approaches such as easy running, conversational-pace running, Zone 2 training, and polarized endurance training differ in their details, but they share an important principle: harder is not always better.

The same principle applies beyond running. Strength training does not require taking every set to failure. A cyclist does not need to finish every ride exhausted. A swimmer can accumulate distance at a comfortable pace and discover, months later, that what once required considerable effort has become easy. Capacity can be built by repeatedly working within one’s limits and allowing those limits to expand.

There is an important distinction here between stress and strain. The aim is not to avoid effort, but to apply enough stress to stimulate adaptation without unnecessarily turning the experience into suffering. By going slowly, we can gradually develop the capacity that eventually allows us to go faster.

We often associate growth with pushing ourselves—no pain, no gain. But another path is consistency, patience, and gradual adaptation. Growth requires challenge, but it does not necessarily require suffering.

What Do We Do With Suffering?

Perhaps the mistake is trying to reach a single verdict on suffering. Suffering is good for you is too crude, but so is suffering should always be avoided. The distinctions matter.

Some suffering should be prevented. Some needs to be acknowledged rather than denied. Some apparent suffering may actually be voluntary discomfort in the service of something we value. And there is wisdom in developing our capabilities gradually rather than making unnecessary hardship into a virtue.

Then there is suffering we cannot prevent: illness, loss, aging, disappointment, and eventually death. Here the question changes. If we cannot remove the experience, what relationship will we have with it?

Sometimes the appropriate response is to change the circumstances. Sometimes it is to rest or ask for help. Sometimes it is to build our capacity patiently. And sometimes it is to look directly at what we are experiencing and see what happens when we stop resisting it.

Perhaps wisdom lies not in learning how to suffer, or even in learning how to avoid suffering, but in learning to recognize what kind of experience we are having and responding to it appropriately.

Pointers to the Oasis

People often say that meditation is boring. In a sense, they are right—but only because they mistake one stage of practice for the whole journey.

When people try meditation for the first time, or only occasionally, they often enjoy it. They leave feeling calmer, more relaxed, perhaps a little refreshed. This is good meditation, but it is only the beginning. It is primarily relaxational meditation. There is real value in it, but it is also relatively easy.

The challenge comes when meditation becomes a regular practice. Sitting every day or every week for twenty minutes or more requires discipline. You are learning a skill. You are training attention. The novelty wears off. Progress seems slow. The practice becomes routine, and many people conclude that meditation is boring.

For many meditators, this is the desert. Some turn back. Others keep walking.

But meditation asks a question in return. What do you mean by boring?

Is boredom always something to avoid? Must every moment be stimulating? Our modern world trains us to expect constant novelty, yet our minds are not necessarily healthier for it. There is value in occasionally doing one simple thing, repeatedly and without hurry. If not meditation, then gardening. Is it really so difficult to spend twenty minutes pulling weeds? Many people discover that weeding the garden becomes, quite naturally, meditative. Repetitive, single-minded activity gives the restless mind an opportunity to settle.

There is another way through boredom: curiosity.

You can gamify meditation, and there is nothing wrong with that. Treat each meditation as an exploration. How long can you follow the sensations of the inhale before they disappear? How long can you remain with the exhale? What subtle variations in temperature, pressure, sound, or movement can you detect? Does the breath have a taste at all? Every sitting becomes an opportunity to notice something you have never noticed before.

The breath is not nearly as simple as it first appears. A curious mind discovers that ordinary experience contains extraordinary detail. What once seemed monotonous becomes endlessly interesting.

With continued practice, something else begins to emerge. You experience the quiet joy of competence.

At first, this joy comes simply from discovering that you can direct your attention more steadily than before. You notice it during meditation. Then you notice it outside meditation as well. Conversations become easier to follow. Reading becomes deeper. You catch distractions sooner. Your attention becomes something you can trust. The practice is paying off, and it feels good. There is nothing wrong with enjoying this reward. It encourages you to continue.

As the hours accumulate—tens of hours, then hundreds—meditation begins to change. The effortful stage gradually gives way to something softer. What was once a dry exercise in concentration becomes infused with quiet joy. Your habits of attention gradually change. Instead of repeatedly reinforcing distraction, muddledness, craving, and suffering, you spend increasing amounts of time cultivating mindfulness, presence, and contentment.

The practice is no longer sustained by discipline alone. Attention itself becomes rewarding. The breath that once seemed ordinary reveals endless subtlety. Stillness no longer feels empty but alive. You find yourself looking forward to sitting down, not because you should, but because you want to.

You realize that what you once called boredom was simply unfamiliarity. You had not yet stayed with the practice long enough to discover what lay beyond it.

The ancient meditation traditions describe increasingly joyful states of practice, but you do not need to know their names to experience them. They are not reached through belief or mysticism, but through patience, curiosity, and sustained practice.

You thought you were crossing a desert. Instead, you had reached an oasis.

A Practical Method for Improving Focus and Mindfulness

Introduction

One of the challenges of meditation is knowing whether we are improving. Some sessions feel calm, others seem filled with distraction. Over weeks or months we hope our attention is becoming steadier, but progress is often difficult to perceive because attention is largely invisible.

Recent years have seen the emergence of neurofeedback devices that estimate attentional states using physiological signals such as EEG. These technologies are fascinating and continue to improve, but they are also relatively expensive and introduce another layer of technology into meditation.

This essay presents a simpler approach.

Rather than attempting to measure attention directly, this method records a specific metacognitive event: the moment a meditator recognizes that attention has wandered. That moment of recognition is central to meditation. Before it, the mind is absorbed in thought. After it, attention can be deliberately returned to the meditation object.

Throughout this essay, counting distractions refers to counting these recognized distractions. The method does not objectively measure attention itself. Rather, it provides an objective, standardized record of metacognitive events. By applying the same counting protocol from one session to the next, the resulting counts become meaningfully comparable across meditation sessions.

More importantly, this is not merely a method of measurement. It is also a method of training. Each time a distraction is recognized, the meditator performs the very mental act that meditation seeks to cultivate: awareness of distraction followed by a gentle return of attention. The act of measurement becomes an act of practice.

Relationship to Research

This method draws upon several well-established findings in cognitive psychology and contemplative science.

First, researchers have shown that the human mind naturally wanders. Conscious experience rarely remains on one topic for long; attention regularly shifts away from the present task toward internally generated thoughts and feelings. Mind wandering is therefore not a failure of meditation but a normal feature of human cognition (Smallwood & Schooler, 2015).

Second, an important distinction exists between mind wandering itself and meta-awareness–the moment we realize that the mind has wandered. Schooler and colleagues argue that the mind is only intermittently aware of engaging in mind wandering, and that this recognition represents a distinct metacognitive process (Schooler et al., 2011). This distinction is central to the counting method proposed here.

Third, mindfulness training has been associated with reductions in mind wandering and improvements in sustained attention. Mrazek, Smallwood, and Schooler (2012) found that mindfulness and mind wandering are opposing constructs in relation to undistracted attention, and that a brief period of mindful breathing reduced behavioral indicators of mind wandering on a later task.

Fourth, contemplative science has increasingly examined meditation as a training of awareness of spontaneous thought. Brandmeyer and Delorme (2021) propose a neurocognitive framework in which meditation cultivates awareness of mind wandering and supports attention regulation. Their work is especially relevant because it links meditation, spontaneous thought, and metacognitive awareness.

The method presented here builds on these findings. It does not attempt to detect mind wandering through physiological measurements such as EEG. Instead, it provides a simple, standardized way for meditators to record moments of meta-awareness during meditation itself. Each click records one such event, creating both a measurement of practice and a form of immediate feedback that helps cultivate the very capacity being measured.

To my knowledge, the literature has focused on detecting mind wandering through experience sampling, behavioral tasks, or physiological measures. The method proposed here offers a simple, standardized practice for recording naturally occurring moments of meta-awareness during meditation itself.

The Tally Counter

The method is simple.

Hold a tally counter comfortably in one hand throughout the meditation. Whenever you recognize that your attention has genuinely wandered from the meditation object, press the counter once. The click records a single metacognitive event: the conscious recognition that attention has drifted. Then gently return your attention to the meditation object.

The counter is used only when awareness returns after a distraction. Most of the meditation proceeds without interacting with it. At the end of the session, the total provides a standardized record of recognized distractions.

The tally counter does not objectively measure attention itself. Rather, it provides an objective, standardized record of moments of meta-awareness. It is this distinction that makes the method both simple and scientifically meaningful.

Why Counting Improves Meditation

Meditation develops through repeated cycles of attention, distraction, recognition, and return. The moment of recognition is easy to overlook, yet it is the pivot on which the practice turns. Without recognizing distraction, there can be no intentional return to the meditation object.

The tally counter reinforces this moment. Every click acknowledges, “I noticed.” The click does not record failure. It records awareness.

Over time, practitioners often notice that distractions are recognized sooner and attention returns more naturally. Early in practice, the distraction count may even increase as awareness becomes more sensitive. This should be welcomed. The goal is not to suppress thoughts but to cultivate the ability to recognize them without judgment.

Unlike many measurement tools, the tally counter does more than observe the practice. It actively reinforces the skill it measures.

Choosing a Counter

I recommend a simple mechanical tally counter.

Before using any device, I experimented with counting on my fingers. Beginning with both hands closed, I extended one finger after each recognized distraction. Ten fingers are generally sufficient for a twenty- or thirty-minute meditation. This method works, although I occasionally lost track of which fingers had already been extended. A counter simply performs the same task more reliably.

Digital tally counters are widely available, but I found them less suitable for meditation. The digital counters I tested entered power-saving mode after periods of inactivity. During meditation I could not tell whether the device was awake, and if it had gone to sleep, the first button press merely woke the device instead of recording the distraction. This introduced an unnecessary interruption into the practice.

A mechanical counter has none of these limitations. It requires no batteries, never sleeps, fits comfortably in the hand, and registers every press immediately with a quiet, reassuring click. After a few sessions, operating it becomes almost automatic.

The counter should interfere with the meditation as little as possible. Its purpose is not to become another object of attention, but to provide a reliable, consistent record of recognized distractions.

A Standardized Counting Method

To make the tally counter a meaningful measurement tool, use it consistently. The objective is not to count every fleeting mental event but to apply the same criteria during every meditation session.

1. Allow the meditation to settle. Do not begin counting immediately. Give the first minute or so for the mind to settle into the practice.
2. Count only genuine distractions. Do not count momentary fluctuations of attention. If your attention retains a good hook to the meditation object, it is not a distraction.
3. Do not count brief instructional self-talk. A simple reminder such as “return to the breath” or “relax the shoulders” is part of the meditation itself, not a distraction.
4. Count the moment of recognition. When you recognize that attention has genuinely wandered, click the counter once. The click records the metacognitive event–the conscious recognition of distraction. Then gently return attention to the meditation object.

When in doubt, do not click. Consistency is more important than attempting to count every possible distraction.

Keeping a Meditation Log

A single meditation session reveals little. A meditation log reveals patterns.

After each session, record:

Date	Time	Minutes	Internal	External	Distractions	Note
2026-06-27	7:00 am	30	2	1	12	Poor sleep; noise outside.

• Date – The date of the meditation session.
• Time – The time of day the meditation began.
• Minutes – The length of the meditation session.
• Internal – Your internal level of distraction before beginning, rated from 1 (low) to 3 (high).
• External – The level of external distraction in the meditation environment, rated from 1 (low) to 3 (high).
• Distractions – The total number of recognized distractions recorded with the tally counter.
• Note – A brief explanation of the Internal and External ratings, or any other observations that may help interpret the session.

The purpose of the log is not to judge individual meditation sessions but to observe trends over weeks, months, and years. You may discover that certain times of day produce better concentration, that poor sleep predicts higher distraction counts, or that environmental conditions influence your practice. These observations provide context for the distraction count and help explain changes over time.

Conclusion

The strength of this method lies in its simplicity.

It requires no specialized equipment, no software, and no knowledge of neuroscience. It asks only that the meditator consistently recognize and record one well-defined metacognitive event: the moment attention is seen to have wandered.

Over time, those simple observations become a record of practice, a source of feedback, and a means of cultivating greater mindfulness.

What can be measured can often be improved. By measuring moments of awareness, we train awareness itself.

Learn More

If you would like to try this method, I recommend a specific mechanical tally counter that I have found reliable for meditation. Details are available on my website.

I also host online meditation sessions using this counting method. Practicing together helps develop a consistent approach while exploring how metacognitive awareness develops through practice.

Finally, I invite practitioners to contribute anonymous meditation logs. By collecting standardized data from many meditators, I hope to better understand patterns of attention, distraction, and the development of meditation practice.

For information about the recommended counter, meditation sessions, and participation in the anonymous logging project, visit johnmiedema.art.

References

Brandmeyer, T., & Delorme, A. (2021). Meditation and the wandering mind: A theoretical framework of underlying neurocognitive mechanisms. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(1), 39-66. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620917340

Mrazek, M. D., Smallwood, J., & Schooler, J. W. (2012). Mindfulness and mind-wandering: Finding convergence through opposing constructs. Emotion, 12(3), 442-448. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026678

Schooler, J. W., Smallwood, J., Christoff, K., Handy, T. C., Reichle, E. D., & Sayette, M. A. (2011). Meta-awareness, perceptual decoupling and the wandering mind. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(7), 319-326. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2011.05.006

Smallwood, J., & Schooler, J. W. (2015). The science of mind wandering: Empirically navigating the stream of consciousness. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 487-518. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015331

See a related essay with a practice focus, Counting Distractions in Meditation