The Varieties of Meditative Distractions

It’s not just your verbal mind…

Listening to a lot of meditators, you’d think that the narrative voice in your head was the only challenge to concentration. Yet while it is a prominent part of meditation — especially early in the process, it’s by no means the only one.

In this article I’m giving descriptions of various distractions, along with a few hypotheses about when they occur — to be experimented with and revised as we go along. I am using my own experience with binaural beats (which create different levels of brain waves). It’s a remarkably small sample set — but case studies are a good way to begin. I’m sure the content in this article has been covered elsewhere, but — surprisingly — I haven’t come across it yet.

The Narrative Voice

This is of course the famous ‘voice in your head’ that is such a persistent part of meditation, especially at the beginning of each sitting, and sometimes throughout the session. Actually, it may not be a narrative, but a dialogue, as you review past interactions or rehearse for the future. While rumination is never good, there’s a practical side to rehearsing, but neither is helpful within meditation.

The narrative/dialogue voice is associated with our usual waking consciousness: left fronto-temporal region, and beta brain waves.

Fantasies and Daydreams

Another type of distraction comes in the form of fantasies and daydreams. Although there can be some speech associated with them, it is often more spontaneous and less propositional than in narrative voice. Auditory images include clips of music, and sometimes repetitive earworms. Visual images are usually an important factor, as well. Generally, there is a fair amount of control over the fantasy, while some auditory and visual content (like earworms) is not under direct conscious control.

I associate fantasies and daydreams with alpha brain waves, and they usually occur deeper into the meditative session. If one were trying to do some problem-solving, this would be a very good opportunity, although that’s not what we’re trying to do in meditation, per se.

Dreams and Non-Conscious Content

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