About 15 years ago, I wrote an article about types of meditation, based on their brain EEG signature. There has been a tendency for scientists, and indeed many people, to see all meditations as equivalent. Some would even use research on different practices to show the value of their practice. However, the results you get with a practice depend on what that practice is designed to develop.
If you practice volleyball, you won’t get better at playing a trumpet.
In that research, they classified three types:
– Focused Attention, which is different styles of concentration.
– Open Monitoring, more commonly called mindfulness practices.
– Automatic Self-Transcending or “effortless” meditation, such as I recommend.
Contemplative practices were not included in that research, but have their own EEG signature too.
Recently, I took a class with Ava Irani of Functional Spirituality via The Centre for Healing. She’s studied the history of spirituality academically and explored the field deeply. She presented a fascinating history of eastern spiritual practices, including how formerly renunciate practices were repackaged for householders, leading to those threads in modern spiritual instruction.
Ava has categorized meditations differently, based on their intent, on the results sought. Her approach makes sense to me.
Ava’s meditation categories are:
– Healing: such as the guided meditations healers use.
– Culturing: techniques that culture qualities, like love, gratitude, or concentration.
– Spiritual: transcending techniques that take you beyond the mind into true nature.
Teachers often claim one technique will support all three tracks. Their practice is all you’ll ever need. However, this is rarely the case.
Certainly, there can be crossover benefits. For example, the deep rest of a transcending technique will cause healing to take place. It will also culture certain qualities, like allowing and calm.
Further, transcending cultures presence which helps us observe the healing process, allowing it to go deeper. And it can reveal qualities worth culturing, like love.
However, as this is not the intent of the practice, it will not fully benefit the other tracks. Transcendental Meditation, for example, has “General Points” of checking, a more somatic approach to help process larger releases. However, most teachers make little use of it as “body awareness” techniques were dismissed as “dulling the mind.” This is not the case if they’re done with awareness. Further, we don’t cultivate practices like allowing unless the process is conscious. Otherwise, we just fall back into old habits in activity.
Notably, our attitude can influence our long-term success more than the practice itself. For example, our attitude can mute or enhance the benefits. This is because our attitude is setting the tone for our mind and energy and thus emphasizing those qualities in our life.
“…the overarching attitude of meditation is actually great training for how we can respond to our lives and the attitudes we can cultivate.”
– Ava Irani
It’s clear to me that a balanced approach directly addresses all 3 arenas. Each supports the other, and together they support the wholeness of life.
Being: an effortless transcending practice to establish presence and prepare the ground for awakening.
Healing: energy healing and somatic work to clear out historical burdens and bring clarity.
Culturing: to develop qualities, gifts, and refinement.
I’ve been talking about all of these but had not discovered this framing. I intend to adopt it. 🙂
Davidya
Last Updated on March 28, 2025 by Davidya
Hi David, this is a beautiful way of structuring meditation, thanks. TM and TM Sidhi, Eva Muller or others similar, and culturing gratitude with eyes wide open, maybe seems like a strategy in accord with this framing of meditation?
Hi Kjetil
Broadly, yes. The siddhis are a culturing practice. What is best suited to us specifically will vary some. I find benefit with Eva, for example, but also do somatic therapy sessions. She herself does various things for healing.
With something like culturing gratitude, it’s not that you walk around thinking about gratitude all the time. You allow yourself to feel whatever is arising. It’s only that here and there you bring attention to what you have to be grateful for. This can shift your emotional tone from dwelling on what’s not wanted, for example.