Counting Meditations
On-line Instruction with Charles MacInerney

Counting Back From 10: This counting meditation is designed to improve your ability to hold the mind steady, without wandering. It is not very elegant or spiritual, but it does strengthen your "concentration muscles." Practicing this meditation is like an athlete who lifts weights to improve his or her golf swing. There are 3 main variations of the counting back meditation. Each one is slightly harder than the previous one. The important point to remember is that the goal is not to reach 1 as many times as possible before losing count. The goal is to learn how to notice the slightest waver of the mind, so that you can bring it back to the meditation again. Every time your mind wanders, and you bring it back to the exercise, it is like doing a push-up - you get a little bit stronger.

The secret to success is to notice the first flicker of attention loss and take immediate steps to bring yourself back to full attention. If you do not notice the first fleeting excursion of the mind, it is less likely you will notice the second or third, and 10 minutes later you will be thinking about work, politics, or something, and you will gain little benefit from the exercise. But if you notice the first flicker and immediately come back to the exercise with full attention you will get stronger with each passing minute.

The best way to notice if your mind has wandered is to listen to the way you say each number. If there is any doubt, no matter how small, as to whether you are at 6 or 5 then you have lost your place and should start over. Listen to the inflection of count... do you say 6!!! or is it more of a 6.....? Remember, if there is any question about what number you are on, you must have wandered or you would know!

Do not judge success by how far you get or how many times you can count back to 1 without losing your place. As you get better, the exercise gets harder, not easier! If you breathe rapidly, say at a 5 second interval, it is easy to stay on track, but as you improve, you breath slower - some people slow down to one breath every 30 seconds or slower - it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain focus.

These exercises can help you see the inner workings of your own mind, and how it can lure you away from your meditation and into daydreaming or worrying. To illustrate, let me share with you an experience I had while practicing this technique, some time past.

I breathed in and counted silently "10" as I breathed out slowly. I breathed in silently, and counted "9" as I breathed out. As I was breathing in, I was startled to realize that although I was almost certain I was at 9, I was not 100% sure, only 99.99%, and that if someone put a gun to my head and asked me again, I would probably admit that I was not as sure as I at first thought. I experienced a breakthrough in understanding the exercise as I realized that I must have allowed my attention to flicker, if only for an instant, otherwise I would know beyond all doubt that it was 9. I realized that what mattered was not the quantity of the concentration, but rather the quality. I was better to sustain perfect focus for a few seconds than 99% focus for a few minutes. I considered the diamond which is examined. If it is flawed, it is broken into smaller pieces in an effort to obtain the largest flawless diamond. Then I realized that I spent 5 minutes thinking about diamonds and meditation instead of practicing meditation, and I sheepishly returned to my meditation breathing out to "10." This was an eye opener for me. I had no idea how devious and subtle my mind was, and how easy it had been to lure my attention away after a single breath!

This exercise gives you the opportunity to catch yourself straying and see the process in yourself, and so come to understand it and so come to recognize it and eventually to rise above such obvious tricks into a new and more subtle arena of mind-play.

1) The easiest variation involves employing simple breath awareness as you count backwards from 10. Count 10 as you breath in, and 9 as you breathe out, and 8 as you breathe in, and 7 as you breathe out... when you count 1 breathing out, start back at 10 as you breathe in again and repeat until you lose your place. Each time you lose your place, start over again at 10. Do not visualize the number, only sound it in your head silently. Visualizing makes the exercise too easy. You can either stretch it out like "tttt....eeeeeeee.....nnnnnnn" over the length of you breath or else just say it normally.

2) If this exercise gets too easy (you make it from 10 to 1 fairly often) then try a more difficult variation: breathe in to 10, breathe out to the sound AUM, breathe in to 9, breathe out to the sound Aum, breathe in to 8... and if you get to 1, start over.

3) The hardest variation requires you to breathe in silently, and count 10 as you breathe out, inhale in silence, count 9 as you exhale... again, if you reach 1 or lose your place, start back at 10.

Counting Back From One. The Counting Back From Ten Meditation Technique was adopted by Herbert Bentson who studied what he called the Relaxation Response and brought the detrimental effects of stress to the public's attention. He wired college students up to monitors that could detect stress levels and taught them this counting back meditation, but found that after an initial drop in stress, many students then experienced a rapid and unexpected skyrocketing of stress levels. When he questioned these students, he found that they had gotten embarrassed or frustrated when they lost count before completing even one cycle.

Counting Back from One: Herbert Bentson decided to make the exercise easier so that students would not compete with themselves or others and suffer anxiety when they were supposed to be relaxing. He instructed the students to count back from 1 and when they reached 1, or lost their place, to start over.... "One...........One.............One........." This adjustment seemed to work well and he began teaching it to the public. One man who learned the technique thanked Mr. Bentson for taking all of the religion and mysticism out of meditation so that someone who did not believe in God could still practice and receive the benefits of meditation. Mr. Bentson was surprised a few days later when a priest thanked him for keeping the spirituality intact with his meditation, reminding students of the oneness of God and the universe... One.... This is a nice meditation because you can read into it what you choose to, and, in fact, you are free to choose your own word if there is one you are more comfortable with. Be sure that the word or phrase you choose has positive connotations, and a pleasant sound to you, and that with repetition it does not dissolve, but rather grows stronger and more clearly defined. This is the hallmark of a good mantra.

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