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The (Unusual) Quick Trick To Calm Your Mind & Produce Alpha Brainwaves in Meditation
Neuron #7: Focus On Nothing
Connor Rankin
October 25, 2022
What do you focus on when you meditate?
When I first started meditating, I didn’t know what to focus on.
My brain was overstimulated by the external world.
Focus was impossible.
Here’s the science and practice that I wish I knew 10 years ago.
In your next meditation, try focusing on something called “nothing”.
Scientific research shows that this immediately slows down your brainwaves into the alpha range, the creative frequency between the conscious and subconscious mind.
How could some thing be no thing?
’Nothing’ is not merely nothing. Nothing, in fact, is a great and robust healer and is critical to the health and well-being of our nervous system.
Here are the steps:
Step 1: Close your eyes
Step 2: Relax the muscle tension in and around your eyes
Step 3: Without activating your eye muscles, visualize a big black empty space one inch behind your eyeballs
Step 4: When the mind wanders, refocus your attention on that space.
Andrew Huberman notes that the brain does not have sensory receptors.
Unlike focusing on your fingertips and the sensations there, if you focus on your brain, you can’t actually sense anything in your brain, except your thoughts…The idea is that you continually bring your focus back to that location—about an inch behind your forehead—over and over again.
As we refocus on that big black empty space one inch behind our eyeballs, we increase our focus ability.
And, most importantly, we change our our brainwaves.
When you change your brainwaves, you change your life.
The brain allocates 20% of its energy to processing visual stimuli in our physical environment, much of which signals danger and triggers stressful reactions.
This produces beta brainwave states.
Instead, when we close our eyes and focus on that space of nothing, we reallocate our energy from survival beta brainwave circuits to creative alpha brain circuits.
I know...it seems paradoxical and contradictory to focus on nothing.
So, how do we do it?
Imagine that you are focusing on a vast endless black space, like a universe with no things in it—no people, places, no time, no ideas, no planets, no stars, no air, no food, no schedules.
And imagine that space tucked in the center of your forehead right between and behind your relaxed eyeballs.
Dr. Joe Dispenza notes, “The imagination and realization of space seems to reset stress-encumbered neural networks.”
By focusing on this space between and behind your eyes, you will start to unplug from the outer world.
Remember, the world is constantly trying to make you something else.
But who are you really?
Why are you here on this planet?
In what ways will you recreate yourself?
If you want to make something out of yourself, make nothing within yourself the foundation of your meditation practice.
Love, Connor
P.S. If you need help understanding this or putting it into practice, send me a DM on Twitter or reply to this email. I'd love to connect with you.
Related Neurons
In Case You Missed It
“Chronic narrow-objective attention requires a great deal of energy and keeps us from knowing our true selves. Yet most of us aren’t aware of the tension.”
🗣️Dr. Les Fehmi
What stimuli are draining your energy, creating physical tension, & blocking you from knowing yourself?
— Connor Rankin (@iamcrankin)
5:50 PM • Oct 25, 2022
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