How Meditation Reshapes Your Thoughts

There is much to be gained from meditation – from stress management to enhanced self-compassion. However, one of meditation’s key effects has to do with un-doing rather than acquiring anything. Specifically, the un-learning of habitual thought patterns.

In their many to (n)one theory, cognitive neuroscientists Heleen Slagter and Ruben Laukkonen propose that by anchoring the practitioner in the present moment, meditation “reins in” the brain’s deep, predictive processing that gives rise to automatic thoughts. Over time, this disruption of habitual thinking could lead to less rumination and greater cognitive flexibility in daily life.

Their theory, which aligns with insights from Buddhist psychology, is rooted in the predictive brain framework. In this framework, the brain is viewed as an organ that repeatedly “regurgitates the world” and reconstructs its version of reality based on predictions it makes from past experiences.

The Predictive Brain Hypothesis

Our brains don’t have direct access to the external world. In order to figure out (to predict) what is “out there” and interpret the incoming flow of sensory input, the brain relies on past experiences to create a model of reality. To function efficiently, the brain reduces prediction errors, by minimizing the gap between its predictions and sensory data. As such, it is continuously generating and refining its own internal model of the world. This model affects our thoughts, emotions, and behavior, in turn, guiding how we engage with the world.

Source: Jill Schafer/Pixabay

Much of our higher-order cognition is shaped by prior mental patterns. Our thoughts, Slagter points out, can function as mental habits. Our attention, similarly, behaves according to habitual patterns – we pay attention to things we attended to in the past. Even anxiety could be driven as a habit, by triggering worry as a mental behavior. As such, while the predictive ability of the human brain is important for our survival, it can get stuck in habitual cognitive and emotional patterns. As Slagter explains, an overly rigid mind can be maladaptive.

Thoughts and constraints

As a species, we have sworn our loyalties to thinking. Whether we realize it or not, we spend the majority of our awake moments in the company of our thoughts. Ironically, we often encounter their relentless ubiquity during meditation. It’s in stillness that the monkey mind – the Buddhist description of the ever-restless mind that leaps from one thought to another – becomes most evident.

The thousands of thoughts we have every day (over 6,000, according to a recent fMRI study) can be categorized along two dimensions of constraints: deliberate (how goal-oriented they are) and automatic (how habitual or involuntary they become). These constraints serve to put limits on the content and dynamics of our thoughts. For example, when thoughts spontaneously go in different places (i.e., mind-wandering), they are low on constraints. On the other hand, rumination is high on automatic constraints, while planning is high on deliberate constraints.

“When we mentally rehearse actions, like planning a trip to the supermarket, we are directing our attention in certain ways inside our minds. By reinforcing specific attentional patterns, we are putting constraints on them, so thoughts automatically behave in certain ways. This process of mental learning creates “dents” in our mental landscape, that over time add up to “valleys.” This influences future thoughts and emotions, shaping the way we think and feel in predictable ways,” explains Slagter.

Regardless of its type, thinking uproots us out of the present moment flow of sensory data and drops us into the (at times murky) waters of counterfactual cognition – the ability to mentally simulate possible realities. While our inclination to continuously revisit the past and the hypothetical future has its adaptive advantages, it can also contribute to our suffering.

Un-doing constraints through meditation

According to Slagter, meditation can remove these constraints and make automatic patterns of thoughts more flexible. Consider mindfulness or open awareness meditation – a style of meditation where practitioners are instructed to allow thoughts and sensations to come and go, without judgment, preference or pushing away. By reducing engagement with habitual thought patterns, the “dents” and “valleys” of the metal landscape are flattened. Over time, this loosens the grip of automatic constraints and expands the brain’s predictive capacity.

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“Mindfulness differs from regular modes of attention, since it’s non-selective, non-goal-directed and stripped-down. This mental inaction may weaken the habitual modes of attending to experience, giving us more mental freedom to think and respond in other ways. Over time, this un-learning can lead to broadening the ways in which we think, feel, and perceive,” says Slagter.

Pruning the tree

Slagter and Laukkonen use the metaphor of the Pythagoras Tree to illustrate the hierarchical way in which the brain processes and represents the information it receives. Input is first registered in direct, precise, raw form (e.g., a round, hollow object) before being interpreted through increasingly abstract, complex, conceptually-rich layers of meaning (e.g., a golden wedding ring symbolizing years of partnership through life’s ups and downs). As we move higher in this hierarchy – like climbing the branches of a tree – we “abstract away” from the direct experience of the present moment and drift further into the depth of the tree, into the intricate web of branches and foliage.

Source: Laukkonen and Slagter, 2021

Meditation counteracts this abstraction by continuously directing attention back to immediate sensory experiences. When we rest our attention on the breath, sounds, or bodily sensations, giving everything that arises equal (low) precision, and staying in a state of non-judgmental observing, we can let go of the automatically arising predictions without grasping, thus interrupting the brain’s habitual tendency to conceptualize.

As Laukkonen and Slagter postulate, to fully inhabit the present moment, the brain must disengage from its usual anticipatory processes. In doing so, one glimpses an “unconditioned” state of awareness that exists before thoughts and emotions take hold.

Rather than being swept away by habitual narratives, one can more skillfully stay with the raw sensory data as it comes in. In this way, by resting in awareness without reinforcing any particular thoughts, meditation “deconstructs” habitual thinking patterns and reduces the brain’s reliance on past-driven predictions. Laukkonen and Slagter (2021) describe this process as “pruning the counterfactual tree.”

Befriending the mind

There are various possible benefits of this temporary reduction in the brain’s high-level counterfactual processing. One of them, according to Slagter, is enhanced cognitive flexibility. If we are are no longer at the mercy of learned mental habits, our brains become open to conjure a broader range of thought patterns. In fact, it “may be one way to revise the immense multiplicity of thoughts to those that are adaptive to one’s goals” write Laukkonen and Slagter (2021).

The renowned Tibetan meditation teacher Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche suggests that the best way to deal with the monkey mind is to befriend it.

Can we bring curiosity to the monkey’s incessant acrobatics, as it swings from one favorite branch to another?

Can we cultivate compassion when it gets lost in the dense foliage?

Consider the pointer from psychotherapist and meditation teacher Loch Kelly: “What’s here now when there is no problem to solve.”

Can we glimpse freedom and respite, if ever for a moment, when the monkey comes down the tree and observes its magnificent canopy from a distance?

Many thanks to Heleen Slagter for her time and insights. Professor Slagter is the Director of the Cognition & Plasticity laboratory at the Department of Applied and Experimental Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands.