MRIs, meditation and monkey brains: Mindfulness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

Happy Talk: Christine Manby wanted to switch off from the stresses of daily life. But she just couldn’t get into the right head space

Meditation, like knotting a cherry stalk with your tongue, is impossible for some (Getty)

A rainy Monday afternoon in June and I’m up to my knees in an MRI machine having my broken foot scanned. The kind, young radiologist offers me earplugs or headphones. I choose headphones. He asks what music I’d like to listen to while I’m in the machine. “Anything but Coldplay,” I tell him. “Good choice,” he agrees, then hands me something that looks like a stress ball attached to a thin tube. “If you want to stop at any time, squeeze this.”

He leaves the room to be safely out of the way when the magnetic bombardment begins. The gigantic machine is fired up and that unique MRI sound starts up: demented tweeting over a sinister bassline of grinding groans and dungeon-heavy clanks. Then the music starts seeping through the headphones at a frustratingly low volume. And while it’s not Coldplay it’s arguably worse. Folk-pop.

It’s cold. I can’t reach the blanket the radiologist put in place for such an eventuality. From where I’m laying it looks as though an enormous robot is swallowing me feet first. And I’m listening to the kind of ukulele-based music with whimsical vocals that sends me skittering out of cafes without finishing my cup of tea. I am seconds away from squeezing the emergency valve but that might only make the ordeal last longer. And then it comes to me, this is exactly the kind of situation in which it would be really, really useful to be able to meditate.

Meditation, like tying a cherry stalk into a knot using only my tongue, is one of those things I’ve never been able to do. It’s not that I haven’t tried. For years, I practised yoga. Forget all the wrapping your legs around your neck bit, it was the part when we had to stretch out flat on our backs in savasana – the corpse pose – and clear our minds that I couldn’t do. Without the distraction of trying not to lose my balance on a sweaty mat, my brain started up with the old chatter at once.

“Did I leave the iron on? The car insurance must be running out soon. I need more toothpaste. Have I got enough toilet roll? What did he mean when he said that last week?” The thoughts pressed in until I couldn’t wait to jump up and put my shoes on. After five years of trying and failing to master that savasana moment, I felt that meditation was for far better people than I could ever be. Less petty people whose minds weren’t constantly spewing a cross between a Twitter feed and a shopping list.

Some of the friends I admire most are big meditation fans. There’s the writer who can focus for long enough to write sweeping historically accurate novels packed with edifying themes. There’s the actor who meditates every morning, before launching into days so packed I have to take a nap after hearing about them. They both credit meditation with improved mental and physical health, productivity and happy home lives. Yet both assured me, when I asked, that once they found meditation difficult too. Encouraged by their admissions, I decided to try one more time.

There are plenty of meditation apps to help the beginner. Headspace is arguably the most famous. An unscientific poll of Facebook friends put it comfortably at the top of the list of recommendations, which isn’t surprising given that some 16 million people have downloaded the app. That said, the company is cagey about how many of them are active users. It’s not cheap to get beyond the free trial. But the website promises “Headspace is meditation made simple” and who isn’t up for that?

A big problem regarding meditation for me was the time it seemed to require to achieve anything like mastery. Gandhi is reputed to have said: “I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one.” Two hours? Who has two hours? I suppose Gandhi didn’t waste anywhere near the same amount of time I do on choosing outfits, but all the same, that’s a lot of time to find. Indeed, one of the refrains that frequently followed all those glowing reviews of Headspace from my Facebook friends was “but I don’t have the time to do it at the moment”.

Two hours?  Who has two hours? I suppose Gandhi didn’t waste anywhere near the same amount of time I do on choosing outfits, but all the same, that’s a lot of time to find

So I was relieved when the Headspace taster suggested I should start with three minutes. Anyone can do anything for three minutes, right? I kicked off my shoes (or rather one shoe and a surgical boot) and settled down to find nirvana. I followed all the instructions. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Feel your body etc etc... stop wondering where the narrator is from. Breathe in. Breathe out. He sounds like a Brit but he pronounces “noticing” with a “d”. Isn’t that an American thing? Breathe in. Breathe out. He definitely pronounces noticing like an American. Breathe in. Breathe out. Stop noticing the nodicing. Breathe in. I can’t stop nodicing it. Breathe out. I’m trying…

My monkey brain could not let go. And then, two minutes in, my phone ran out of battery and the nodicing ended abruptly. I sat up to plug my phone in and found myself answering emails again before my first three minutes as a Headspace beginner were up.

A second attempt was scuppered even before it began. The app was having issues. A third attempt was interrupted by a call that probably wasn’t as important as it felt at the time. A fourth attempt… well, at least I was still giving it a go.

There is no doubt that meditation is a skill worth mastering. Meditation devotees report its effectiveness in managing conditions such as depression and anxiety and in providing drug-free pain relief. The scientific evidence backs up the anecdotal. Earlier this year, for example, a team from New York University led by professor of neuroscience Wendy Suzuki examined the effects of a 13 minute daily guided meditation on mood, cortisol levels and emotional regulation compared to the effects of 13 minutes a day spent listening to a podcast. Measuring the subsequent changes in emotional regulation using the Trier Social Stress Test, they found that after eight weeks, those subjects who listened to the guided meditation experienced better mood, decreased anxiety and enhanced attention than their podcast-listening friends. So it’s worth hanging in there, turning up and tuning in.

Just two weeks into my meditation experiment, my mind is still monkeying around but now I look forward to hearing the soothing instructions of the meditation guide even if sometimes it’s nothing more than a cue for a micro-nap. Meanwhile, next time I have to have an MRI – and I’m keeping my fingers crossed there won’t be a next time – I will go with my playlist prepared.