Tag Archives: meditation

‘Poetic meditation’ could enhance qualitative data analysis

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Poetry can provide research inspiration. Courtesy: University of Birmingham

I like the opening line in this January 10, 2023 University of Birmingham press release for how it relates poetry to data analysis (Note: A link has been removed),

‘Poetic meditation’ can enhance qualitative data analysis by offering researchers improved sensory experience and an ability to approach data analysis from unexpected directions, a new study reveals.

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(For some reason the first line/lede was rewritten for the January 10, 2023 news item on phys.org and for the copy found on EurekAlert.)

The rest of the press release (Note: A link has been removed),

The authors of the study explain that meditation allows researchers to train their body for data collection – improving their capacity to capture unexpected insights and deal with uncertainty and transformation as they incorporate novel interpretations into their research.

The skills enable researchers to understand novel cultural practices. Poetic meditations may prepare the researchers to see the world with different eyes.

Publishing their findings in Journal of Marketing Management, researchers at the University of Birmingham and Kedge Business School, Bordeaux, France, outline a radical new process to help researchers to enhance their work.

Pilar Rojas-Gaviria, from the University of Birmingham, commented: “Scientific wonder prompts us to ask questions about the purpose of consumption, the way markets are created and extended, and how life and human experience are attached to both.

“Academics have always developed theses to resolve questions and explain events, but mindfulness practice can make our bodies an instrument of research – gathering data from different environmental sources. Poetry offers qualitative researchers a useful tool to refigure their surroundings and shed new light on the data they work with.”

Poetic meditation allows researchers to reveal unexpected or previously unnoticed features of market and consumption environments – rather than simply reproducing existing categories and theories.

By recording and presenting poetic meditations through audio media, the researchers demonstrate poetry’s potential to stimulate new ideas that can influence how academics approach data collection or analysis.

The researchers demonstrate the technique with two poetic meditations focusing on the colours green and red. These audio presentations settle the listener into a relaxed state, before taking the listener on an intellectual journey into poetry and philosophy, and ending with a period of meditation.

Robin Canniford, from Kedge Business School, commented: “We believe this technique can inspire researchers to include sound recordings and data presentations in their publications – creating a different approach to communicating and understandingtheir findings.

“Creating a poetic meditation might be a first step in a researcher’s journey that uncovers new sensations, interpretations, and questions – reaching towards unconventional and impactful responses in our research, even when answers seem to be far in the future.”

Poetry in marketing is already proven to be an effective research method to challenge conventional thinking in areas such as branding. It has helped marketers understand markets and consumers – engaging in conversations that capture how people consume products and services.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper (where you’ll find an audio file of this paper and supplementary audio files of poetry),

Poetic meditation: (re)presenting the mystery of the field by Pilar Rojas-Gaviria & Robin Canniford. Journal Marketing Management Volume 38, 2022 – Issue 15-16: Presenting Marketing Differently Pages 1821-1831 DOI: 10.1080/0267257X.2022.2112611 Published online: 22 Nov 2022

This paper is open access and because I quite like it, here’s the,

ABSTRACT

How does one use one’s body in qualitative research? Poetic meditation is a technique that offers to enhance researchers’ sensory capacities and embodied practices in research. By using mindfulness practice as a means to relax and focus on sensations, scholars can prepare to embody data collection so as to encounter multiple environmental features including, but not limited to the visual and textual. So too is poetic meditation intended as a tool to help researchers to encounter mysterious moments and to refigure their surroundings in ways that explicitly reframe sensemaking and representation. This companion essay to recorded poetic meditations encourages researchers to embrace mystery as a pathway to knowledge-making, and to build confidence to creatively step outside of common linguistic and theoretical modes.

Enjoy!

Meditating and neuroscience: Canada National Film Board movie and a Dalai Lama talk

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These documentaries are usually focused on Buddhism and its meditation practices but in The Mystical Brain, Isabelle Raynaud starts with some archival footage of brain work, paintings of brains through history, and a Buddhist monk  before segueing to a neuroscientist trying to talk some Carmelite nuns into a research experiment he wants to run. I haven’t seen the whole film yet but The Mystical Brain, a National Film Board (NFB) of Canada production, by  Raynaud offers a fresh and neuroscientific approach to the age old question, ‘Is there really such a thing as a mystical experience and, if so, can we measure it?’

Carolyn Weldon in her Apr. 9, 2013 posting about The Mystical Brain on the NFB.ca blog describes it thusly (Note  a link has been removed),

First, the film follows a team of Université de Montréal researchers studying, through electroencephalography (or EEG), the brains of Carmelite nuns asked to remember a moment of divine communion they experienced in the past. This was as close to the “real deal” as they could study as Carmelite nuns, like most of us, apparently can’t trigger mystical experiences on command.

Nine nuns later, the 2 scientists were able to demonstrate that prayer increased the brain’s Theta activity, or Theta waves. Theta waves (4-7.5 Hz) are some of the slowest waves our brains emits. These waves are associated with REM sleep, daydreaming, super learning, and increased memory and creativity. For most people, Theta activity is only experienced momentarily, as one drifts off to sleep from Alpha, or wakes from deep sleep, from Delta. For nuns, especially cloistered ones, like Carmelite [sic], this is a state they spend hours in – consciously – every day.

Next, the film takes us to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where a different team is studying the meditating brain of Matthieu Ricard, a French-born Buddhist monk who also happens to be the French interpreter to the Dalai Lama [and holds a PhD in molecular genetics]. Ricard, the author of numerous bestselling books on meditation and happiness, is a natural at explaining what meditation is and isn’t, and his on-camera sequences are some of the film’s strongest.

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Buddhist monks and long-time meditation practitioners, on the other hands, are like the Olympic athletes of the mind. Their minds are clear, serene, and less vulnerable to the vagaries of external events. At Wiconsin-Madison U. [sic], the neuroscientists found that meditation has a robust impact on brain function…. and not only for Ricard and his kind. Positive physical and psychological changes can already be observed in new practitioners, as early as 2 months into their practice.

The documentary, for those who are interested,  is embedded in Weldon’s posting. As she notes, meditation has gone mainstream in a very big way. And not only with the general public, it sometimes seems that I come across at least one new research study about meditation and the brain on a daily basis.

Raynaud’s film about meditation and neuroscience reminded me of my Aug. 21, 2012 posting where I mentioned an upcoming dialogue with the Dalai Lama about science. At the time I was under the impression that it was to be his third such dialogue with Natasha Mitchell in an Australia Broadcasting Corporation series but I’m no longer sure about that.  Yesterday, I searched and found the Happiness & its causes event (June 19 – 20, 2013 in Melbourne, Australia) which features Natasha Mitchell and the Dalai Lama in two presentations, from the Day 2 Conference page, (Note: Links have been removed)

9.15am     In conversation with His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Be inspired by words of wisdom and compassion from one of the world’s most revered spiritual leaders. In this intimate conversation with the Dalai Lama, Natasha Mitchell delves for practical advice on how we can lead a happy and meaningful life.

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9.45am     Science of Mind Forum

Isn’t the mind amazing? Science is only just beginning to glimpse the extraordinary workings of the mind and how it governs everything. Witness a  unique dialogue between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and a panel of world renowned scientists.

› His Holiness the Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Australia
› Dr Mario Beauregard, Associate Researcher, Departments of Psychology and Radiology, Neuroscience Research Center; author: Brain Wars, University of Montreal, Canada
› Professor Jayashri Kulkarni, Professor of Psychiatry, The Alfred and Monash University, Australia
› Professor Lorimer Moseley, Professor of Clinical Neuroscience, University of South Australia, Australia
› Natasha Mitchell, Presenter, Life Matters, ABC Radio National, Australia

I could not find any information about a third dialogue for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Simon Fraser University’s Jay Vidyarthi exhibits Sonic Cradle at TEDActive 2012

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The Sonic Cradle, Simon Fraser University (SFU located in Vancouver, Canada) student Jay Vidyarthi’s project which combines music, meditation and modern technology, will be exhibited from Feb. 27 – March 1, 2012, at TEDActive 2012 in Palm Springs (US).

This is a Sonic Cradle video (available from the Sonic Cradle website) which gives viewers a sense of the project and includes some interviews with people who’ve been held in the cradle,

Sonic Cradle from Jay Vidyarthi on Vimeo.

The Feb. 10, 2012 news release from SFU provides more details,

 “The idea grew from my desire to explore how technology can be used to free us from the stress associated with information overload,” says Vidyarthi, who is pursuing a master’s degree in SFU Surrey’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology.

Vidyarthi and his supervisor Bernhard Riecke, who heads up SIAT’s new iSpace lab, have been invited to display Sonic Cradle as part of the prestigious TEDActive TechArt exhibition. During the week-long conference participants will be able to try 15-minute meditative sessions.

Vidyarthi, who is also working with co-supervisor Diane Gromala, director of SFU’s Transforming Pain research group, says the project was accepted despite being primarily a design research artifact rather than a piece of art.

Developed last spring, Sonic Cradle provides a digitized compendium of musical sound bites from 30 musicians from across North America, including recordings of falling rain, flute and guitar arrangements, meditative chimes and even spoken poetry.

Breathing stimulates the sound patterns, which are unique to each ‘cradle’ visit, says Vidyarthi, a musician who earlier studied psychophysics and neuroscience at McGill University.

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The researchers plan further study on how the system physiologically affects people. The creation of a handheld mobile version of Sonic Cradle is also possible.

As the one who has spent the most time in Sonic Cradle, Vidyarthi says, “when you remove all the distractions, it can feel something like leaving the planet.”

You can find out more about the TEDActive 2012 programme here and there’s more about the Transforming Pain research group at SFU here.