Meditation and Asana

A meditation/dhyana/dharana/zazen sitting practise became part of my regular routine, following my immersion at Bodhi Zendo Meditation Centre in Tamil Nadhu, India.
I noticed immediately that i was able to sustain postures significantly longer with more mental ease. My attention span had lengthened if you like. My panic/boredom mechanism that usually bought me out of a posture was far less dominant, and i was able to begin to see each breathe, as the first breathe in the posture.
This led to increased enjoyment of Asana with less mind traffic.

Meditation and the Brain.

I sense something during meditation.
A physically tangible sensation.
The activity, or energy in the head moves from the front of the skull (cerebral cortex) to the middle part of the skull (cerebellum) as conceptual thinking is disengaged from. I feel the mid brain, which deals with perception and sensation being engaged, (like a slight humming feeling), and the front of the brain, which deals with conceptual thought, relaxing.

One of the Zen descriptions for liberation is "The cessation of conceptual thought".
This directly correlates to Patanjali's Sutras regarding the stopping of Vritti (fluctuations of the mind). Another interesting interpretation of Vritti is "Mental Modifications".
I take this to mean that all thought is a manipulation or augmentation of the original input (an event or sensation) …. and therefore is not to be trusted.
It is well known in the legal system that "Eye witness accounts are the most open to interpretation and falsehood." This doesn't mean that the witness is lying …. it just means that what we remember is never what exactly happened.
I spoke to an artist friend of mine once. Everything had suddenly started working well for him after years of struggle. When i asked him how that felt about this his only comment was
"The lobotomy helped"

Paul Simon …. "Maybe i think too much" (Hearts and Bones)