Meditation Monday - Is It Possible to Slow Time?

Photo by Kevin Ku on Unsplash

Over the weekend I read an intriguing article How to Slow Down Time (the neuroscience of Time perception) by Yana Yuhai. She comments:

The answer isn’t to slow time, it’s to fill it. To create more neural “density”. More events, more attention, more memory. The brain registers time through what it notices. If you want more time, you need to make it notice.

“Make it notice”; pay attention, rest in the moment. It seems to me that these are all similar concepts that help us make the most of our perception of time and enable us to feel that life is passing slowly, rich with experience and delight. Ironically this post is late because I literally did lose track of time over the weekend and was focused on things I love to do - entertaining friends, working in the garden and reading - and forgot to finish this article.

Yana suggests several ways to help us "slow our perception of time”:

1) the Novelty Effect

When something unexpected or unfamiliar happens, your brain perks up. It devotes more attention and forms richer memories. This makes those moments feel longer - both as you’re living them and later when you remember them.

This really resonated with me. As you know, much as I like the routine of a regular spiritual discipline, I like to vary my spiritual practices depending on the seasons, time of year and liturgical seasons. These not only help keep my spiritual life alive but also make it more likely that these will register with richer memories in my mind. A win win situation that really does seem to slow time.

2) the Contextual Change Hypothesis

Your brain keeps track of time partly by counting how many distinct things happen. More variety means more “mental timestamps”. A day filled with different sights, tasks, or emotions feels longer.

We have all heard the expression “variety is the spice of life” and evidently it is true. The more we focus on one task and pay attention to something specific, the slower time feels.

3) predictability shrinks time

The brain is wired for efficiency. When it knows what to expect, it stops paying close attention. Familiar experiences get compressed and stored with less detail.

So how do we expand time?

The brain registers time through what it notices. If you want more time, you need to make it notice:

Reclaim novelty. tiny changes wake up your brain. novelty doesn’t need to be dramatic, it just needs to be different enough to register.

Visit somewhere new or take a new route on your daily walk. Try a new recipe. Learn a new word or concept. Each of these creates a deviation in your brain’s model of the world. That deviation slows time down.

use your senses, not just your mind. time perception is tied to sensory input. the insula, a region linked to bodily awareness, activates when you’re present in sensation.

As you can imagine this one really resonated with me. On my awe and wonder walks, be they around the neighbourhood, my garden or even around the house I love to feel textures, listen closely to bird song and wind chimes, watch how light changes and pay attention to a slowly opening flower. These are the kinds of things children notice automatically. This is what keeps them alive with wonder and makes time move slowly.

interrupt autopilot. notice when you’re zoning out in a routine. then, pause and disrupt it, even for a moment:

A two minute stretch exercise break, a different coffee order or maybe a different coffee shop, a few deep breaths in and out conscious of your body and the passage of your breath in and out, a walk without your phone. These are the kinds of experiences that create mental markers. Your brain encodes the difference.

create oddball moments. unique, salient stimuli are perceived as longer. give yourself micro-oddballs:

This is a deliberate attention to something new. Chat to a neighbor you have not met before. Visit a new restaurant, play on the swings, move things around on your desk so that it appears different. Evidently even a change in lighting can alter your perception of time’s passing.

track attention, not time. presence changes neural activity, especially in the default mode network (which governs mind-wandering). when you’re engaged (aka in flow), you don’t notice time. but afterward, it feels full. your brain encoded a rich memory.

This for me was the most important. It is a different form of perception that makes our brains feel full and content. It opens us more to awe and wonder and a joyful way of looking at the world. Paying attention to our experiences rather than to the time that is passing is very important as a part of our spiritual practices. If we want our lives to be full and satisfying we need to learn to focus more and be distracted less.

Look back over the last week - when did you lose track of time? Perhaps you were focused on something you love to do and it made you feel more alive, more filled with wonder, more joyful and content - like we all feel after a rich and nourishing meal.

Make a list of these experiences. How could you incorporate more of them into your life.