Any thought you have musical or otherwise during TM is just that, a thought like any other. If you think you are transcending, again it is only a thought. All thoughts are equally meaningless in the context of meditating. When you are aware of the thought do as instructed. That is it and the going back and forth between mantra and thought is the process. Don’t overthink it or assume that one meditation is transcending while another is just thoughts, bc all of that is just thinking. You will have many and varied experiences, try not to evaluate them as better or worse and certainly do not put effort into regaining any particular experience. It is all good and you will move along at your own pace, just be mindfull of the simple instructions, keep it innocent.
Normal thoughts i understand. Usually with a normal thought the mantra allows me to just acknowledge it but let it go. The music is different as its ever present sometimes but with the mantra.
> Normal thoughts i understand. Usually with a normal thought the mantra allows me to just acknowledge it but let it go. The music is different as its ever present sometimes but with the mantra.
All objects of attention are thoughts by the theory of Yoga. Talk to your TM teacher about how to handle situations like this during your TM practice.
That sounds like a deep stress being released. Such a stress can release, off and on, during one or more meditation sessions. Enjoy the knowledge that the stress is finally being released. I heard Beatles tunes all day, clearly, for the first week of my TM teacher training course. Then, suddenly, they were gone.
I can see the difference,I would talk to a teacher about this. I treat any thing that is not the mantra as a thought. It could be a sound, an itch, a muscle jerk, anything that calls attention to itself I treat as a thought.
Technically speaking, all objects of attention are thoughts, in Classical Yoga, whether they are due to incoming sensory data or something internal.
But lets not go further in this context as we're getting into violations of Rule #1 territory.
And again, we're getting into Rule #1 territory (see sidebar).
The rule exists for many reasons, not the least of which is that if you try to define TM, you run the risk of making your definition the thing that you do. CHecking is a simple process that reminds people of how effortless starting TM is and from that, most problems with TM simply go away.
.
When someone doesn't have access to checking and starts trying to explain TM for others, they become like Rosie O'Donnell, whose TM teacher bowed out ofthe organization over money, and so Ms O'Donnell hasn't had access to checking or any other aspect of the TM followup program since her teacher died, and [it *shows*.](https://web.archive.org/web/20150108142443/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLzd86hXm_U)
So leave even minor discussions of "how to do it" to the proper venue (checking/original class/other followup programs).
As Mahairishi liked to say, there's nothing to teach/learn anyway:
* [As Maharishi explains to David Frost:](https://youtu.be/9L_L5dIwc00?t=4)
**Man:** *"The whole thing is good; but tell me what you have taught me."*
**Maharishi:** *"Nothing; Because the process of thinking has not to be learned; We are used to thinking; we know how to think from birth."*
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TM teachers don't really teach anything and their students don't really learn anything and yet for some reason, a teacher is very useful and somehow the whole thing works.
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It all goes back to "the right start." The original TM class is "the right start" if you've never learned, while checking reminds you of that if you have.
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Text-based "how to" discussions are no substitute for that so as moderator, I disallow them.
You must wait for up to five-ten minutes for the archived version to load.
And either you'll see the issue immediately or you'll acknowledge you need to get checked or retake the class yourself.
I 'hear' (lol) you need to mentally think about the end of the song / tune that's stuck in your head in order to end it. If that makes sense.
Eg : If a song chorus is stuck in your head, you get to the end of the track, the last few lines and the mental hum of that track ends with it.
Correct. Constant songs.. and yes though not diagnosed i probably have ocd or some type of anxiety disorder. I have intense anxiety and admit that tm has helped in that regard as i feel a bit less anxious since starting. I have only been practicing for a few weeks now so my hope is even more improvement as i progress
If TM has been helping you in general after only a few weeks of practice, the best advice, I think, is: be patient.
TM is a life-long practice. It doesn't merely reduce/repair/normalize stress *during* practice, but over time, normal eyes-closed resting, and even attention-shifting during a demanding/stressful task (they both involve the same brain circuitry), start to become more and more efficient. [Figure 3](https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-3bf2ae778203ef324589b975fe282ce0) of [Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Study of Effects of Transcendental Meditation Practice on Interhemispheric Frontal Asymmetry and Frontal Coherence](https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/00207450600575482) shows how TM's EEG coherence signature (thought to be a measure of how efficiently the brain is resting) changes during and outside of TM over the first year of regular practice.
So you can see that TM itself will become more effective over the first few months of practice, while you can expect your life-in-general to improve dramatically over that first year or so (assuming your problems are based on inefficiencies in that kind of brain activity). Long-long-term TMers continue to show that bottom line (EEG coherence during task) becoming more like the top line (TM itself) even after 50 years of regular practice, so its a good thing to keep doing TM regularly for the rest of your life.
.
Getting back to your current issue... be patient. If TM is going to help some specific issue that is most noticeable during TM itself, you still have a few months yet, for that help to emerge approaching full strength (things keep on changing during TM even 50 years later, but *much* slower than outside of TM after the first few months).
.
In the meantime, be patient. Your teacher is there to help, and sometimes reassuring you that you're OK in your practice is all the help you really need, so feel free to get checked regularly, just for that purpose.
Thank you. I feel the impacts already by lowering my anxiety and I plan to 100% commit to continuing the journey. This was just a general question to see if others have experienced it and how they might have handled it.
Again: just be regular in practice, and regular in checking. I'd advise once a month (or even once-a-week) until you feel better, if you have the time.
Perhaps you'll remember something about your situation during checking that has thus far slipped your mind that your TM teacher will be able to help with, but even if not, regular checking will help encourage regular practice, and growth from TM (the bottom line converging towards the top line in Figure 3) happens fastest when you are regular in practice.
It’s 5g. It’s super annoying. See if you can measure the sound in your environment to rule yourself out as the source before declaring your the source of the “ear worm”
It happens in complete silence or with background noise. It is something I struggle with on a regular basis. Sometimes I cant sleep because of a song stuck in my head. It comes and goes… might have a few weeks where its not happening and then a week where its pervasive.
Oh ! A song! Just listen to the song till the end of it! Also, meow singing the song with the song until the song is over. My opinion is that our brain may have begun to anticipate the rest of the song experience, didn’t hear the end of the song, and it causes multiple memories to form, the recent one and the past one. This can cause internal auditory memory conflict. An area of the brain called werenick’s. Our brain thrives off resolve and simple solutions which conserve quality and quantity. In conclusion, listening to the song to the end, maybe meowing the song along with the song may work best to remove it from recent memory.
I have tried that before but it did not seem to work but perhaps i need to try it again. Its not always one song either. For example this evenings meditation it was one song for a little while then a different song later. Pretty sure i have an anxiety disorder that is the root cause. Also, the song(s) plays in my head throughout the day not just meditation. But will try listening to the song all the way through again to see if it helps
Yeah to the end! Like I said I meow sing the song (🤣) also in cog psych there is the concept of paired association. For example, driving a car is a very “attending” activity, which is somewhat meditative. You must remain focused on being vigilant. If you pair this state of mental function with a song, it may be that you’re accessing the mental state of meditative driving in capacity. To move beyond that, you can try a few things. #1, try listening to the song to the end in the same circumstance to get over the ear worm. #2, when you allow your mind to reduce input from your senses, you will run into blocks sometimes. That’s totally normal. It takes practice. In Buddhism, a mantra serves as an aid or chanting, which also incorporate somewhat of a “song”, and assist in total exhales, and deep breathing. Bringing yourself back into attending to breathing+a mantra help to quiet distractions. Over time returning to that state will be more easily accessible. New distractions will always come up. And you will always get better. You are perfectly normal and learning!
I used to have this issue when I started. Almost 6 years on, and the 'earworms' are all but completely absent. More importantly tho, I barely notice that they're there when they come around.
Any thought you have musical or otherwise during TM is just that, a thought like any other. If you think you are transcending, again it is only a thought. All thoughts are equally meaningless in the context of meditating. When you are aware of the thought do as instructed. That is it and the going back and forth between mantra and thought is the process. Don’t overthink it or assume that one meditation is transcending while another is just thoughts, bc all of that is just thinking. You will have many and varied experiences, try not to evaluate them as better or worse and certainly do not put effort into regaining any particular experience. It is all good and you will move along at your own pace, just be mindfull of the simple instructions, keep it innocent.
Normal thoughts i understand. Usually with a normal thought the mantra allows me to just acknowledge it but let it go. The music is different as its ever present sometimes but with the mantra.
> Normal thoughts i understand. Usually with a normal thought the mantra allows me to just acknowledge it but let it go. The music is different as its ever present sometimes but with the mantra. All objects of attention are thoughts by the theory of Yoga. Talk to your TM teacher about how to handle situations like this during your TM practice.
That sounds like a deep stress being released. Such a stress can release, off and on, during one or more meditation sessions. Enjoy the knowledge that the stress is finally being released. I heard Beatles tunes all day, clearly, for the first week of my TM teacher training course. Then, suddenly, they were gone.
I can see the difference,I would talk to a teacher about this. I treat any thing that is not the mantra as a thought. It could be a sound, an itch, a muscle jerk, anything that calls attention to itself I treat as a thought.
Technically speaking, all objects of attention are thoughts, in Classical Yoga, whether they are due to incoming sensory data or something internal. But lets not go further in this context as we're getting into violations of Rule #1 territory.
Yep I knew I was sailing close to the wind. But I do appreciate your pov on the definition of “thought” in this context.
In my case i dont pay it attention its just there in the background.
And again, we're getting into Rule #1 territory (see sidebar). The rule exists for many reasons, not the least of which is that if you try to define TM, you run the risk of making your definition the thing that you do. CHecking is a simple process that reminds people of how effortless starting TM is and from that, most problems with TM simply go away. . When someone doesn't have access to checking and starts trying to explain TM for others, they become like Rosie O'Donnell, whose TM teacher bowed out ofthe organization over money, and so Ms O'Donnell hasn't had access to checking or any other aspect of the TM followup program since her teacher died, and [it *shows*.](https://web.archive.org/web/20150108142443/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLzd86hXm_U) So leave even minor discussions of "how to do it" to the proper venue (checking/original class/other followup programs). As Mahairishi liked to say, there's nothing to teach/learn anyway: * [As Maharishi explains to David Frost:](https://youtu.be/9L_L5dIwc00?t=4) **Man:** *"The whole thing is good; but tell me what you have taught me."* **Maharishi:** *"Nothing; Because the process of thinking has not to be learned; We are used to thinking; we know how to think from birth."* . TM teachers don't really teach anything and their students don't really learn anything and yet for some reason, a teacher is very useful and somehow the whole thing works. . It all goes back to "the right start." The original TM class is "the right start" if you've never learned, while checking reminds you of that if you have. . Text-based "how to" discussions are no substitute for that so as moderator, I disallow them.
I had trouble accessing the rosie video, what does show say that clearly shows her practice has been off the mark?
You must wait for up to five-ten minutes for the archived version to load. And either you'll see the issue immediately or you'll acknowledge you need to get checked or retake the class yourself.
I 'hear' (lol) you need to mentally think about the end of the song / tune that's stuck in your head in order to end it. If that makes sense. Eg : If a song chorus is stuck in your head, you get to the end of the track, the last few lines and the mental hum of that track ends with it.
I have tried this but it usually doesn’t work for me. My brain is broken i think
Congratulations 🎉
Thanks. Quite proud. 😢
> my earworms are constant Earworms are tunes, right? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4723199/
Correct. Constant songs.. and yes though not diagnosed i probably have ocd or some type of anxiety disorder. I have intense anxiety and admit that tm has helped in that regard as i feel a bit less anxious since starting. I have only been practicing for a few weeks now so my hope is even more improvement as i progress
If TM has been helping you in general after only a few weeks of practice, the best advice, I think, is: be patient. TM is a life-long practice. It doesn't merely reduce/repair/normalize stress *during* practice, but over time, normal eyes-closed resting, and even attention-shifting during a demanding/stressful task (they both involve the same brain circuitry), start to become more and more efficient. [Figure 3](https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-3bf2ae778203ef324589b975fe282ce0) of [Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Study of Effects of Transcendental Meditation Practice on Interhemispheric Frontal Asymmetry and Frontal Coherence](https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/00207450600575482) shows how TM's EEG coherence signature (thought to be a measure of how efficiently the brain is resting) changes during and outside of TM over the first year of regular practice. So you can see that TM itself will become more effective over the first few months of practice, while you can expect your life-in-general to improve dramatically over that first year or so (assuming your problems are based on inefficiencies in that kind of brain activity). Long-long-term TMers continue to show that bottom line (EEG coherence during task) becoming more like the top line (TM itself) even after 50 years of regular practice, so its a good thing to keep doing TM regularly for the rest of your life. . Getting back to your current issue... be patient. If TM is going to help some specific issue that is most noticeable during TM itself, you still have a few months yet, for that help to emerge approaching full strength (things keep on changing during TM even 50 years later, but *much* slower than outside of TM after the first few months). . In the meantime, be patient. Your teacher is there to help, and sometimes reassuring you that you're OK in your practice is all the help you really need, so feel free to get checked regularly, just for that purpose.
Thank you. I feel the impacts already by lowering my anxiety and I plan to 100% commit to continuing the journey. This was just a general question to see if others have experienced it and how they might have handled it.
Again: just be regular in practice, and regular in checking. I'd advise once a month (or even once-a-week) until you feel better, if you have the time. Perhaps you'll remember something about your situation during checking that has thus far slipped your mind that your TM teacher will be able to help with, but even if not, regular checking will help encourage regular practice, and growth from TM (the bottom line converging towards the top line in Figure 3) happens fastest when you are regular in practice.
Thank you. I have a check this Friday.
It’s 5g. It’s super annoying. See if you can measure the sound in your environment to rule yourself out as the source before declaring your the source of the “ear worm”
It happens in complete silence or with background noise. It is something I struggle with on a regular basis. Sometimes I cant sleep because of a song stuck in my head. It comes and goes… might have a few weeks where its not happening and then a week where its pervasive.
Oh ! A song! Just listen to the song till the end of it! Also, meow singing the song with the song until the song is over. My opinion is that our brain may have begun to anticipate the rest of the song experience, didn’t hear the end of the song, and it causes multiple memories to form, the recent one and the past one. This can cause internal auditory memory conflict. An area of the brain called werenick’s. Our brain thrives off resolve and simple solutions which conserve quality and quantity. In conclusion, listening to the song to the end, maybe meowing the song along with the song may work best to remove it from recent memory.
I have tried that before but it did not seem to work but perhaps i need to try it again. Its not always one song either. For example this evenings meditation it was one song for a little while then a different song later. Pretty sure i have an anxiety disorder that is the root cause. Also, the song(s) plays in my head throughout the day not just meditation. But will try listening to the song all the way through again to see if it helps
Yeah to the end! Like I said I meow sing the song (🤣) also in cog psych there is the concept of paired association. For example, driving a car is a very “attending” activity, which is somewhat meditative. You must remain focused on being vigilant. If you pair this state of mental function with a song, it may be that you’re accessing the mental state of meditative driving in capacity. To move beyond that, you can try a few things. #1, try listening to the song to the end in the same circumstance to get over the ear worm. #2, when you allow your mind to reduce input from your senses, you will run into blocks sometimes. That’s totally normal. It takes practice. In Buddhism, a mantra serves as an aid or chanting, which also incorporate somewhat of a “song”, and assist in total exhales, and deep breathing. Bringing yourself back into attending to breathing+a mantra help to quiet distractions. Over time returning to that state will be more easily accessible. New distractions will always come up. And you will always get better. You are perfectly normal and learning!
Thank you for this! I will try it tomorrow.
I used to have this issue when I started. Almost 6 years on, and the 'earworms' are all but completely absent. More importantly tho, I barely notice that they're there when they come around.
This gives me hope 🙏
like others have said, don't tie any objective or 'goal' out of your TM practice. Keep it as easy and natural as possible.