How To Stop Time: A mindfulness exercise with Professor David McCormick

This article was originally published by Align Magazine.

“We tend to have this desire to speed time up when things are not going well, and to stop time when things are going well,” David McCormick said. “But time, in essence, doesn’t change. It goes at its own rate.”

With almost 30 years of practicing meditation and mindfulness — and experience teaching neuroscience to Buddhist monks in Tibetan monasteries in India — McCormick, University of Oregon Professor and Director of the Institute of Neuroscience, currently teaches a science-based elective on campus about the neuroscience of happiness.

Happiness: A Psychology and Neuroscience Perspective launched in 2020, and just under 2,000 students have already taken the course. With it being offered in the upcoming fall and spring terms, an additional 1,200 students are projected to take it next year. According to McCormick, then approximately 25 percent of students at the UO will have taken the course by the time they graduate.

In this course, meditation and mindfulness are central topics. After taking the course myself, I learned from McCormick that meditation can be a five minute exercise or an hour-long group session dedicated to quieting the mind. Mindfulness is consciously bringing our awareness to the present moment. With practice, meditation can help us learn to live mindfully, in the present moment.

The first time McCormick sat down and meditated, it was like “a storm in the middle of a roaring ocean,” but after six months of persistent, daily meditation, he started to see real progress.

His mind became “a still, quiet lake,” he said. As equanimity, balance, and stillness gradually became more familiar states, he applied a newfound mindset to his daily life, which enabled him to better see what the true nature of things are, and be more present with how things are.

“Life,” he continued, “is nothing but a series of present moments.” The past is made up of present moments that have happened, the present is the present moment, and the future is present moments yet to happen.

“So if you can learn to live in the present moment fully,” he said, “your life will be filled with fully lived moments.”

Rather than ruminating on how much longer you have with your best friends until graduation or counting the days until distance rips you and your significant other apart, the best thing to do is be present and appreciate the moment for what it is.

“You can’t control time,” McCormick said, “so you have to learn to let go of the regret that a wonderful, pleasurable moment didn't last forever, or the regret that an anxious time went on way longer than you had hoped.”

And while we cannot control or stop time, the closest we might come is through a core concept of Buddhist practice: jhana meditation. Author and jhana teacher Leigh Brasington explains that jhana involves nine altered states of consciousness, or jhanas, achieved through strong concentration in which one eventually experiences infinite space, time-less consciousness, and no-thingness.

When entering the higher states of jhanas, “You might start feeling like you don't have limits in your space,” McCormick said. “You're expanding into the room, into the outside. There's no differentiation between you and everything else. You become expansive and limitless.”

While it’s not easy due to the inevitable distractions inside and outside of the mind, eventually, one can reach a point of naked awareness: consciousness without content.

“Here, there's nothing happening,” he said. “So, there's no time, because time has to have a past, present, or future. But nothing is happening. You just are.”

Time, McCormick said, doesn’t have meaning anymore. Hours pass in seconds, seconds stretch into hours, and time — a construct of the imagination — ceases to exist. When you come out of this state, you can see even more clearly and realize how various experiences, situations, parts of your identity, relationships etc., affect your mindset and your happiness.

Thus, through extensive concentration and a dedicated journey, mindfulness and meditation can alter one’s perceptions of time.

“If you take each moment for what it is,” McCormick said, “there's less of a desire to try and slow time down or speed time up.”

Considering the amount of concentration and mindfulness needed to stop time, follow this beginner-friendly mindfulness and meditation exercise, curated by McCormick, to enter — just the beginning — of your journey to stopping time:

Focus on your breath

Your breath is life-affirming, it is always with you. Pay attention to the temperature of the air when you breathe in versus when you breathe out. Be with your breath. Count your breaths one to 10, and then back down to one again. In breath, one, out breath, one. And so on.

Find your anchor

If your anchor is not your breath or counting breaths, sometimes you can anchor on other things: the sound of the rain, meditative music, or even chanting. If you can’t keep your eyes closed, slightly open them and use a lit candle as an anchor to keep your mind occupied.

Treat your thoughts as clouds floating by

Observe your thoughts from a distance, allowing them to simply float by like clouds. You will want to learn how to distance yourself from yourself. Don’t let thoughts and feelings capture you — keep your mind stable, set, and observant.

Learn to how to be the listener

Every conversation in your head must have a speaker and a listener. Just be the listener — be with your breath and listen. Let the voice do whatever it is going to do. Don't identify with the voice, just observe.

Practice mindful moments

Extend your practice into your daily life. Whether you are walking to class, taking a shower, brushing your teeth, washing your dishes, etc. you can practice being present. Next time you find yourself in a conversation, for instance, try mindful listening: actively listening to others, not thinking about other things or what you’re going to say next.