Meditationprovides investors with many benefits. Below are meditation tips from the newly releasedMeditation Guide for Investment Professionals, the full version of which isavailable online for CFA Institute members.

In focused awarenessmeditation, also known as Zen, practitioners concentrate on one object. The object can be the breath, a candle flame, a white wall, the repetition of a word, a series of words or mantra etc. When awareness inevitably strays, meditators return their focus to that object.

In previous articles in this series, I shared general meditation tips and described theopen-monitoringform of meditation, which hones our natural state of consciousness known as metacognition, or the awareness of awareness itself.

Focused awareness has much in common with open-monitoring, so some confusion is understandable. But these two forms of meditation are really two sides of the same coin. Open-monitoring practitioners notice the thoughts that come into awareness. They do not scrutinize them but let them pass out of awareness. They then return to being open, aware, and non-attached.

Focused awareness meditators have a singular point of attention. They ignore distractions when they arise and refocus back on the object at the center of the meditation.

Focused Awareness Meditation

What It Is: Focused awareness meditation trains a natural capability of mental functioning: top-down control. What is top-down control? Its our capacity to choose what to think and when to think it. For many of us, top-down control is far removed from our normal, waking state of consciousness wherein random thoughts enter and exit our minds. Some of these thoughts come fully formed, but most are bits and pieces of other thoughts. Focused-awareness seeks to eradicate this noise. In a world that demands intense mental concentration and clarity from investment professionals, focused awareness is critical.

Science has identified four or five major forms of meditation. The fifth form is known as automatic self-transcending among its adherents and some researchers. Transcendental meditation is one variety of this form. Like focused awareness, automatic self-transcending requires practitioners to focus on a single thing, in this instance, a word or series of words a mantra.

Some emerging neuroscientific research demonstrates that automatic self-transcending has distinct effects on practitioners. Specifically, it engages the parts of the brain associated with verbal and motor skills. For our purposes, however, in keeping with other researchers work, we classify automatic self-transcending as a sub-form of focused awareness.

Benefits

Focused awareness meditation relieves stress and improves thinking. Experienced focused awareness meditators have better control over their attention: Their minds wander less, and they can choose when and how to think.

Steps

Focused awareness requires the most mental discipline of all the meditation styles. Its practitioners emphasize how critical technique is to achieving the intended goal of disciplined focus.

Below are steps for a generalized focused awareness meditation using breath as the singular object. For convenience, read the steps into your smartphones Voice Notes function so you can control the pacing and duration of your meditation.

Can focus on any activity lead to a meditative state? Yes, it can. Many experienced meditators find that certain pursuits that concentrate their attention on something simple household chores, exercise, or creating art, for example can also result in meditative states. What distinguishes meditation is that the meditative state is an outgrowth of the accompanying activity. In meditation, the activity is designed specifically to develop awareness and mental focus.

If you have experiences with focused awareness meditation, share them in the comments section below.

If you are a CFA Institute member and would like more information or support about meditation, then join our LinkedIn CFA Institute Members Meditation Group.

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All posts are the opinion of the author. As such, they should not be construed as investment advice, nor do the opinions expressed necessarily reflect the views of CFA Institute or the authors employer.

Image credit: Getty Images/Kaligraf

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Meditation Tips for Investment Professionals: Focused Awareness - CFA Institute Enterprising Investor (blog)