Daydreaming: A Vacation for Your Brain

by Nina

by Melina Meza

I get some of my best ideas when I’m sweeping the kitchen floor, weeding the garden, waking up in the morning, and practicing yoga. Sometimes I won’t even realize that I’ve been mulling over a problem in the back of my mind when, like a gas bubble in the La Brea Tar Pits, an idea suddenly burbles up into my conscious mind.

Which reminds me—I recently saw Brad’s report cards from grammar school, and this super accomplished scientist, who has a Ph.D. in biochemistry from MIT, didn’t do very well during his early years. In fact he spent so much time daydreaming during one class that his teachers wrote, “Brad lives in another world.” At least in his case, we know that not paying attention didn’t seem to hurt his intellectual development one bit. 

Which reminds me: I heard Daniel Levintin, a neuroscientist and author of The Organized Mind, being interviewed on KQED radio (listen here) the other night and he said that daydreaming was a “reset button” for the mind that is overwhelmed with information, and that this state of mind was the mental state in which we’re most creative. So maybe the reason I get my best ideas when I’m doing some simple tasks (I’ll get to yoga in a minute), is that I’m getting a chance to daydream. In his NY Times article Hit the Reset Button in Your Brain, Levintin describes daydreaming:

“This brain state, marked by the flow of connections among disparate ideas and thoughts, is responsible for our moments of greatest creativity and insight, when we’re able to solve problems that previously seemed unsolvable. You might be going for a walk or grocery shopping or doing something that doesn’t require sustained attention and suddenly — boom — the answer to a problem that had been vexing you suddenly appears. This is the mind-wandering mode, making connections among things that we didn’t previously see as connected.”

He says that our brains have two dominant modes of attention: the task-positive network and the task-negative network. The task-positive network is active when you’re “actively engaged in a task, focused on it, and undistracted.” The task-negative network is active when your mind is “wandering” or daydreaming. Together, he says, “these two networks operate like a seesaw in the brain—when one is active, the other is not.” To fully absorb the information we’ve been exposed to, we need to spend some time in both modes. (This sounds very similar to the two modes of the autonomic nervous system: Fight or Flight and Rest and Digest, don’t you think?) 

We don’t get much time for daydreaming these days, what with all the multitasking we’re doing throughout the day and all the information we’re constantly being asked to absorb. In his interview, Levintin pointed out that multitasking isn’t really multitasking; it’s just switching very frequently and quickly between one task and another. That’s kind of overwhelming in and of itself. He also wrote, “According to a 2011 study, on a typical day, we take in the equivalent of about 174 newspapers’ worth of information, five times as much as we did in 1986.” So it makes sense that our brains, much like our nervous systems, would need a rest once in while.

Which reminds me: when I first starting practicing yoga in Boston and then later in Cambridge, England, my teachers always taught us a guided Savasana at the end of class. It was only when I moved to the West Coast of the US that I had teachers who told me to lie down in Savasana and then just quit talking and left me to it. That always puzzled me. Weren’t we supposed to have a focus for our minds as we lay there to guide us into a state of relaxation? Why were the teachers just leaving us to “rest” on our own? After all, just this week, I republished a post about Savasana in which I said that one of the things that made Savasana a pose was having a focus for your mind, and not just lying there spacing out. Having the focus for your mind is certainly what’s needed to invoke the Relaxation Response to put you in Rest and Digest mode. But what if your nervous system is in fine shape but your poor brain needs a bit of a vacation? Maybe lying in Savanasa and daydreaming for about 10 minutes could be just what you need? Were my West Coast yoga teachers on to something?

As for my own daydreaming while I do yoga, it’s probably happening while I’m doing restorative poses and long supported inverted poses, because sometimes I just relax physically without a specific mental focus. Oh, okay, sometimes my mind wanders a bit when I’m doing more active poses as well, especially ones I’ve been practicing at home for many years, even though I do try to keep my mind focused on my physical sensations. But until I heard Levintin talking about daydreaming, I had no idea that my wandering mind during my yoga practice was actually providing me with some important benefits! 

How about you? Does your brain ever feel overwhelmed by your work? Or what you’re learning in school? Or all the information that you’re bombarded with on a daily basis? If so, consider adding some daydreaming to your yoga practice. You could do it in any form of Savasana (see Savasana (Corpse Pose) Variations). Or, you could also do it while you’re practicing restorative yoga poses (see Restorative Yoga: An Introduction and Mini Restorative Practice), as these poses relax you physically while your mind is free to wander.

Which reminds me: Ram cautions that not all daydreaming is productive or helpful, and he recommends “controlled daydreaming.” That sounds like an oxymoron to me, but I assume he means that if you notice your mind drifting in violent or aggressive fantasies, or negative dramas of any sort, you could gently move your mind away from those thoughts and onto something less stressful.