If you read my initial article on the cognitive shuffle and the theory behind it, published in 2013, you’ll see that I said that the cognitive shuffle (such as serial diverse imagining) is a form of meditation. None of the journalists who covered the cognitive shuffle, to my knowledge, has commented on that.
Most forms of meditation have a single anchor: the breath, a mantra, or parts of the body. I’ve now created another new type of meditation. It’s called BSBM meditation (for a combined body scanning, breath, and mantra meditation). This multi-anchor approach is meant to occupy multiple channels of attention at once, leaving less room for intrusive or repetitive thoughts.
BSBM meditation also emphasizes training oneself to refocus one’s attention. To be sure, refocusing is supposed to be a feature of other meditations. But in BSBM, it’s the major constraint one applies when sitting for a meditation, which affects the entire meditation. The goal of BSBM meditation is to help you when you are not meditating, but living your life.
BSBM meditation is meant to help in cases where mental perturbance (the state underlying repetitive thought, viz. worries, rumination, obsessions, preoccupations, etc.) puts you off track. I contend that other mindfulness practices often do not deliver the refocusing goods. I think it is because other practice tend to have too many objectives and constraints. Anyone familiar with cognitive psychology will understand that this leads to cue overload. In contrast, with BSBM refocusing is the key.
BSBM meditation is more demanding meditation than would be focusing on just one of its constituent anchors. That is by design. I’ve described BSBM on the CogZest blog. Amongst other things, that article gives tips for becoming skilled at BSBM meditation. It also provides some of the theoretical underpinning of BSBM.
My colleagues and I did a few experiments on the cognitive shuffle, and I intend to do more. I also hope to collaborate with meditation researchers to test BSBM. For now, it’s just a proposal. You can see if it makes sense theoretically, and whether it works for you. This is exploratory at this stage; I make no promises.