http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/
MEDITATION
The Pursuit of Happiness
CBC News Online | April 23, 2004
Reporter: Eve SavoryProducer: Marijka HurkoFrom The National
Erin Gammel is a shoo-in for the Canadian Olympic swim team. Canadian record holder, champion backstroker – unless something wildly unexpected happens, she's going to Athens . But four years ago she was a sure bet for the Sydney Olympics, too."Everyone kept telling me you're a shoo-in," she says. "And we had the strategy and everything was perfect. And I thought this is it, I'm going to the Olympics."She was racing at the Olympic trials in Montreal . She hit the lane rope, lost her concentration and lost her place on the team."It was just extremely disappointing. I was depressed. I was just really sad. I was crying and I couldn't control myself," Gammel says.Erin Gammel cried for two years. Help was to come in a way she would never have dreamed, from Dharamsala in Northern India , 5,000 kilometres and cultural eons away.Dharamsala is the home in exile to thousands of Tibetans who followed the Dalai Lama, after China occupied Tibet .For 25 centuries Tibetan Buddhists have practised and refined their exploration. For generations they probed their inner space with the same commitment with which western science explored the external world and outer space. The two inhabited separate worlds.But now, they are finding common ground in a remarkable collaboration.In March 2000, a select group of scientists and scholars journeyed to Dharamsala. They came to share insights and solutions – to human distress and suffering.Among them was Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist from the University of Wisconsin . He finds nothing contradictory about doing science with Buddhists."There is almost a scientific-like attitude that is exemplified by Buddhist practitioners in investigating their own mind," he says. "Their mind is the landscape of their own experimentation, if you will." The westerners had been invited by the Dalai Lama himself to his private quarters.For five days, monks and scientists dissected what they call "negative emotions" – sadness, anxiety jealousy craving, rage – and their potential to destroy.One of the participants, Daniel Goleman, author of the book Destructive Emotions, says, "As we were leaving the U.S. to come here the headline was a six-year-old who had a fight with a classmate and the next day he came back with a gun and shot and killed her. It's very sad."Why would the scientists seek answers in Tibetan Buddhism?Because its rigorous meditative practices seem to have given the monks an extraordinary resilience, an ability to bounce back from the bad things that happen in life, and cultivate contentment.Richard Davidson's lab is one of the world's most advanced for looking inside a living brain. He's recently been awarded an unprecedented $15-million (Cdn) grant to study, among other things, what happens inside a meditating mind."Meditation is a set of practices that have been around for more than 2,500 years, whose principal goal is to cultivate these positive human qualities, to promote flourishing and resilience. And so we think that it deserves to be studied with the modern tools of science," Davidson says.A little over a year later, in May 2001, the Dalai Lama returned the visit to Davidson's lab in Madison , Wis.His prize subjects – and collaborators – are the Dalai Lama's lamas, the monks. "The monks, we believe, are the Olympic athletes of certain kinds of mental training," Davidson says. "These are individuals who have spent years in practice. To recruit individuals who have undergone more than 10,000 hours of training of their mind is not an easy task and there aren't that many of these individuals on the planet."The Dalai Lama has said were he not a monk, he would be an engineer.He brings that sensibility – the curiosity and intellectual discipline – to the discussion on EEGs and functional MRIs. But this isn't really about machines.And it isn't about nirvana. It's about down-to-earth life: about the distress of ordinary people – and a saner world. "The human and economic cost of psychiatric disorder in western industrialized countries is dramatic," says Davidson. "And to the extent that cultivating happiness reduces that suffering, it is fundamentally important."The monk and the scientist are investigating – together – the Art of Happiness."Rather than thinking about qualities like happiness as a trait," Davidson says, "we should think about them as a skill, not unlike a motor skill, like bicycle riding or skiing. These are skills that can be trained. I think it is just unambiguously the case that happiness is not a luxury for our culture but it is a necessity."But we believe we can buy happiness?if we just had the money. That's what the ad industry tells us. And we think it's true.People's theories about what will make them happy often are wrong. And so there's a lot of work these days that shows, for example, that winning the lottery will transiently elevate your happiness but it will not persist.There's some evidence that our temperament is more or less set from birth. So and so is a gloomy Gus?someone else is a ray of sunshine – that sort of thing.Even when wonderful or terrible things happen, most of us, eventually, will return to that emotional set-point.But, Davidson believes, that set point can be moved. "Our work has been fundamentally focused on what the brain mechanisms are that underlie these emotional qualities and how these brain mechanisms might change as a consequence of certain kinds of training," Davidson says.His work could not have been done 20 years ago. "In fact, 20 years ago, we had dreams of methods that allows you to interrogate the brain in this way, but we had no tools to do it."Now that we have the tools we can see that as our emotions ebb and flow, so do brain chemistry and blood flow. Fear, depression, love ? they all get different parts of our brain working.Happiness and enthusiasm, and joy – they show up as increased activity on the left side near the front of the cortex. Anxiety, sadness – on the right.Davidson has found this pattern in infants as young as 10 months, in toddlers, teens and adults.Davidson tested more than 150 ordinary people to see what parts of their brains were most active.Some were a little more active on the left. Some were a little more active on the right.A few were quite far to the right. They would probably be called depressed. Others were quite far to the left, the sort of people who feel "life is great."So there was a range. Then Davidson tested a monk.He was so far to the left he was right off the curve. That was one happy monk. "And this is rather dramatic evidence that there's something really different about his brain compared with the brains of these other 150 people. This is tantalizing evidence that these practices may indeed be promoting beneficial changes in the brain."Here, the Olympic athletes of meditation meet the Cadillac of brain scanners.Khachab Rinpoche, a monk from Asia, came to Madison to meditate in perhaps the strangest place in his life: the functional MRI.It let's scientists watch what happens inside his brain when he switches between different types of meditation. They want to know how his brain may differ from ordinary people, and whether that change is related to the inner contentment the monks report.So they test how subjects react to unpleasant sounds and images flashed into the goggles they wear in the MRI.Normally when we're threatened one part of the brain is tremendously active, but in the monks, "the responsivity of this area is specifically decreased during this meditation in response to these very intense auditory simuli that convey strong emotions," Davidson says.It's very preliminary work, but the implication may be that the lamas are able to move right through distressing events that overwhelm the rest of us – in other words, one of the keys to their happiness.It may tell us something about our potential. "Our brains are adaptable, our brains are not fixed. The wiring in our brains is not fixed. Who we are today is not necessarily who we have to end up being," Davidson says.Tibetan Buddhism is said to be one of the most demanding mental endeavours on the planet. It takes 10,000 hours of meditation and years in retreat to become adept. Few of us can imagine such a commitment.But that doesn't mean the benefits of meditation are out of our reach.Zindal Segal is a psychologist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto . He uses meditation to treat mood disorders.It's based on Buddhist teachings and its called mindfulness.
"Very few of us can sit for 10,000 hours to be able to do this but the interesting thing is that we don't need to. These capacities are available to all of us," Segal says. " We're talking about paying attention, we're talking about returning wherever our minds are to this present moment. These are things that we all have. We don't have to earn them, we just have to find a way of clearing away the clutter to see that they are already there." Meditation is now out of the closet. The word is, it eases stress, drops blood pressure, helps put that bad day at the office in perspective.Meditation is being mainlined by the mainstream, from corporate offices to factory floors.These days it's not unusual to find hospitals like St. Joseph 's in Toronto offering meditation programs. Some 360 people pass through the eight-week course every year.Like most, this program has taken the simplest form of Buddhist teaching and adapted it for busy lives. "Meditation is a skill, and like any skill it needs to be practised. So we use the breath as the place where we start to practise but eventually what we want to be able to do is to be able to use the awareness of the breath in our daily lives," Segal says."When we have the ability to do that we can then use the breath when we're standing in line at a bank, or if we're having an argument with a spouse, as a way of grounding ourselves in the middle of something that is disturbing."Something disturbing, like the mind movie Erin Gammel couldn't escape: the day when she failed to make the Olympic team."I just remember my hand getting caught in a lane rope and thinking to myself, it's over," Gammel says. She lost her focus, her place on the team, and her heart to swim. "It affected my entire life. I cried at the drop of a hat. I wasn't improving and it didn't look like anything was really improving. And I felt everything I did I seemed to fail at," she says. "That was part of the depression and the sadness because I felt like I was failing at the time. Nothing was going well." Until she hooked up with the National Swim Team's sports psychologist, Hap Davis. Davis had been fascinated by scientist Richard Davidson's work.He had a hunch that reliving the trauma was suppressing that part of Erin 's brain on the left that Davidson had found was so active in happy people.He devised a rescue plan – a breathing meditation that she was to do before and after repeatedly viewing the video."If a person can ground themselves and feel centred with meditative breathing they can get to the point where they can look at it and view it with a critical mind, with a mind that is capable of being open to the experience and looking objectively at what took place," Davis says."You know what it felt like during the race. It felt like I stopped absolutely dead. But in the video I look and it looks like just a little glitch. Nothing."It's more than two years since they've needed to study the tape – because it worked. Erin 's joy of swimming returned; she's winning race after race."She's more resilient emotionally. She's more stable emotionally. She's more consistent in terms of performance," Davis says."Meditation isn't necessarily about happiness but it makes you happier. I guess that is how you would say it. And I feel more confident. That I know how to work with this stuff and work with bad things that happen in my life," Gammel says.Once again there's one more race to win – the trials to make the team that goes to Athens ."This is my year. That's what I keep telling everyone. This is my year to make the Olympic team because making it through all those times there it's just going to happen, I know it is. lt's just going to happen," she says."Meditation has been around for 2500 years so it's not like a new practice," Davis says. "But science is catching up to an old tradition and the evidence seems to be emerging that meditation can change the pattern of brain chemistry or blood flow in the brain."And now there's proof meditation can change the brains of ordinary people and make them healthier.Promega is a biotech company in Madison , Wis. , where the researchers from the Brain Imaging Lab recruited typical stressed out workers – office staff, managers, even a skeptical research scientist, Mike Slater. "Things were chaotic and crazy. We had a newborn. We had three deaths in the family. So it was a pretty topsy-turvy time," Slater says.All the subjects had activity in their brain measured?and half – including Mike Slater – were given an eight- week course in meditation.Then everyone – meditators and controls – got a flu shot, and their brains were measured a second time.The meditators' brain activity had shifted to that happy left side. Mike Slater was almost too successful. "I was pretty happy all the time and I was worried that maybe I was masking some stuff that might really be irritating me so I stopped it and my wife noticed an increase in my irritability, so, you know, I have both sides of the experiment now. It calmed me down and I stopped doing it and my irritability increased," he says.That wasn't all. Their immune systems had strengthened."Those individuals in the meditation group that showed the biggest change in brain activity also showed the biggest change in immune function, suggesting that these were closely linked," Davidson says.Davidson and his team had shown meditation could shift not just mood – but also brain activity and immunity in ordinary people.And they'd answered a potential flaw in the monk study."Someone may say, well, maybe these individuals are that way to start out with. Maybe that's why they're attracted to be monks," Davidson says. "And we actually can't answer that on the basis of those data, but with the Promega study, we can say definitely that it had to do with the intervention we provided."There are reasons to believe the insane pace and many aggravations of daily life can be dangerous to the health of our minds and our bodies.We can't push the delay button on a busy world and we can't bail out. But perhaps meditation is a way to encourage a sense of well-being – a deep breath in the centre of the whirlwind."As the Dalai Lama himself said in his book The Art of Happiness, we have the capacity to change ourselves because of the very nature, of the very structure and function of our brain," Davidson says. "And that is a very hopeful message because I think it instills in people the belief that there are things that they can do to make themselves better."
"Very few of us can sit for 10,000 hours to be able to do this but the interesting thing is that we don't need to. These capacities are available to all of us," Segal says. " We're talking about paying attention, we're talking about returning wherever our minds are to this present moment. These are things that we all have. We don't have to earn them, we just have to find a way of clearing away the clutter to see that they are already there." Meditation is now out of the closet. The word is, it eases stress, drops blood pressure, helps put that bad day at the office in perspective.Meditation is being mainlined by the mainstream, from corporate offices to factory floors.These days it's not unusual to find hospitals like St. Joseph 's in Toronto offering meditation programs. Some 360 people pass through the eight-week course every year.Like most, this program has taken the simplest form of Buddhist teaching and adapted it for busy lives. "Meditation is a skill, and like any skill it needs to be practised. So we use the breath as the place where we start to practise but eventually what we want to be able to do is to be able to use the awareness of the breath in our daily lives," Segal says."When we have the ability to do that we can then use the breath when we're standing in line at a bank, or if we're having an argument with a spouse, as a way of grounding ourselves in the middle of something that is disturbing."Something disturbing, like the mind movie Erin Gammel couldn't escape: the day when she failed to make the Olympic team."I just remember my hand getting caught in a lane rope and thinking to myself, it's over," Gammel says. She lost her focus, her place on the team, and her heart to swim. "It affected my entire life. I cried at the drop of a hat. I wasn't improving and it didn't look like anything was really improving. And I felt everything I did I seemed to fail at," she says. "That was part of the depression and the sadness because I felt like I was failing at the time. Nothing was going well." Until she hooked up with the National Swim Team's sports psychologist, Hap Davis. Davis had been fascinated by scientist Richard Davidson's work.He had a hunch that reliving the trauma was suppressing that part of Erin 's brain on the left that Davidson had found was so active in happy people.He devised a rescue plan – a breathing meditation that she was to do before and after repeatedly viewing the video."If a person can ground themselves and feel centred with meditative breathing they can get to the point where they can look at it and view it with a critical mind, with a mind that is capable of being open to the experience and looking objectively at what took place," Davis says."You know what it felt like during the race. It felt like I stopped absolutely dead. But in the video I look and it looks like just a little glitch. Nothing."It's more than two years since they've needed to study the tape – because it worked. Erin 's joy of swimming returned; she's winning race after race."She's more resilient emotionally. She's more stable emotionally. She's more consistent in terms of performance," Davis says."Meditation isn't necessarily about happiness but it makes you happier. I guess that is how you would say it. And I feel more confident. That I know how to work with this stuff and work with bad things that happen in my life," Gammel says.Once again there's one more race to win – the trials to make the team that goes to Athens ."This is my year. That's what I keep telling everyone. This is my year to make the Olympic team because making it through all those times there it's just going to happen, I know it is. lt's just going to happen," she says."Meditation has been around for 2500 years so it's not like a new practice," Davis says. "But science is catching up to an old tradition and the evidence seems to be emerging that meditation can change the pattern of brain chemistry or blood flow in the brain."And now there's proof meditation can change the brains of ordinary people and make them healthier.Promega is a biotech company in Madison , Wis. , where the researchers from the Brain Imaging Lab recruited typical stressed out workers – office staff, managers, even a skeptical research scientist, Mike Slater. "Things were chaotic and crazy. We had a newborn. We had three deaths in the family. So it was a pretty topsy-turvy time," Slater says.All the subjects had activity in their brain measured?and half – including Mike Slater – were given an eight- week course in meditation.Then everyone – meditators and controls – got a flu shot, and their brains were measured a second time.The meditators' brain activity had shifted to that happy left side. Mike Slater was almost too successful. "I was pretty happy all the time and I was worried that maybe I was masking some stuff that might really be irritating me so I stopped it and my wife noticed an increase in my irritability, so, you know, I have both sides of the experiment now. It calmed me down and I stopped doing it and my irritability increased," he says.That wasn't all. Their immune systems had strengthened."Those individuals in the meditation group that showed the biggest change in brain activity also showed the biggest change in immune function, suggesting that these were closely linked," Davidson says.Davidson and his team had shown meditation could shift not just mood – but also brain activity and immunity in ordinary people.And they'd answered a potential flaw in the monk study."Someone may say, well, maybe these individuals are that way to start out with. Maybe that's why they're attracted to be monks," Davidson says. "And we actually can't answer that on the basis of those data, but with the Promega study, we can say definitely that it had to do with the intervention we provided."There are reasons to believe the insane pace and many aggravations of daily life can be dangerous to the health of our minds and our bodies.We can't push the delay button on a busy world and we can't bail out. But perhaps meditation is a way to encourage a sense of well-being – a deep breath in the centre of the whirlwind."As the Dalai Lama himself said in his book The Art of Happiness, we have the capacity to change ourselves because of the very nature, of the very structure and function of our brain," Davidson says. "And that is a very hopeful message because I think it instills in people the belief that there are things that they can do to make themselves better."
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How Meditation Changes Your Brain
There is growing evidence to show that meditation can make people healthier and happier. It may even increase lifespan, alter brain structure and change personality.
Now, mainstream medicine is beginning to take notice of meditation’s effects. For example, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), which is about 80 percent meditation, has been approved in Britain for use with people who have experienced three or more episodes of depression.
MRI scans of long-term meditators have shown greater activity in brain circuits involved in paying attention. Long-term meditation can also cause changes in the actual structure of your cortex, the outer layer of your brain. Brain regions associated with attention and sensory processing have been shown to be thicker in meditators.
Studies suggest that meditation can help you to train your attention and focus, even in the midst of distractions. For instance, when disturbing noises were played to a group of experienced meditators undergoing an MRI, they had little effect on the brain areas involved in emotion and decision-making.
About 10 million people meditate every day in the West, and many more in other parts of the world.
Sources:
The London Times March 14, 2008
Dr. Mercola's Comments:
Before you brush off meditation as something only for Buddhist monks or hippies, it would serve you well to find out what you may be missing.
Meditation is the equivalent of giving your mind an escape valve to blow off steam.
This is such a necessary tool in today’s 24/7 society that many people naturally engage in some form of meditation whenever they feel stressed -- listening to music, journaling, prayer, soaking in a bath, all of these work similarly to meditation in that they focus your mind and help promote a state of calm.
In so doing, your pulse, breathing and heart rate are likely to slow down, and your muscles will begin to relax. Your mind, too, will begin to unwind and forget about its racing thoughts.
At its most basic level, meditation helps you take a deliberate break from the stream of thoughts that are constantly flowing in and out of your mind. Some people use it to promote spiritual growth or find inner peace, while others use it as a relaxation and stress-reduction tool.
And while it’s not unusual for the most experienced meditators to have spent decades, even a lifetime, perfecting this art, you can gain benefits just from meditating in your home for 20 minutes a day.
What Can 20 Minutes a Day do for You?
Meditation has been shown to alter the workings of your brain not only in the short-term, but quite possibly permanently. Meditating thickens the areas of your brain where memory and attention reside, according to a Harvard study, and although the aging process lightens the brain in certain sectors, 20 minutes of meditation a day slows that down a bit.
Meditation can also improve your attention span, even while you’re performing mundane tasks in the mid-afternoon, a time when people typically have problems concentrating. Interestingly enough, according to one study the benefits of meditation remained strong even after patients lost a night's sleep in follow-up research.
Meanwhile, because meditation works so well to relieve stress, it can benefit all types of stress-related illness … and as you regular newsletter readers know, just about every illness is stress-related. This may explain why meditation can help to relieve:
High blood pressure
Chronic pain, including headaches
Respiratory problems such as emphysema and asthma
Sleep disturbances and fatigue
Gastrointestinal distress and irritable bowel syndrome
Skin disorders
Mild depression and premenstrual syndrome
Clearly, meditation ranks right up there with exercising and eating right when it comes to improving your health. And it’s something that just about everyone can carve out the time to do.
Simple Guidelines to Start Meditating
If you’d like to give meditation a try, sit quietly, perhaps with some soothing music, breathe rhythmically and focus on something such as your breathing, a flower, an image, a candle, a mantra or even just being in the moment. Some people prefer to close their eyes to block out visual stimulation. If you find that your mind starts to wander, direct it back to your focus point and continue from there.
Ideally, set aside 15-20 minutes a day to practice meditation. You can also try it in shorter segments, but ultimately try to work your way up to 20 minutes.
I’m also a major fan of brainwave entrainment technology, which is usually available in CD form. When you listen, you’re exposed to a combination of frequencies that induce powerful states of focused concentration or deep relaxing meditation while stimulating various parts of your brain to work together.
The benefit is that you can begin experiencing the deep frequencies right away, as opposed to having to work up to that level with traditional meditation.
However you choose to do it, just make sure you are giving your mind some down time to relax, regroup and recharge on a regular basis.
Related Articles:
Meditation Can Boost Your Immune System
Meditation Improves Your Attention
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The London Times
March 14, 2008
Meditation can alter brain structure
Barbara Lantin
Kathy Sykes, a Bristol University professor, has long known that if she does not find at least 30 minutes a day in her frantically overcrowded schedule to lie down and listen to music, she is grumpier, more tired and less able to concentrate.
What Professor Sykes, who holds the chair in the Public Engagement of Science and Engineering at Bristol, did not realise until recently is that she was, in effect, practising a fairly crude form of meditation. She also didn't know that there was growing evidence to show that this ancient practice can make people healthier and happier. It may even increase life span, alter brain structure and change personality.
Ancient traditional therapies do not always stand up to close scientific scrutiny. But when Professor Sykes put meditation under the metaphorical microscope for the second series of Alternative Therapies: The Evidence, which she is presenting on BBC Two on Monday, she was surprised to find that the saffron-robed monks of Kathmandu and the white-coated scientists of Harvard shared more common ground than might have been expected.
“Several people have told me that meditation can affect your emotions,” she says, “and one of the areas of the brain that scientists are finding may be affected by meditation is involved in processing emotions, among other things. These are early days and we need more trials, but this is potentially very exciting.”
Related Links
Buddhist monks really are happier
There are signs that mainstream medicine has already started to sit up and take notice of meditation. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), which is about 80 per cent meditation, has been approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) for use with people who have experienced three or more episodes of depression. And MBCT is now offered by some UK primary care trusts.
Finding a state of calm
About ten million people meditate every day in the West and, while there are many different techniques, the purpose is always to focus the mind - sometimes through the use of a mantra, a sound or the breath - and promote a state of calm.
Although Professor Sykes had always found her own ad hoc methods useful, she noticed a change after her visit to Kathmandu for instruction with Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk who has been meditating for more than 30 years. “It would be absurd to say that I have learnt to meditate when people spend a lifetime doing that, but when I try to meditate now it does have a more powerful effect,” she says.
“My dad died from cancer about two months before I made the programme, but I had not cried about him for a while because I was just so busy filming. Matthieu had suggested I try to focus on unconditional love so, the next time I was trying to meditate, I thought about that and inevitably about my love for my dad. Within milliseconds I was bawling my eyes out. It was quite an intense experience and I found it comforting in my grief.
“Not long ago, I was on a crowded train where there was standing-room only going from Paddington to Bristol. I sat cross-legged on the floor to meditate and felt like I was transported to a delightful place. It was glorious to feel it was possible to ‘escape' like that.”
As a scientist, Professor Sykes wanted to know what was happening to her body to make her feel this way, so she checked into the famous Massachusetts General Hospital, where Dr Herbert Benson, a Harvard Medical School professor, put her through a barrage of tests.
After hooking her up to a range of monitors “like a lab rat”, doctors measured her resting pulse, muscle tension, respiration and sweat. They then subjected her to some humiliating mental arithmetic on camera, during which her stress levels and all her readings soared.
But after a short period of meditation, her pulse and breathing dropped below the resting rate. Dr Benson calls this the “relaxation response” and believes it can help with a wide range of conditions, including heart disease, asthma, diabetes and infertility. “To the extent that any disorder is caused or made worse by stress, regular elicitation of the relaxation response will counteract that condition,” he saysMeditation changes the brain
For Professor Sykes, the most exciting part of her investigation took place in the laboratories, where scientists are demonstrating that meditation appears to be associated with changes in the brain. These studies suggest that we could all benefit from regular meditation.
MRI scans of long-term meditators have shown greater activity in brain circuits involved in paying attention. When disturbing noises were played to a group of meditators undergoing an MRI scan, they had relatively little effect on the brain areas involved in emotion and decision-making among those with the most experience of meditation.
“Attention can be trained in a way that is not that different to how physical exercise changes the body,” says Richard Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Long-term meditation seems not only to alter brain-wave patterns: early research suggests that it may also result in changes in the actual structure of the cortex, the outer parts of our brains. “We have found that brain regions associated with attention and sensory processing were thicker in meditators than in the controls,” says Dr Sara Lazar, an assistant in psychology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“The data give credence to some of the claims of long-term meditators and suggests that meditation can play a role in reducing stress, improving emotion regulation and perhaps slowing the effects of ageing on brains - slowing the normal decrease in mental agility, ability to learn new things and memory that comes with age.”
It is possible, of course, that people with a thicker brain cortex in areas associated with awareness and sensory processing are more likely to meditate. So Dr Lazar is investigating whether changes in brain structure can be detected before and after learning the technique.
All this means that Professor Sykes will be sticking with meditation and thinks the rest of us should try it, too. “I find it incredibly empowering to think that how happy we feel or our ability to focus or concentrate may not be fixed character traits but may be skills that we can train and get better at,” she says. “This must be worth investigating. If evidence is found that meditation can help us all to think better, to be happier and to be more compassionate, that would be amazing.”
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Meditation Improves Your Attention
Buddhist monks have claimed for centuries that meditation helps increase attention and concentration. New findings offer support for this notion.
Increases Thickness of Brain Regions
Researchers at Harvard Medical School examined Westerners who meditated for about 20 minutes every day, but didn't necessarily believe in the tenets of Buddhism. MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) was used to look at brain parts involved in memory and attention. The thickness of those regions had increased.
Those areas generally shrink as people get older, but older meditators in the study were able to avoid some of that shrinkage. This suggests that a regular meditation practice might help people maintain their ability to remember and focus on details.
Boosts Performance on Attention Tests
Another study indicates that meditation may boost performance on tests that measure attention. A University of Kentucky study showed that 10 people taught to meditate for 40 minutes did better on a test of attention than they did after reading for 40 minutes.
The study also showed that meditation can improve attention worsened by lack of sleep.
Produces a Jump in Brain Waves
A third study, of mostly Buddhist monks, found that meditation produced a jump in brain waves associated with vigilance. The study also showed that meditation activated brain regions involved in attention.
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Meditation Can Boost Your Immune System
Researchers found that people who did eight weeks of meditation training produced more antibodies to a flu vaccine. They also showed signs of increased activity in brain areas related to positive emotion than people who didn't meditate.
While most of you know that I am not a major fan of flu vaccines, the study does show the value that meditation has to the immune system. I am sure there are some outstanding meditators out there, but I suspect most of you are similar to me and remain seriously challenged to remain focused and not let your mind wander.
Fortunately, there is a major new advance involving brain wave entrainment. Over the last year I have been using the Holosynch system to provide the benefits of meditating for more than a decade nearly instantly. If you haven't read my recent article on Holosynch yet please do as I suspect you will find it fascinating.
Psychosomatic Medicine Jul-Aug 2003;65(4):564-70
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Meditation trains the mechanism wch controls the deployment of attention.
Bringing intensely focused/concentrated attention to bear upon a task is crucial to learning.
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Dr Davidson's website: http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/
Recent publication on meditation:
http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/web/pubs/2007/10.1371_journal.pbio.0050138-L.pdf
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Longevity & Beneficial Hormones Released During Meditation.
By Michael Mackenzie
In certain brain wave frequencies the brain releases numerous highly beneficial substances, including (HGH) human growth hormone.
As we become older, the brain creates lesser quantities of these beneficial substances and we therefore develop various ageing symptoms and diseases.
Recent research performed by Dr. Vincent Giampapa, M.D., a prominent anti-aging researcher and past-president of the American Board of Anti-Aging Medicine, revealed that regular deep meditation dramatically affects production of three important hormones related to increased longevity, stress, and enhanced well-being: cortisol, DHEA, and melatonin.
At the slower Alpha and Theta brainwave patterns, production of DHEA and melatonin increases significantly.
One study noted an increase in DHEA of as much as 44%.
Some even had DHEA increases of up to 90%.
Melatonin increases were even more astounding, with average increases of 98% recorded. Many participants even had increases of up to 300%.
On the other hand, cortisol levels declined by an average of 47%. Of course, not all study participants showed the same results, but about 70% of the study participants recorded the above improvements.
Cortisol is the major age-accelerating hormone.
Cortisol
Cortisol is a hormone naturally produced by the adrenal glands. According to Dr. Giampapa, cortisol is the major age-accelerating hormone. It also interferes with learning and memory and is, in general, bad news for your health and your well-being.
Cortisol is the "stress hormone," and the more of it you have, the more stressed you feel...the more vulnerable to disease you are and the faster you age!
DHEA is extremely important.
DHEA
Another hormone, DHEA, is also produced by your adrenal glands. DHEA is a precursor, or source ingredient, to virtually every hormone your body needs.
DHEA level is a key determinant of physiological age and resistance to disease. When levels are low, you're more susceptible to aging and disease; when they're high, the body is at its peak—vibrant, healthy, and able to fight disease successfully.
DHEA acts as a buffer against stress-related hormones (such as cortisol), which is why as you get older and make less DHEA you become more susceptible to stress and disease.
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (December 11, 1986) found that a 100 microgram per deciliter increase in DHEA blood levels corresponded with a 48% reduction in mortality due to cardiovascular disease—and a 36% reduction in mortality for any reason!
The benefits of Melatonin
Melatonin
Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland and helps to create restful sleep. The inability to sleep soundly can dramatically decrease the quality of your life and greatly speed up the aging process. The production of this important hormone rapidly declines with age.
New research also reveals that Melatonin is a powerful antioxidant.
Biological implications of reduced melatonin:
Melatonin is a ubiquitous neurohormone whose production is low during the day and high at night. It passes through cell membranes and acts as a highly potent antioxidant to scavenge free radicals that cause damage to DNA, Reiter (1995).
Hence melatonin reduction is involved with diseases produced by free radicals, including cancer, aging, neurological diseases, acute heart disease and heart attack, Reiter and Robinson (1995).
The circadian cycle involvement of melatonin shows that reduced melatonin will alter blood pressure and heart rate, neurological cardiopulmonary and reproductive functions.
It suggests that reduced melatonin will also reduce immune system competence and enhances the risk of cardiac, neurological and carcinogenic disease and death through reducing its antioxidant activity. These predictions are checked against clinical studies.
Melatonin reduction and health effects:
Reiter and Robinson (1995) and Brzezinski (1997) reviewed the clinical studies involved with reduced melatonin. Dr Brzezinski identifies roles for melatonin in sleep and circadian rhythm, mood, sexual maturation, reproduction, cancer, immune system response and aging.
Dr Russell Reiter, an eminent melatonin researcher, is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Pineal Research.
Reiter and Robinson confirm all of the effects identified by Brzezinski, and add arthritis, asthma, diabetes, hypertension, blood clotting and stroke, cardiac arrhythmia, ischemic heart disease, heart attack, epilepsy, manic depression, suicide, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases.
Published papers are cited to justify each of these health effects. Most of the
21 associated conditions relate to the oxidative damage by free radicals and melatonin's multiple roles as a potent antioxidant, sleep enhancer and immune system booster.
Serotonin
Meditation increases the production of serotonin which is a calming neurotransmitter in the brain.
Human Growth Hormone
It is within delta that our brains are triggered to release great quantities of healing hormones, one of which is human growth hormone (HGH) which we make less of as we age, resulting in many symptoms and diseases associated with aging.
Hollywood stars pay up to $20,000 a year for synthetic human growth hormone injections, because it brings back youthful energy, looks, and stamina. And I agree, the effects of HGH are dramatic:-
Greater muscle tone,
Stronger bones,
Less fat,
Increased brain function and younger-looking, tighter skin!
HGH is one of the reasons kids have endless energy—their pituitary glands spew out heaps of the stuff!
Unfortunately, your body produces less HGH as you get older—as much as 50% less by our late 50s.
And it shows!
But HGH injections are dangerous, expensive and can cause frightening side effects!!
Now you know you can produce HGH and many other healing hormones, naturally and safely with a little daily meditation.
“By quieting the mind, which then quiets the body, and the less turbulent the body is, the more the self-repair healing mechanisms get amplified. In fact, scientists have shown that the better your DNA, your genetic machinery is at healing itself, the longer you live. That's how meditation lowers biological age.” Deepak Chopra
As we become older, the brain creates lesser quantities of these beneficial substances and we therefore develop various ageing symptoms and diseases.
Recent research performed by Dr. Vincent Giampapa, M.D., a prominent anti-aging researcher and past-president of the American Board of Anti-Aging Medicine, revealed that regular deep meditation dramatically affects production of three important hormones related to increased longevity, stress, and enhanced well-being: cortisol, DHEA, and melatonin.
At the slower Alpha and Theta brainwave patterns, production of DHEA and melatonin increases significantly.
One study noted an increase in DHEA of as much as 44%.
Some even had DHEA increases of up to 90%.
Melatonin increases were even more astounding, with average increases of 98% recorded. Many participants even had increases of up to 300%.
On the other hand, cortisol levels declined by an average of 47%. Of course, not all study participants showed the same results, but about 70% of the study participants recorded the above improvements.
Cortisol is the major age-accelerating hormone.
Cortisol
Cortisol is a hormone naturally produced by the adrenal glands. According to Dr. Giampapa, cortisol is the major age-accelerating hormone. It also interferes with learning and memory and is, in general, bad news for your health and your well-being.
Cortisol is the "stress hormone," and the more of it you have, the more stressed you feel...the more vulnerable to disease you are and the faster you age!
DHEA is extremely important.
DHEA
Another hormone, DHEA, is also produced by your adrenal glands. DHEA is a precursor, or source ingredient, to virtually every hormone your body needs.
DHEA level is a key determinant of physiological age and resistance to disease. When levels are low, you're more susceptible to aging and disease; when they're high, the body is at its peak—vibrant, healthy, and able to fight disease successfully.
DHEA acts as a buffer against stress-related hormones (such as cortisol), which is why as you get older and make less DHEA you become more susceptible to stress and disease.
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (December 11, 1986) found that a 100 microgram per deciliter increase in DHEA blood levels corresponded with a 48% reduction in mortality due to cardiovascular disease—and a 36% reduction in mortality for any reason!
The benefits of Melatonin
Melatonin
Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland and helps to create restful sleep. The inability to sleep soundly can dramatically decrease the quality of your life and greatly speed up the aging process. The production of this important hormone rapidly declines with age.
New research also reveals that Melatonin is a powerful antioxidant.
Biological implications of reduced melatonin:
Melatonin is a ubiquitous neurohormone whose production is low during the day and high at night. It passes through cell membranes and acts as a highly potent antioxidant to scavenge free radicals that cause damage to DNA, Reiter (1995).
Hence melatonin reduction is involved with diseases produced by free radicals, including cancer, aging, neurological diseases, acute heart disease and heart attack, Reiter and Robinson (1995).
The circadian cycle involvement of melatonin shows that reduced melatonin will alter blood pressure and heart rate, neurological cardiopulmonary and reproductive functions.
It suggests that reduced melatonin will also reduce immune system competence and enhances the risk of cardiac, neurological and carcinogenic disease and death through reducing its antioxidant activity. These predictions are checked against clinical studies.
Melatonin reduction and health effects:
Reiter and Robinson (1995) and Brzezinski (1997) reviewed the clinical studies involved with reduced melatonin. Dr Brzezinski identifies roles for melatonin in sleep and circadian rhythm, mood, sexual maturation, reproduction, cancer, immune system response and aging.
Dr Russell Reiter, an eminent melatonin researcher, is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Pineal Research.
Reiter and Robinson confirm all of the effects identified by Brzezinski, and add arthritis, asthma, diabetes, hypertension, blood clotting and stroke, cardiac arrhythmia, ischemic heart disease, heart attack, epilepsy, manic depression, suicide, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases.
Published papers are cited to justify each of these health effects. Most of the
21 associated conditions relate to the oxidative damage by free radicals and melatonin's multiple roles as a potent antioxidant, sleep enhancer and immune system booster.
Serotonin
Meditation increases the production of serotonin which is a calming neurotransmitter in the brain.
Human Growth Hormone
It is within delta that our brains are triggered to release great quantities of healing hormones, one of which is human growth hormone (HGH) which we make less of as we age, resulting in many symptoms and diseases associated with aging.
Hollywood stars pay up to $20,000 a year for synthetic human growth hormone injections, because it brings back youthful energy, looks, and stamina. And I agree, the effects of HGH are dramatic:-
Greater muscle tone,
Stronger bones,
Less fat,
Increased brain function and younger-looking, tighter skin!
HGH is one of the reasons kids have endless energy—their pituitary glands spew out heaps of the stuff!
Unfortunately, your body produces less HGH as you get older—as much as 50% less by our late 50s.
And it shows!
But HGH injections are dangerous, expensive and can cause frightening side effects!!
Now you know you can produce HGH and many other healing hormones, naturally and safely with a little daily meditation.
“By quieting the mind, which then quiets the body, and the less turbulent the body is, the more the self-repair healing mechanisms get amplified. In fact, scientists have shown that the better your DNA, your genetic machinery is at healing itself, the longer you live. That's how meditation lowers biological age.” Deepak Chopra
The Physical Effects of Meditation on the Brain
ReplyDelete--Stephan A. Schwartz
Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
Volume 7, Issue 6 , Pages 348-353, November 2011
http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307(11)00236-9/fulltext
Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.
ReplyDelete--Voltaire
The ingredients for a longer life
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200512-the-ingredients-that-hold-the-secret-to-a-long-life?ocid=ww.social.link.email