19 Sep 2007, ST, Mind Your Body
Focus on nothing but breathing in and out for20minutes a day and you really will feel happier,
according to researchers in the US who have studied the brains of Tibetan lamas
I have spent a fair amount of time at silent Buddhist retreats staring into inner space and coming to the conclusion that enlightenment isn't going to be happening in this lifetime.
But now when I do find the motivation to sit on the cushion, I imagine a cheerleading squad of a brain researchers waving reams of data.
This data suggests that spending 15 or 20 minutes a day concentrating on the in-out movement of the breath, or a repeated word or mantra - or damn near anything besides the usual rambling, self-obsessed inner monologue - is a good thing, whether anybody reaches nirvana or not.
This scientific movement first took shape in the late 1970s when a young meditator and molecular biologist by the name of Jon Kabat-Zinn founded a stress-reduction programme at the University of Massachusetts at Worcester in the United States.
His notion was that if you stripped away the robes and the gongs and even the smiling image of the Buddha himself, what was left, the cultivation of a calm, non-judgmental mental awareness - 'mindfulness' - might be of great benefit to people suffering chronic pain.
Almost 30 years later, more than 16,000 people have passed through the Centre for Mindfulness' Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programmes. (Log on to www.umassmed.edu/ cfm/index.aspx for more details.)
Studies have found that psoriasis sufferers who included MBSR in their therapy saw their sores heal four times as fast, and that programme graduates made more antibodies when they were injected with a flu virus.
'You're just sitting and following your breath,' said Harvard researcher Sara Lazar in wonderment.
'What's going on in the brain?'
Professor Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin, the leader in a new wave of research attempting to tease out the brain chemistry of meditation, has invited Tibetan lamas into his lab to find out.
Their electroencephalograph readings reveal that they are generating gamma waves, associated with attention and learning, for minutes. Most people can manage this for only a few seconds at best.
According to the functional MRI data, they also show an unusual amount of brain activity in the left side of the pre-frontal cortex, associated with positive emotions. So they are more alert and happier than the rest of us.
In another of Prof Davidson's studies, even a bunch of stressed-out Silicon Valley types who had taken a single eight-week MBSR course registered more activity in the 'happy' part of their brains, dovetailing with their own reports that they were feeling more positive about life.
The underlying explanation for what's going on here can be summed up in a word that scientists in the field repeat like a mantra - 'neuro-plasticity'.
Contrary to what the medical world long believed, the brain is continually changing, both the number of neurons and their arrangement, in response to the mind's daily encounter with the world.
So it follows that it's possible to 'Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain', the title of Newsweek writer Sharon Begley's recent book on the merger of meditation and neuro-science.
Buddha was all over this 2,500 years ago: 'All that we are is the result of what we have thought.'
But now, we've got some pretty fancy tools to drive home the point that practice makes plastic. Harvard's Dr Lazar compared the brains of experienced American meditators to a matched control group and found that certain parts of their cortex, involved in attention, were on average 5per cent thicker, a difference most pronounced in her older subjects.
She's now embarked on a study that focuses on ageing subjects to see if regular 'cushion time' might buy us protection from the shrinking cortexes and mental declines that were thought inevitably to accompany old age.
But Dr Lazar, not yet 40, doesn't have to be personally convinced that the benefits of meditation show themselves before you get old. 'I notice the difference when I'm not regularly sitting,' she admits. 'I drive more aggressively in traffic.'
- FEATUREWELL
-----------------------------------
Clear out the internal jabber
If we were to speak out loud the disjointed monologue that runs through our heads most of the time, we'd be locked up for being nuts.
Buddhist meditation comes in many different flavours (Tibetan, Zen and Vipassana are the major ones) but the common premise is this: if we can tamp down the internal jabber, we will get in touch with a calmer, wiser self, which is less tethered to the ego and its constant cravings - for novelty, attention, power, sex, food, name your poison.
The means to this end is usually 'one-point concentration'. In a relaxed position (purists sit on a cushion, legs crossed), you bring all your attention to a single neutral thing like a repeated word or mantra or, more basic still, the in-out movements of breath.
Beginners (and oft-lapsing veterans) should try to establish the rhythm of a daily sit, 10 to 20 minutes in the morning or evening.
This solitary ritual may be enriched by finding a group in your area or spending a weekend or multi-day retreat offered at a growing number of meditation centres. Read the non-sectarian Buddhist quarterly Tricycle for more such information.
Be aware that as you get comfortable on the cushion and prepare to settle in, your mind will inevitably bombard you with inane trivia, sex fantasies or Really Important Things You've Got to Take Care of Right Now!
But it's all part of the drill.
In the popular 'insight' or Vipassana style of meditation, when you become aware of these mind games, you will simply return to the exercises, focusing, for instance, on the feel of the air moving through your nose.
It's a kind of enlightenment, one screw-up in concentration at a time.
- FEATUREWELL
Focus on nothing but breathing in and out for20minutes a day and you really will feel happier,
according to researchers in the US who have studied the brains of Tibetan lamas
I have spent a fair amount of time at silent Buddhist retreats staring into inner space and coming to the conclusion that enlightenment isn't going to be happening in this lifetime.
But now when I do find the motivation to sit on the cushion, I imagine a cheerleading squad of a brain researchers waving reams of data.
This data suggests that spending 15 or 20 minutes a day concentrating on the in-out movement of the breath, or a repeated word or mantra - or damn near anything besides the usual rambling, self-obsessed inner monologue - is a good thing, whether anybody reaches nirvana or not.
This scientific movement first took shape in the late 1970s when a young meditator and molecular biologist by the name of Jon Kabat-Zinn founded a stress-reduction programme at the University of Massachusetts at Worcester in the United States.
His notion was that if you stripped away the robes and the gongs and even the smiling image of the Buddha himself, what was left, the cultivation of a calm, non-judgmental mental awareness - 'mindfulness' - might be of great benefit to people suffering chronic pain.
Almost 30 years later, more than 16,000 people have passed through the Centre for Mindfulness' Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programmes. (Log on to www.umassmed.edu/ cfm/index.aspx for more details.)
Studies have found that psoriasis sufferers who included MBSR in their therapy saw their sores heal four times as fast, and that programme graduates made more antibodies when they were injected with a flu virus.
'You're just sitting and following your breath,' said Harvard researcher Sara Lazar in wonderment.
'What's going on in the brain?'
Professor Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin, the leader in a new wave of research attempting to tease out the brain chemistry of meditation, has invited Tibetan lamas into his lab to find out.
Their electroencephalograph readings reveal that they are generating gamma waves, associated with attention and learning, for minutes. Most people can manage this for only a few seconds at best.
According to the functional MRI data, they also show an unusual amount of brain activity in the left side of the pre-frontal cortex, associated with positive emotions. So they are more alert and happier than the rest of us.
In another of Prof Davidson's studies, even a bunch of stressed-out Silicon Valley types who had taken a single eight-week MBSR course registered more activity in the 'happy' part of their brains, dovetailing with their own reports that they were feeling more positive about life.
The underlying explanation for what's going on here can be summed up in a word that scientists in the field repeat like a mantra - 'neuro-plasticity'.
Contrary to what the medical world long believed, the brain is continually changing, both the number of neurons and their arrangement, in response to the mind's daily encounter with the world.
So it follows that it's possible to 'Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain', the title of Newsweek writer Sharon Begley's recent book on the merger of meditation and neuro-science.
Buddha was all over this 2,500 years ago: 'All that we are is the result of what we have thought.'
But now, we've got some pretty fancy tools to drive home the point that practice makes plastic. Harvard's Dr Lazar compared the brains of experienced American meditators to a matched control group and found that certain parts of their cortex, involved in attention, were on average 5per cent thicker, a difference most pronounced in her older subjects.
She's now embarked on a study that focuses on ageing subjects to see if regular 'cushion time' might buy us protection from the shrinking cortexes and mental declines that were thought inevitably to accompany old age.
But Dr Lazar, not yet 40, doesn't have to be personally convinced that the benefits of meditation show themselves before you get old. 'I notice the difference when I'm not regularly sitting,' she admits. 'I drive more aggressively in traffic.'
- FEATUREWELL
-----------------------------------
Clear out the internal jabber
If we were to speak out loud the disjointed monologue that runs through our heads most of the time, we'd be locked up for being nuts.
Buddhist meditation comes in many different flavours (Tibetan, Zen and Vipassana are the major ones) but the common premise is this: if we can tamp down the internal jabber, we will get in touch with a calmer, wiser self, which is less tethered to the ego and its constant cravings - for novelty, attention, power, sex, food, name your poison.
The means to this end is usually 'one-point concentration'. In a relaxed position (purists sit on a cushion, legs crossed), you bring all your attention to a single neutral thing like a repeated word or mantra or, more basic still, the in-out movements of breath.
Beginners (and oft-lapsing veterans) should try to establish the rhythm of a daily sit, 10 to 20 minutes in the morning or evening.
This solitary ritual may be enriched by finding a group in your area or spending a weekend or multi-day retreat offered at a growing number of meditation centres. Read the non-sectarian Buddhist quarterly Tricycle for more such information.
Be aware that as you get comfortable on the cushion and prepare to settle in, your mind will inevitably bombard you with inane trivia, sex fantasies or Really Important Things You've Got to Take Care of Right Now!
But it's all part of the drill.
In the popular 'insight' or Vipassana style of meditation, when you become aware of these mind games, you will simply return to the exercises, focusing, for instance, on the feel of the air moving through your nose.
It's a kind of enlightenment, one screw-up in concentration at a time.
- FEATUREWELL
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