All of us are the same. A much more interesting, kind, adventurous
and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop our curiosity, not
caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet. To
lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting
to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more
passionate, full and delightful life than that, we must realize that we
can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we
are and what this world is, how we tick and how our world ticks, how
the whole thing just is."
-
Pema Chodron, "The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness"
Earlier this year, the journal of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging
published a study showing that in just eight weeks of mindfulness
meditation practice, structural changes in gray matter were observed.
The study had participants meditating for as little as 27 minutes each
day. This is the first study documenting that meditating actually
changes the brain.
Previously, comparisons of meditators to non-meditators had shown
that the brains of those who meditated were different in areas of
attention and focus, compassion and emotional intelligence, but this was
only correlative. In addition, previous functional MRI studies have
showed metabolic changes occurring during meditation, but these studies
were not designed to document that these changes lasted beyond the
meditation session. Now we have evidence of what many people already
know intuitively, that meditation produces significant effects on our
brains/minds/consciousness that last far beyond the time on the cushion,
and affect our daily lives in profound ways.
Most of our waking hours are spent in unconsciousness. We drive
unconsciously, we walk unconsciously, we eat, brush our teeth, even have
conversations unconsciously. Our time is spent thinking about the
future and the past. We are not aware of what is happening in the
present moment. Many of us strive to become more aware of the present
moment, to become more conscious, more engaged and more present. Most
who have this aspiration will engage in some form of meditative
practice.
Instead of moving through life mostly on autopilot or as a prisoner
of past conditioning, meditation can be used as a way to create "a more
passionate, full and delightful life," as Chodron put it. The creativity
comes when the mind disengages with discursive thinking and is allowed
to become spacious.
Evolution has created a strategy to respond to life-threatening
situations. When we perceive a threat, our survival wiring takes over.
The amygdala is in charge of emergencies and gets priority in such a
situation. The problem is that in modern times many things trigger this
response that are not really life-threatening, think PTSD or anxiety.
When the amygdala has hijacked our consciousness we can only focus on
the perceived threat to the exclusion of all else. In addition, the
amygdala is only good at seeing the basic outline of the problem and
can't sort out details. We respond from conditioned training to these
situations and do not bring much thought to the process. This is good if
a lion is in the room, but not so good if our boss just criticized our
project.
According to Dan Goleman, author of "The Brain and Emotional Intelligence," the top five triggers of an amygdala hijack in our modern world are:
- Condescension and lack of respect.
- Being treated unfairly.
- Being unappreciated.
- Feeling that you're not being listened to or heard.
- Being held to unrealistic deadlines.
Meditation trains the brain to keep the pathways open between the
emotional centers and the thinking centers, specifically the amygdala
and the prefrontal cortex. Basically, meditation trains us to use more
of our brain for any given situation. Meditation practices offer
natural, drug-free, self-administered ways to manage stress and to
skillfully manage ourselves and our behavior towards others. Being able
to modulate our initial feelings and thoughts and create a measured
response is what makes us responsible citizens.
We strive for this because we have been told by most of the ancient
traditions that this is where the truth lies. Where health derives from.
Where happiness lies. We know this intuitively. More and more we have
the help of modern science to substantiate this intuitive knowledge.
Until recently, only those who had some degree of faith and spiritual
inclinations would avail themselves of these techniques of mind
cultivation. Now, those who only trust science can get into the act, and
for their own good too!
We see the balancing act of form and formlessness, yin and yang,
science and religion playing out on a societal level, as well as an
intrapersonal level. Society debates the value of science vs. religion
as if it is one or the other that has the truth. Einstein was able to
hold that both paradigms of awareness could co-exist within one
individual. His legacy endures as a human being who was able to be
committed to the scientific method while having faith in the mystery of
it all.
Decision-making and meditation
Antonio Damasio, a neurosurgeon, had a patient with a brain tumor
that needed excision. In order to extract the tumor, he had to sever
connections between the prefrontal cortex, where thinking dominates, and
the amygdala, an emotional center. This patient was a successful
corporate lawyer, who after surgery was able to do well on every type of
intelligence testing offered him, yet his life fell apart. He couldn't
function at work, lost his job, got divorced and generally could not
live a normal life. He went back to Damasio who tested him and couldn't
find anything wrong until the surgeon asked him when he could return for
another appointment. The corporate lawyer could not make a decision.
This led Damasio to understand that proper decision-making was both an
emotional and rational process. We have to be able to feel how a thought
affects us before we can decide if that thought works for us. No
feeling, no decision. Sales people and advertising executives know a lot
more about this than the medical profession.
Meditation will enhance our ability to become aware of our internal
process, enabling us to notice the feeling and notice the thought while
not having them automatically drive each other. In a study titled, "Interoception drives increased rational decision-making in meditators playing the ultimatum game," published by Frontiers in Decision Neuroscience,
a group of experienced meditators were better able to regulate their
emotional responses compared to a control group of non-meditators when
playing a game that involved economic decision making. Functional MRI
during the game revealed that the inula was the area of the brain
involved in controlling negative emotions. The meditators were more able
to decouple negative emotions from their behavior. In other words,
meditators are more able to keep their cool.
The implications of this are enormous. The number one killer of
teenagers is poor judgment. Imagine what a little meditation could do to
enhance the areas of the teenage brain that result in better
decision-making. The adult world could also benefit from some enhanced
judgment as well.
The fundamental key to all this is self-awareness. Often, I ask
patients how they are feeling, right now, in their body. They will
usually tell me something like this: "I feel anxious, or tired, or
worried, or happy, or stuck, or pain ..." All these descriptions are
conceptual and not really descriptions of actual feelings. How do you
know you are anxious? You feel a sensation in the body, perhaps the
chest, like a pressure, or a constricted feeling, or a heavy sensation,
and then the conceptual mind slaps a label on it - "anxious."
Once the label is there, the connection to the actual sensations
become less available. We already know what it is, so there is no longer
the need to pay so much attention to it. By staying with the actual
body sensation and avoiding the temptation to label it, we stay in the
present moment. We stay with the actual sensation and we don't think
about it as much, or not at all. This brings us into reality and out of
fantasy. Our fears and worries tend to recede. If they do arise, we are
more apt to see them for what they are, simply thoughts. Now the
thoughts arise in a context of feeling the actual sensation. The
connection between them is now available to us and we don't need to
react from past programming. Now we have a choice, just like the
meditators who were able to make better decisions in the money game. Now
that's using your inula.