Meditation. Not just for hippies

The practice of meditation has an extremely long history, stretching back over 3,000 years. It has historically been bound up in religious practice. Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity all employ some form of meditative prayer, but over the past fifty years, it has become more secular. In the last twenty years it has increasingly come to be seen as therapeutic, and in the last five years science has begun to understand the changes in the brain associated with meditation. 

Meditation trains the mind to function more harmoniously. In everyday life, we have frequent periods when our brain goes into neutral and our thoughts tend to jump around randomly. Our mind wanders. During these periods we tend to focus on ourselves, and the impact of what is happening around us, drawing on experiences from the past and associating what is happening to us in the present with previous negative experiences.

These ‘me’ thoughts can lead to anxiety and unhappiness. Buddhist meditation introduces the concept of Mindfulness and teaches that such ‘me’ thoughts can be eliminated. The mind can be calmed, by the practice of prolonged and intense observation of the physical sensation of breathing.

With time, practicing meditation focusing on breathing, or indeed other forms of meditation, can lead to a positive change in mental functioning. This helps people to face tensions and problems in a calm and balanced way rather than reacting with anxiety or anger.

In 2007 a study was published in Science linking ‘mind-wandering’ and self-centered ‘me’ thoughts to underlying brain activity in an area of the brain termed the ‘default mode network’. There are other studies linking activity in the ‘default mode network’ to feelings of unhappiness.

In November 2011 some exciting research was published by Judson Brewer and a series of co-authors. The researchers used brain imaging to show how experienced meditators can monitor and tune out the unhappy ‘me’ thoughts and when they do so, their brain activity changes in an observable way.

Meditators have developed a new default mode, which is centered on the present, and calm acceptance, without drawing on past negative experience. Brewer found that experienced meditators could switch off the old ‘default-mode network’. When it did appear, other areas associated with self-monitoring and cognitive control became active at the same time, in effect switching off the ‘default mode network’.  

So, meditation allows you to change the way your brain functions, turning off unhelpful circuits associated with anxiety and unhappiness and replacing them with calm acceptance.

Mindfulness has been combined with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). CBT was originally developed to help people change how they think about themselves, the world and other people, and understand how their actions affect thoughts and feelings. Instead of focusing on the past, or on how distress or mental symptoms arose in the first place, CBT looks for ways to improve your state of mind in the here and now.

Mindfulness has now been incorporated in a form of CBT, MCBT, which helps a person to distract themselves from negative ‘me’ thoughts by simple breathing meditation and yoga exercises, while at the same time learning to accept negative feelings without judgment.

MCBT has been shown to reduce the relapse rate of depression. One Cambridge study found that MBCT was particularly effective for people at the severe end of the spectrum – those who had already suffered several episodes of depression and who had also had difficult childhoods.

Although meditation techniques have been around for thousands of years, we are only just beginning to understand how it can transform the mind and release us from negative emotions.

While it may still be early days for this research and for the development of therapies based it, it is incredibly exciting that we are now beginning to understand how meditation techniques can change the way the mind functions for the better.