Meditation

Meditation, forms a part of yoga, is the ancient Indian wisdom. However, every
religion taught some sorts of meditative practices as means to evolve and achieve
spiritual development. Today meditation techniques have spread across the world
like wild fire and many see it as a panacea for all their problems. Still many
schools of science are skeptical about its benefits. But many meditation practices
like Transcendental Meditation have scientifically proven benefits on all aspects
of health and all-round wellness.
We know that brain is the most unique and critical organ in human body. It has
only two percent of the body’s weight but it consumes about 20 % of body’s
metabolic energy.
There is a common perception that our brain needs rest; while doing no activity
the brain is getting rest and it is required for a human being and brain.
Vast majority of the circuits in the brain especially the limbic brain is involved in
the activities of protecting, maintaining, strengthening the self, and its
identifications – the so called ego mind. Hence it is the default mode of the brain
and generally the thoughts, emotions and brain activities are negative and
emotional in nature.
Contrary to the common belief, the recent studies have revealed that when a
person is doing nothing, his brain is fully activated and when he is engaged in
constructive mental activity, most of the brain regions are deactivated and
arrested except the area involved in the activity.
When a person is idle, the areas called mPFC (middle prefrontal cortex) and PCC
(post cingulate cortex) are fully active. When a constructive activity is engaged in
the corresponding area of the brain is activated, the above default area is calmed
down and rested. It is also widely believed that idling mind or wandering mind is
taking rest. It is observed that a wandering mind is a negative mind with lot of

brain activities like nurturing, strengthening and reinforcing our ego or false
image. In short, when our attention is focused deliberately on positive activities,
our default negative mental activities are deactivated.
When a person does meditation after a period of the mind wandering, it is found
that the neural circuits in PFC are strengthened and this strengthening of neural
circuits help people to reduce the mind wandering tendency.
We know that there are many types of meditations available in the public domain.
Some have proven track record and benefits and very popular also. The common
feature of all meditations is that these meditations envisage to focus our
awareness or attention to the conscious and desired area of mind or body or
activity. This process and experience is called mindfulness.
Another feature of wandering mind is its ‘sticking’ nature to certain type and
pattern of thoughts. Depending upon the nature of self image and perceptions of
life, mind develops a pattern of ‘sticking’ to certain types of thoughts and
emotions and develops a tendency to repeat it. As the negative thoughts and
emotions are repeated by way of ‘sticking’, it has a very harmful effect on body
and mind. Main cause of mental conflict and pain of person is due to sticking
nature of the mind, emotional attachment and non acceptance of different
situations. These emotional aspects of the mind are regulated by emotional
circuits, mainly by amygdala and the nucleus accumbens. It is seen that
meditation has potential to reduce the grip of these regions and strengthen the
rational thinking process.
It is also seen that the reduction of ‘sticking’ nature helps to reduce the intensity
of self or ego mind which helps people to develop more connectedness to the
fellow human beings and spiritual development.
Meditation helps to strengthen dorsolateral prefrontal area in the brain which is
the key area involved in regulating the negative thoughts, emotions and the ego
aspect of the mind.
Another astonishing finding of studies on meditation and mindfulness practice is
that long term practice of meditation helps to raise the level of awareness of the
practitioners. When practiced for a longer period the practitioners develop a
higher level of awareness, that is, they become aware of their own awareness

called Meta-awareness, and this level of awareness has seen to be drastically
reducing the grip of default mode rigidity or false self on the brain and mind of a
human being. Similarly long-term meditation practitioners have seen to have
achieved lasting drop in mind wandering.
Emotional attachment, wandering mind, addictions, sense of false self and
‘stickiness’ to thoughts and emotions are considered as important traits of an ego
mind. It is established that an area in the brain called nucleus accumbens is
regulating these functions in the brain. It is also seen that in the case of long-
term meditation practitioners, the grey matter volume attached to nucleus
accumbens has diminished substantially which indicates reduction in the intensity
of ego mind and its adverse impacts. It means that there will be corresponding
increase in the experience of great feelings of compassion and love in natural
way. Neuroscience has found that brain structure alters according to the
experience of a person which is called neuroplasticity. When long-term
practitioners of meditation start experiencing more and more positive emotions,
it will gradually change the brain structures paving way for permanent changes in
the brain.
This is an era of stress and there is widespread demand for various stress
reduction programs especially in West and America. Stress is identified as the root
cause for innumerable health problems. This has led to the development of a
program called ‘Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction’ (MBSR). In simple words
mindfulness means experience of life with focused attention and awareness every
moment which is an offshoot of every good meditation. When stress is the main
cause for many illnesses, mindfulness meditation has fastened the healing
process. In a study, it is found that in the same situation meditation practitioners
are found to be having 13% lower stress hormone, cortisol and substantial
reduction in pro-inflammatory cytokines which are substantial changes to make a
difference in the health of a person. It is well known that meditation can reduce
blood pressure in a better way than medicine. It is reported that long term
practice of meditation can influence at the genes expressions especially
inflammatory genes indicating prevention of many chronic illnesses including
mind related ones. It also enhances the strength and longevity of cells.

Slow breathe is an indicator of wellness and good health. It is seen that long term
meditators have slower breathe at the ratio of 1.6:1 when compared to non
practitioners. Harvard scientists have found various critical regions of brains of
practitioners of meditations strengthening over a period of time. One study
observed that brains of meditators of 50 years found to be ‘younger’ by 7.5 years
compared to the non meditators of same age. In another study, the brain of
meditation practitioners of aged 41 resembled 33 years old brain .
Types of thoughts and attitude also play a role in health of the brain. Persons with
a positive attitude of compassion and empathy have found to have strengthened
a critical area (between temporal and parietal lobes) in the brain.
Having convinced with the miraculous benefits of meditation on health, the
American medical scientists have developed various practices like Mindfulness-
Based Cognitive Therapy(MBCT) for therapeutic purposes of critical illnesses like
cardiovascular diseases and mental illnesses .It is observed that MBCT helps to
reduce relapse in severe depression by about 50 %.
In the case of students it is noticed that mindfulness based meditation has
improved concentration and lessened mind wandering. it also improved working
memory as they are able to pay more attention .One study reported 30 %
increase in the GRE score in the case of students practiced mindfulness-based
meditation.
As benefits of meditation are experienced in all aspects of life including
performance in workplace, many corporates have adopted mindfulness based
meditation practices as part of their training and development activities.
Persons of any age can start meditation at any time in life. For those who are yet
to start practice of meditation, it is better late than never.
More insights are available from counselling and training sessions.
For more info on Advanced Meditation Training For Organization contact us.