TED talks - the science of meditation

Two of my favourite Ted talks.  

Two scientists talking about the science of meditation.

How mind-blowing (pun intended) ..

Neuroscientist Sara Lazar's amazing brain scans show meditation can actually change the size of key regions of our brain, improving our memory and making us more empathetic, compassionate, and resilient under stress.

Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — shut down one by one. An astonishing story.

The Science of Meditation: Brain health

'Find the Stillness' guided meditation CD is $20
available at our SHOP online

We all want a healthy brain .. and in recent years there has been a growing library of research in the field of neuroscience and how the brain is positively impacted by the practice of meditation.

Watch this excellent TEDxCambridge video by Sara Lazar (Neuroscientist) on how meditation can reshape our brains .. and Sara also discusses some of the latest research on a recent edition of the ABC All In The Mind series..

and it's all GREAT NEWS!

Professor Sara Whitney Lazar, Ph.D. is the Assistant Professor of Psychology at Massachusetts General Hospital.  One of her studies involved putting a group of non-meditators through an 8-week meditation program (the MBSR program developed by Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn) and scanning their brains before, and after.

“We showed that there is growth in certain brain regions as a result of this meditation practice.”

Lazar says that change was measured in a number of regions of the brain:

the posterior singular cortex, the "number one region that goes in Alzheimer’s disease. It’s a very important part of the brain. It’s found to be involved in a lot of different processes, in particular its main thing seems to be about mind wandering and staying in the present moment, related to memory. And this is an area that seems to be improved by [meditation].”

the hippocampus, also “important for ageing, and Alzheimer’s and memory, and those two – the posterior singular cortex and hippocampus – work together. And so this data has suggested [meditation] could potentially slow down or prevent those sorts of diseases.”

the amygdala the area of the brain associated with stress, anxiety and fear and research showed that it got smaller, with meditators reporting feeling less worried or hassled by their lives, even when their circumstances remained the same.

An earlier study by Lazar's team in 2006 found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. Brain scans they conducted revealed that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input. The technique used in the study was insight meditation (focusing on whatever is there, like noise or body sensations).

And so, research continues to support the ancient, time-tested value of a regular meditation practice .. and show that you do not have to be a long term meditator to start experiencing positive results.  Lazar commented that ..

“there has been a little bit of research suggesting that even five or 10 minutes a day can provide some benefit. And so at this point we like to tell people just doing five, 10, 15 minutes a day, three or four times a week, you’re probably going to get some benefit, and if you can do more, that’s great.”

What can you do?

Try our Body Awareness practice, a mindfulness technique which brings your attention to different parts of the body in turn, starting with your toes and journeying up to the top of your head.  In this practice we shift our attention 'inward' and open and anchor our awareness to the sensations, feelings and movements that we find in the body .. then with each exhalation we relax a little further so that tension and tightness just melt away.

Body Awareness by Sarah, Quiet Mind Meditation

Sara Lazar : Meditation can reshape our brain

Excellent TEDxCambridge video by Sara Lazar (Neuroscientist) on how meditation can reshape our brains .. 

and it's all GREAT NEWS!

Sara Whitney Lazar, Ph.D. is the Assistant Professor of Psychology at Massachusetts General Hospital.  She uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural correlates of changes in autonomic function during the practice of meditation.

Meditation and mental health

A media release from the University of Sydney last week cites "Meditation linked to better wellbeing and health, including mental health".

The University of Sydney study found that long-term meditators (with a minimum of two years regular practice) were more than 10% better off than the general population with regards to mental health.

Dr Ramesh Manocha, Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Psychiatry, Sydney Medical School led the research, a world-first health quality-of-life survey of long-term meditators. The study uses the same measurement instruments as the one used by the federal government’s National Health and Wellbeing Survey and followed more than 350 people from across Australia.

"We focused on the definition of meditation as mental silence and surveyed practitioners of Sahaja Yoga meditation who practise a form of meditation aimed at achieving this state rather than relaxation or mindfulness methods that are usually the focus of other forms," Dr Manocha said.

"Most markedly there was a robust relationship between the frequency of experiencing mental silence and better mental health. This definition is based on it being the form of meditation practised for centuries."

The meditators were asked how often they experienced 'mental silence' for more than a few minutes at any one time. Fifty-two percent of respondents said that they experienced mental silence "several times per day or more" while 32 percent were experiencing it "once or twice per day".

"Our analysis showed very little relationship at all between how often the person who meditated physically sat down to meditate and mental health scores. However the relationship was clearly apparent in relation to how often they experienced the state of mental silence.

"The health advantage appears to be connected to this aspect more than any other feature of the meditation lifestyle. In other words it is quality over quantity".

"While we did expect that there would be some differences between the meditators and the general population we didn't expect the findings to be so pronounced".

"This is one of the first studies to assess the long term health impacts of meditation on health and wellbeing. When we take the evidence of this study, along with the results of our other clinical trials, it makes a strong case for the use of meditation as a primary prevention strategy, especially in mental health," Dr Manocha said.

Wonderful to have some home-grown research to share .. we previously noted a work stress conducted by Dr Manocha back in July 2011.  In that study, noted as the largest study of its kind in the world, clinical trials found that meditation riggered changes in electrical activity of the brain, delivering measurable improvements in mind and body.

"What authentic techniques should do is show you how to widen space between thoughts until the space is so large you have no thoughts whatsoever in that moment".

Meditation and Pain



Managing pain is a real issues for many people.  Managing pain in meditation is almost a 'given'.  We have long lost the ability to sit still for periods of time without fidgeting and hurting, we have long lost the sense of what the body 'feels like' when the cocktail of stress hormones have seeped away (which happens when we relax or meditate).  Ouch .. my knees hurt, I have a headache that is far worse now than before, or my shoulders ache .. I hear these things all the time. 

There is some amazing research being done around meditation to assist with managing pain .. please check out the wealth of online information and research by Jon Kabat-Zinn (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) who for almost thirty years has witnessed the practical, hands on, real life experience of those with chronic pain and the application of mindfulness practices to assist in managing pain. 

Researchers link meditation and pain-reduction : from USA Today

A recent article that appeared online with USA Today reports that a study published earlier this year in the Journal of Neuroscience found that ‘meditators slashed their pain levels by 57%’ although scientists at the time were unsure how the mindfulness practice worked to provide relief. 

Mindfulness (the practice of observing thoughts and feelings from a distance) has been shown to help with pain, partly by increasing activity in the brain regions linked to processing sensory information according to the journal Cerebral Cortex. 

"During the state of mindfulness, meditators seem to be in contact with the present moment experience as it is — without reappraising or evaluating it — which seems to reduce suffering," said lead study author Tim Gard, of Massachusetts General Hospital. 

To read the full article go here

Meditation and Focus

One of the often mentioned benefits of a regular meditation practice .. is a improvement in our ability to focus and concentrate. This is often something we realise ourselves quite quickly once we start a meditate practice .. it's like going to the gym and lifting weights; in meditation we are flexing, relaxing, strengthening and building our ‘concentration muscle’ (the brain).

There is a mountain of research going right back to the 1970s when research was focused on Buddhist monks who had regularly meditated for years; and were found to perform better than most on concentration tests. Over the past five years, further studies have gone on to show that meditation can also yields substantial gains in concentration for laypeople who take up the practice.

A recent paper in the journal Psychological Science reported on a study which showed intensive meditation can help people focus their attention and sustain it – even during the most boring of tasks. And another recent study even suggested that meditation doesn't have to be intensive to have an effect.

Scientists at the University of North Carolina found that students were able to improve their performance on cognitive skill tests after just four days of meditation training (20 min. a day). On one particularly challenging computer test of sustained attention, students who meditated did 10 times better than a control group; and also performed better on timed information-processing tasks designed to induce deadline stress.

Findings reported in the Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging journal found that meditating for about 30 minutes a day for eight weeks produced measurable changes in gray-matter density in the hippocampus, an area important for learning and memory; and reduction of gray matter in the amygdale the region connect with anxiety and stress.

Always great when science catches up with these ancient practices (after all .. why would people practice and continue to share, for thousands of years, these amazing life tools? .. because they work!).

Recent articles where you can read more:

New York Times : How meditation may Change the Brain

Time Magazine Online : Losing Focus? Studies Say Meditation May Help

Meditation in the news ...

I am still (partially) on summer-ease time .. a couple of meditation classes under my belt this week and surprisingly ample time to catch up on my reading.  Here are two interesting articles that appeared in my inbox this week:

Mindfulness Meditation Helps Rheumatoid Arthritis

A new study published by the Annals of Rheumatic Diseases suggests that practicing mindfulness meditation reduces stress and fatigue associated with rheumatoid arthritis.

The study evaluated 67 rheumatoid arthritis patients and randomly assigned participants to either 10 group sessions of mindfulness exercises over 15 weeks, plus a booster session 6 months, or to a standard care plan with a CD of mindfulness exercises for home use. The mindfulness sessions included exercises using music, drawing and guided imagery.

Results : those who attended the sessions showed less stress and fatigue – scoring lower stress scores a the one year mark follow up. Fatigue levels also were significantly reduced.

The authors of the study “indicate that the participants may have incorporated some mindfulness strategies into their daily lives and that these strategies have strengthened their ability to respond to their stressful experience in a more flexible way,”.

Meditation isn't just for hippies any more. And it's not all about saying ommmm

An insightful interview from Time magazine with Jon Kabat-Zinn, the molecular biologist who began meditating when the practice was a little woo-woo.  Now, roll forward forty years and we can see his efforts have been paramount to where meditation sits today, with dozens of studies showing the benefits of his MBSR program (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) which has been running at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center for 32 years.

(Now I have another book to add to my summer reading as Kabat-Zinn has released Mindfulness for Beginners to introduce meditation to first-timers).

Kabat-Zinn started his Stress Reduction Clinic in 1979 where outpatients attend an eight-week course that introduces mindfulness .. a practice of ‘paying attention’.

Massachusetts General Hospital have conducted recent studies that show that eight weeks of MBSR can actually produce thickening in particular regions of the brain important for learning, memory, executive decision-making and perspective-taking (which are vital when experiencing stress or pain); and a thining of the areas that involve threat and fear. After only eight weeks!

Kabat-Zinn notes that “Mindfulness is not about getting anywhere else — it’s about being where you are and knowing it. We are talking about awareness itself: a whole repertoire of ways of knowing that virtually all come through the senses. "My definition of healing is coming to terms with things as they are, so that you can do whatever you can to optimize your potential, whether you are living with chronic pain or having a baby. You can’t control the universe, so mindfulness is involves learning to cultivate wisdom and equanimity— not passive resignation—in the face of what Zorba the Greek called the full catastrophe of the human condition".

He also suggests that you meditate for a good 15minutes “long enough so that you get really bored and antsy and learn how to make room for unpleasant moments.”  .. this is sooooo true and so avoided!

Fascinating Meditation Facts

The scientific community continues to conduct research into meditation .. and now there is a wealth of information available about how meditation affects mind and body.  

I love this meeting of science and ancient wisdom .. but once you start meditating regularly I suggest you will already have your own body of evidence!  

Today from the Huffington Post “7 Fascinating Facts About Meditation” .. an interesting snapshot of current studies on Meditation:

Makes your brain plastic : Sustained meditation leads to something called neuroplasticity, which is defined as the brain's ability to change, structurally and functionally, on the basis of environmental input. Research by University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Richard Davidson has shown that experienced meditators exhibit high levels of gamma ray activity and display an ability -- continuing after the meditation session has attended -- to not get stuck on a particular stimulus. That is, they're automatically able to control their thoughts and reactiveness.

Increases Gray Matter: A 2005 study on American men and women who meditated a mere 40 minutes a day showed that they had thicker cortical walls than non-meditators. What this meant is that their brains were aging at a slower rate. Cortical thickness is also associated with decision making, attention and memory.

Better Than Sleeping : In a 2006 study, college students were asked to either sleep, meditate or watch TV. They were then tested on their alertness by being asked to hit a button every time a light flashed on a screen. The meditators did better than the nappers and TV watchers -- by a whole 10 percent.

Better than Blood Pressure Medication: In 2008, Dr. Randy Zusman, a doctor at the Massachusetts General Hospital, asked patients suffering from high blood pressure to try a meditation-based relaxation program for three months. These were patients whose blood pressure had not been controlled with medication. After meditating regularly for three months, 40 of the 60 patients showed significant drops in blood pressure levels and were able to reduce some of their medication. The reason? Relaxation results in the formation of nitric oxide which opens up your blood vessels.

Protects your Telomeres: Telomeres -- the protective caps at the end of our chromosomes -- are the new frontier of anti-aging science. Longer telomeres mean that you're also likely to live longer.  Research done by the University of California, Davis' Shamatha Project has shown that meditators have significantly higher telomerase activity that non-meditators. Telomerase is the enzyme that helps build telomeres, and greater telomerase activity can possibly translate into stronger and longer telomeres .

Slows The Progression of HIV : A 2008 study on HIV positive patients found that, after an eight-week meditation course, patients who'd meditated showed no decline in lymphocyte content compared with non-meditators who showed significant reduction in lymphocytes. Lymphocytes or white blood cells are the "brain" of the body's immune system, and are particularly important for HIV positive people. The study also found that lymphocyte levels actually went up with each meditation session. However, due to the small sample size -- only 48 volunteers -- it's harder to draw definitive conclusions.

Beats Morphine : Earlier this year, a study conducted by Wake Forest Baptist University found that meditation could reduce pain intensity by 40 percent and pain unpleasantness by 57 percent. Morphine and other pain-relieving drugs typically show a pain reduction of 25 percent. Meditation works by reducing activity in the somatosensory cortex and increasing activity in other areas of the brain. This study also had a small sample size, making it harder to draw definite conclusions.

Meditation in the News

There's nothing to it and science agrees - meditation works
SMH : Melissa Lahoud : July 12, 2011

Article found in Sydney Morning Herald this week detailing a recent study on work stress that was led by Dr Ramesh Manocha at Sydney University.

The clinical trial included 178 full-time workers who practiced meditation (Sahaja Meditation) twice daily at home for 10-20 minutes over eight weeks.

The study found that meditation triggers change in electrical activity of the brain, improving the mind and body in measurable ways. Within the context of meditation and stress, it's the largest study in the world … and we've applied some rigorous conditions," Dr Manocha said.

"What authentic techniques should do is show you how to widen space between thoughts until the space is so large you have no thoughts whatsoever in that moment," he said

The improvements for mood and depression were twice as high for those practising ''mental silence'' compared to the ''relaxation'' and placebo groups.

"We've done other published studies where, when you teach people relaxation, they feel better, but there's no change in disease, but when you teach mental silence approach, they felt twice as better but also saw significant changes in indicators with disease," Dr Manocha said

* A Lifeline poll reveals that stress levels are rising, with 93 per cent of Australians under strain at a rate that could create serious illness.

* Workplace stress costs the economy $15 billion a year.

Read article here:

Medical Sector Offering Meditation

From ABC News (USA) : Hospitals, Medical Centers Offering Meditation and More"Health care providers are increasingly suggesting that their patients look to meditation and other integrative techniques to improve their health, according to a report released Monday by Harvard Medical School and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Many medical centers and institutions, in fact, are providing such services themselves." (sorry for the advertising which begins the video .. the things they will do!)

Meditation Cultivates Attentional Skills

'Oneness' Feeling Experienced by Monks, Explained
By: Marina Watson Peláez, TIME MAGAZINE
We now have further insights into how monks' brains are reorganized during meditation.

Zoran Josipovic, a research scientist and adjunct university professor at New York University, has been placing Buddhists in a FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machine, which tracks their blood flow as they meditate.  Josipovic, who moonlights as a monk himself, wanted to know more about the state of "oneness" or "nonduality" that monks achieve by meditating.  "One thing that meditation does for those who practise it a lot is that it cultivates attentional skills," Dr Josipovic told the BBC. He added that it helped to live a happier and tranquil life.

Meditation to Curb Pain .. new study

Meditation produces powerful pain-relieving effects in the brain, according to new research published in the April 6 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience. 

A recent study, conducted at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina, took a small group of healthy medical students completely new to meditation and gave them four, 20-minute training sessions on “mindfulness meditation” a technique adapted from a Tibetan Buddhist form of meditation called shamatha (acknowledging and letting go of distraction). 

“You are trying to sustain attention in the present moment – everything is momentary so you dont need to react ... what that does healthwise is it reduces the stress response”, said [lead study author Dr Fadel Zeidan].

After subjecting the group to a distracting bit of pain – a small, thermal heating devise applied to the right calf – the group were given special brain scans (called arterial spin labeling magnetic resonance imaging – ASL MRI) to monitor brain activity. When subject to pain under normal conditions the region of the primary somatosensory cortex lit up. 

So how effective was the meditation on easing pain? 

“We found a big effect – about a 40 per cent reduction in pain intensity and a 57 per cent reduction in pain unpleasantness,” said Dr. Fadel Zeidan. 

“Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain ratings by about 25 per cent.” 

Zeidan and colleagues believe that meditation has great potential for clinical use because so little training was required to produce such dramatic pain-relieving effects. “This study shows that meditation produces real effects in the brain and can provide an effective way for people to substantially reduce their pain without medications,” Zeidan said.

Meditation Improves Meetings

Ten minutes of meditation before a meeting could significantly improve its outcome, according to research by the Kyoto Convention Bureau.

A group of 20 did five separate exercises – including memory, language, comprehension and listening tests – on two separate occasions, 12 days apart. Before the first session there was no preparation, but before the second participants each did a 10-minute meditation exercise. The study found that after the second session delegates showed an average improvement of 12.5% in completing the tasks.

The largest individual improvement across all the tasks was 21%, while the smallest individual improvement was 2%. Reverend Matsuyama, a Zen Buddhist priest, who conducted the meditation session, said: “It is a simple principle; if your tea cup is already filled, there is no point in pouring more tea in it".

“People who come to attend seminars and meetings are often under pressure and tired either because of long journeys or work based stress. If they are to take on-board new information they must first make room for it.” Full article here .. from ABTN (Air & Business Travel News)

Meditation Research

The Shambhala Mountain Centre in Colorado has for four decades offered instruction and retreat to students serious about meditation and yoga. In February 2007 it also became a scientific laboratory with the introduction of the Shamatha Project which sought to put some rigour around the claimed effects of meditation.

In a randomized, controlled study, the project looked at how intensive meditation training affects the way people think and feel. It employed cognitive and perceptual tasks, emotional provocation, questionnaires, and physiological and biochemical monitoring to assess people’s skills and behavior before during, and after long-term, intensive meditative practice.

Led by Dr. B. Alan Wallace, founder and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, as well as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, Dr Wallace seeks to integrate Buddhist contemplative practices and Western science to advance the study of the mind. The Shamatha Project was directed by Clifford Saron, a Neuroscientist at the University of California at Davis, and started with two retreats held in February and September 2007. A group of 60 experienced meditators (ranging in age from21 to 70 years old) enrolled in the three month study, half receiving intensive training and practice in Shamatha ('calm abiding') practice and engaging in five or more hours of individual practice every day; and completing a battery of behavioural and physiological tests at various stages of the study.

A recent article in the Huffington Post 'New Meditation Research: Putting the 'Om' in 'Chromosome' detailed some of the key insights now being reported from the Shamatha Project .. that the ancient practice of meditation delivers benefits that go 'all the way down to the chromosomal level'. With the Psychological Science journal recently reporting that meditators' increased visual acuity and freed up their cognitive awareness, sharpening their attention and improving their performance on task .. and that the improvement lasted for five months after the retreat. The online journal Psychoneuroendocrinology also recently reported that meditators showed improved psychological well-being, and that these improvements lead to biochemical changes associated with resistance to aging at the cellular level.

Positivity appears to be a key link between meditation practice and the promoted health benefits. Practice appears to give people an improved sense of purpose and meaning in live which in turn leads to an increased sense of control over life, and this reduces negative emotions.

This research into the effects of meditation practice on the brain is the most comprehensive study ever conducted. Initial results show that intensive contemplative training sharpens and sustains attention, enhances well-being, and leads to less judgmental, more empathic emotional responding to the suffering of others. The training has also been linked with pro-social emotional behavior and important physiological markers of health.

* Details from the Shambhala Mountain Center , the UC Davic Centre for Mind and Brain, and the article 'New Meditation Research : Putting the 'Om' in 'Chromosome' printed in the Huffington Post November 19, 2010.

Mindfulness and Depression Therapy

There seems to be a wealth of meditation research and education flowing around the Internet at the moment .. I have posted a few recent reports this week because I think it is really interesting to marry the 'art and the science' of meditation.

Today I read that Aberdeen University is now offering the first course of its kind in Scotland - a part time MSc in Mindfulness .. 'a revolutionary Buddhist-based non-medication approach to depression therapy'.

"Mindfulness is a particular way of paying attention to one's mind and one's experience in a way that is non-judgemental and kind. So much of the time our mind just spins off in different directions. So much of our time is waster. Mindfulness is training our mind to be centered so we can be more calm and effective in what we do in our life" says Karma Choden (former lawyer who is now a monk at Samye Ling Tibetan Centre who assisted in creating the course).

Dr Alistair Wilson, a consultant psychiatrist at Gartnavel Hospital in Glasgow, said that there has been a profound shift in attitude towards mindfulness based cognitive therapy .. "There are very rigorous studies that show a reduction in recurrence rates with people with depression"

Article was found in News.Scotsman.com

Research : Meditation seems to aid concentration

From the Washington Post, Science News

by Leslie Tamura, Tuesday 3 August, 2010

Meditation seems to aid concentration

For people who have difficulty staying on task, intensive meditation may help.

So say researchers from several campuses of the University of California, who had 30 participants attend a three-month retreat during which they practiced meditation for about five hours a day. Researchers then periodically tested the participants' ability to stay focused when confronted with a boring visual task.

That chore was spending 30 minutes merely identifying long and short lines that flashed on a computer screen. Participants were given this test at the beginning, middle and end of the retreat and again five months later. The study also used a control group of 30 people who were familiar with meditation but came to the retreat only for the visual testing.

Participants who lived at the retreat center went without television, phones, the Internet and books. They had instructor-led meditation in the morning and evening, and they spent most of their free time in solitary meditation, said the lead researcher, Katherine MacLean.

Before the retreat began, the experimental and control groups scored similarly in keeping track of long and short lines. As the retreat continued, those in the meditation group performed better. Those in the control group showed some improvement after the first test, but their changes weren't as great.

Participants who continued to practice meditation daily after the retreat maintained their increased ability to concentrate, whereas those who stopped had a drop-off, the researchers reported.

"The changes that occur [during the meditation retreat] are still with you once you go back to daily life and help you function better," MacLean said. "Purely mental training can improve your ability . . . to perceive things more clearly, and that can make it easier to pay attention." The study findings were published in the June issue of Psychological Science.

Boosting Brain Connectivity

A recent report from the University of Oregon disclosed new research (to be published shortly) that just 11 hours of learning the meditation technique IBMT, 'induces positive structural changes in the brain connectivity by boosting efficiency in a part of the brain that helps a person regulate behavior in accordance with their goals'.

The meditation technique that was being researched is known as IBMT or Integrative Body-Mind Training which is adapted from Chinese medicine and which has now been taught to undergraduates involved in research on the method at the University.

The availability of ground breaking scientific tools - in this case a magnetic resonance diffusion tensor - allowed researchers to examine fibres connecting brain regions before and after training. The strongest changes occurred in the part of the brain that regulates emotions and behaviour, and these changes only showed up in those who practiced the meditation. What is truly amazing .. is that the start of changes in connectivity occurred within six hours of training and clear changes showed up by eleven hours of practice.

Earlier studies in 2007 and 2009 found that doing IBMT found that following five days of IBMT practice, students had lower levels of stress hormone cortisol, lower levels of anxiety, depression, anger and fatigue. That subjects in China had increased blood flow in the right anterior cingulate cortex, as well as lower heart rates.

IBMT is relatively unknown outside of China. The article from the University of Oregon described the practice 'avoids struggles to control thought, relying instead on a state of restful alertness, allowing for a high degree of body-mind awareness while receiving instructions from a coach, who provides breath adjustment guidance and mental imagery and other techniques while soothing music playing in the background' (.. sounds like a bit of everything in there ...)

If you wish to read the full article from the University of Oregon go here

Pupils focus better after meditating in Maribyrnong

Dr Sue Smith with Footscray students. Pictures: DAVID SMITH

Interesting article in the local newspaper this week .. reporting on a study into meditation and Buddhist education at a local primary school.

It is so fantastic to read the .. not only is this a local Melbourne based study .. but also that some of our local school are showing themselves to be open to new thought and new practices (funny given the practice of meditation is millenium-old).

Last year I completed Teacher Training with Relax Kids, a brilliant program for introducing stillness and meditation to children of all ages. If you are interesting in introducing your children to some simple meditation practices please have a look at the Relax Kids website .. there are plenty of free resources available online (you can also click on the link in this blog to purchase CDs, Books, Cards etc). The Relax Kids program has been running within the UK school system for a while now .. Go kids!

Pupils focus better after meditating in Maribyrnong
Article from Maribyrnong Leader, 16 Aug 10 by Anthea Cannon

EVERY teacher’s quest for a calm and focused class may be more than a dream, with meditation scoring results with some of Maribyrnong’s junior students.

In the first study into the effects of Buddhist education, Victoria University PhD graduate Sue Smith found grade 3 to 6 students were happier, had improved concentration, coped with anxieties and felt greater kindness toward themselves and others.

Dr Smith said the study of 12 schools showed Buddhist-inspired meditation had an important place in education without being religious.

“Consistently the children were marking themselves in the positive category after meditation (a happy face rating),” she said. “Even if they marked the same face twice they would say that although they didn’t feel better, they were definitely calmer,” she said.

“They’d mention their mind felt brighter, they were less worried.”

Need more reasons to meditate?

There are many reasons that people seek out meditation .. probably the two most common reasons I hear, are stress management and health concerns.

An interesting article rolled into my in-tray today from Psychology Today titled ‘6 Other Reasons to Meditate’ which details some recent research in the field of meditation .. and six MORE good reasons to start meditating. Detailed below is an abbreviation of the article "6 Other Reasons to Meditate" (the article is by Linda Wasmer Andrews, Published on July 8, 2010 : read full article and find links to the studies mentioned here).

Enhance concentration
Meditation is about focusing the mind and thus is shown to improve our power of concentration. A recent study in the Journal of Neuroscience found that three months of intensive meditation training led to improvements in attentional stability - the ability to sustain attention without frequent lapses.

Lower blood pressure
A study published in the American Journal of Hypertension found that Transcendental Meditation (TM) helped students decrease psychological distress and increase coping ability, changes associated with a reduction in blood pressure.

Improve sleep
A study from India's National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences looked at how sleep was affected by vipassana meditation (a technique that focuses on mental and physical processes in order to develop insight). Meditators showed enhanced slow wave (deep) sleep and REM sleep.

Manage pain
One of the best-studied medical uses of meditation(mindfulness meditation) is for helping manage chronic pain. For chronic pain sufferers, mindfulness may help them notice and accept their pain without becoming anxious and panicky, which just makes the pain worse. A study from the University of Montreal found structural MRI brain scans showed that meditators had a thicker cortex in certain pain-related areas of the brain. This cortical thickening was associated with lower pain sensitivity.

Live longer
Three converging lines of research show that meditation may influence not only quality of life, but also quantity : (1) meditation may help counter the body's stress response and all the physical wear and tear that goes along with chronic stress, (2) meditation may help slow aging by decreasing oxidative stress - cellular damage caused by highly reactive molecules known as free radicals, (3) meditation may help fight chronic inflammation throughout the body, which contributes to diseases as diverse as obesity, atherosclerosis, diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer's disease.

Connecting with others
Loving-kindness meditation might seems to help build a sense of social connectedness. A study in the journal Emotion found that just a few minutes of this form of meditation practice increased positive, connected feelings toward strangers.

So .. isn't it time to start meditating?

Happiness

A few weeks ago I heard Deepak Chopra speak in Melbourne and he mentioned that over the last few years there has been a huge shift in medical/scientific research from research based on understanding stress .. to research based on understanding happiness.

Scientist inspired by Dalai Lama studies happiness
By RYAN J. FOLEY (published Associated Press)

Currently His Holiness the Dalai Lama is in the US. Last weekend he opened the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This new facility will allow for a dozen researchers to study the science behind positive qualities of mind .. the only center in the world with a meditation room next to a brain imaging laboratory. This Center is where scientists will focused on finding the causes of positive human qualities like happiness and compassion.

Since meeting the Dalai Lama in India in 1992, Richard Davidson (a University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist) has sought to build a connection between Buddhism and western science. His tools of choice are brain imaging technology, Buddhist monks and other veteran practitioners of meditation .. seeking to learn how their meditation training affects mental health.

At this point, findings suggest meditation and other "contemplative practices" can improve compassion, empathy, kindness and attention .. and support the concept that even adult brains can change through experience and learning.

Read the full article here ..