I read two books about scientific studies done to understand how meditation changes our brains. I will summarize the key takeaways here for your easy comprehension. Let’s start with some definitions.

“Meditation is a catch-all word for myriad varieties of contemplative practice, just as ‘sports’ refers to a wide range of athletic activities”

-Daniel Goleman/Richard Davidson

Some of the most popular meditative practices include:

• Focusing on the sensation of breath

• Performing a ‘Body Scan’ to be aware of all parts of the body

• Generating love and compassion for self and others

• Repeating a ‘mantra’ or special phrase

• Maintaining an open and non-judgmental awareness of all thoughts and sensations(mindfulness)

Mindfulness is the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to the unfolding of experience

-Jon Kabat-Zinn

Mindfulness is one of many forms of meditation. Mindfulness can be practiced in a meditation session, and it can also be a quality of being that one’s awareness is in as they go about their day.

• A team of Dutch researchers analyzed twenty two studies carried out on 1235 chronic pain patients. They found that…

  • Patients who completed eight weeks of mindfulness training in the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course suffered less emotionally from their pain.

  • Meditation is at least as effective as medication.

• A meta-analysis of seven studies found that mindfulness meditation had a positive effect on patients’ anxiety and depressive symptoms.

• Thirty minutes of mindfulness meditation or mindfulness stress reduction exercises are sufficient to observe diminished activity in the amygdala

• A meta-study at Johns Hopkins analyzed forty seven quality clinical studies on mediation. Researchers obtained ‘moderate proof’ that anxiety, depression, or pain symptoms were relieved after an eight week MBSR course. They also found that for depressives, mindfulness can be as effective as an anti-depressant.

• Telomeres are a part of our chromosomes that scientists can use to estimate the lifespan of a cell. Telomerase is an enzyme that protects the length of telomeres. High telomerase has beneficial effects on cell longevity

• Expert meditators have longer telomeres than people who do not meditate

• Increased telomerase levels were identified in people who practiced meditation for a three month retreat

  • Despite promising results, identifying the exact conditions in which this process happens, and how long the increased levels last, remains complex

• About ten hours of mindfulness over a two week period strengthened attention and working memory- and led to substantial improved scores on the graduate school entrance exam (GRE)

• Compassion meditation enhances empathetic concern, activates circuits for good feelings and love, as well as circuits that register the suffering of others, and prepares a person to act when suffering is encountered.

• Just ten minutes of mindfulness meditation can overcome the damage to concentration from multitasking.(but the effects only last a short time after the meditation).

• The brain’s Default Mode Network circuits quiet during mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation. This quieting of the self-circuitry begins as a state effect, seen during or immediately after meditation, but with long-term practitioners it becomes an enduring trait.

• Yogis with many thousands of hours of meditation experience have on average twenty five times greater amplitude gamma oscillations during baseline compared with a control group….this sustained, brain-entraining gamma pattern goes on even while seasoned meditators are asleep-as was found by the Davidson group in other research with long-term vipassana meditators who have an average of about 10,000 hours of practice. These gamma oscillations continuing during deep sleep are something never seen before and seem to reflect a residual quality of awareness that persists day and night.

The science backing up the positive effects of meditation is still young. There is much more work to be done so we can understand all of the mechanisms at play. There is a lot of good data to support the effectiveness of meditation to help people with anxiety and depression. I tried to use the authors’ exact words in this post to not misrepresent the results of the scientific studies. If you want to look deeper and check out the sources, pick up these books at your local library or order them online! Thank you so much for reading, I hope this post is helpful.