Participating in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy, and stress. In a study that will appear in the Jan. 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, a team led by Harvard-affiliated researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) reported the results of their study, the first to document meditation-produced changes over time in the brain’s gray matter.

“Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,” says study senior author Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology. “This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”

See the full article for much more.

She has written about her successes with the practice. An excerpt:

I teach in a public school. You might wonder if the practice has caused controversy. Certainly, my first two years were fraught with worry that a student might misinterpret the practice to his parents, and I doggedly corrected students who called it “karma” or “some weird Buddhist crap.” A number of parents over the years have thanked me for teaching their kids “an important life skill,” and a few offered, preemptively, to defend me should a problem arise.

The school and community have so supported the practice that I was recently awarded a grant through the local Education Foundation to run a meditation group at the high school.

Students have told me repeatedly that they come to depend on Stillness. On days I am particularly rushed, I might launch into some directions, but they always pull me back: “You forgot ‘peace time!” or “What about Stillness, Mrs. B?” or, my favorite, “Can we do 20 minutes today? I really need it.”

In recent years, I’ve broadened our practice, allowing every six weeks or so an extended period of 20 minutes, sometimes silent, sometimes with a guided full-body scan. And as a reward at the end of the year, I’ve invited my sister-in-law, a yoga teacher, to lead each class in some soothing poses.

Students have told me that they use stillness on the bus before football games, in the middle of the lunchroom when someone “said something stupid that made me want to punch him out,” and at night when they can’t sleep. They regularly download the songs I play or make me cds of music they think will work well. They return after graduation to say they’ve taken yoga or mediation classes at college. The biggest compliment I’ve ever received was when a tough guy – you know the type, too cool for school and always ready to challenge authority – re-emerged after a 20-minute session mumbling dreamily, “Mrs. B., you have the best voice.”

His friends razzed him mercifully, but he was stalwart in defending Stillness: “Dude, shut up! I am so chillaxed after that. We should have a whole class of just her talking about that ‘blue healing breath’ or whatever that thing is.”

See her full article for much more.

What determines whether a soul has basic trust? Basic trust is the effect on the soul of a particular aspect or quality of Being that we call Living Daylight. We call it this because if one’s perception is subtle enough to visually see and kinesthetically feel the substance of one’s consciousness, it actually looks like daylight, and is felt as an alive consciousness. It is experienced as something boundless, in the sense that it is not bounded by one’s body but rather is experienced as something that everything is made of. It is a universal sense of presence in that it pervades everything and is everywhere. The first level of experiencing it is to perceive that it is everywhere; the second level is to see that everything comes out of it; and the deepest level is to know that everything is made of it. At this deepest level, everything in the universe is seen to be originating in, bathed in, and constituted by Living Daylight.

This is definitely in the territory of the mystical, but I like Almaas’s ability to explain mystic experiences through less-mystical origins (e.g., pointing out that we’re essentially looking at the nature of our own consciousness, here).

I’m getting a ton out of slowly making my way through his new book The Unfolding Now. I hope to publish a fuller review of this book at some point, because it’s been quite profound so far.

I would assume that, like me, you have consulted many doctors and they aren’t able to do much to help. In this case, one of the most powerful therapies is what we might call “radical acceptance.”

The basic premise is that we often don’t realize how much of our suffering is of our own creation, created by how we react to the pain in our body. Sometimes the core of pain itself can be like a grain of sand in an oyster; but through our irritated reaction, it grows and grows and grows, like a painfully hard pearl, into something large and hard that impinges on our ability to live.

I use the word “radical” acceptance because normally we think of acceptance as a sort of trivial cognitive process: I know I’m in pain. OK, I accept that — but it’s not going anywhere.

On a more influential level, though, real acceptance is not just cognitive but also emotional, and has roots deep in the body and the unconscious mind. And so the process for those of us who experience constant pain is to learn to look deeper than our thoughts, deeper than our surface emotions, and observe our own reactions to the pain in a very intimate way. Instinctively, it is often the last thing we would think to do, since we just want the pain to get out of our way; but if we become skilled at looking deeper and with greater compassion, it can help a great deal.

One of the first steps, especially for those of us who tend to get caught up in our thoughts, is to learn to be more deeply present with “the now” — and not just when we sit down to meditate or do yoga, but as a way of life. In this area, I know of no better teacher than Eckhart Tolle. His book The Power of Now is perhaps the best instruction manual for learning to get more deeply into the present moment and stay there.

I particularly recommend listening to the audiobook version of The Power of Now, so you can hear his voice and join him at a psychological level as he models the quality of consciousness of which he speaks.

When it comes to more intensive meditation and personal inquiry, another teacher I’ve learned from immensely is Adyashanti. His True Meditation audiobook is particularly incisive, even though the recording quality isn’t great. For anyone with some prior exposure to Buddhism, I would also highly recommend his Spontaneous Awakening recordings.

Adyashanti’s basic teaching is very simple. He teaches that if we want to reach our true potential, we must learn to stop trying to manipulate our mind into artificial states, wishing for our experience to be different, always longing, striving, aching for reality to be other than it is — wanting to get somewhere faster, to gain more insight, to overcome our struggles, to change the way we feel, to improve the way we think, etc. This striving creates a conflict in our minds, so that we do everything from a place of effort and tension, rather than ease.

And so his basic spiritual teaching, regardless of your level of meditation experience, is to simply let go of control and allow everything to be as it is.

In my own meditation practice, I often sit on a small bench, put my torso in a nice relaxed upright posture, get in touch with the feeling of my in-breath and out-breath, and then start paying attention to the tension in my body. As I see my emotional tension, I notice where it is at in my body, observe it as intimately as I can, and then let go of it.

Then I repeat that same process with any urgent thoughts that come to mind, any aching tensions in my body, any well-intentioned efforts to improve my state of mind, etc. The answer to each of these things, almost like a mantra or a psychological balm I administer to them in equal measure, is: Let go of control and allow everything to be as it is.

And I keep repeating the process. The first time notice some mental tension and let go, I might get 10% of the way there. But as I keep repeating it, with each tension in my mind and body, I get deeper into a state that actually looks like radical harmony with the way things are.

Amazingly, the more I let go of control, the more my mind and body are able to join this harmony, accomplishing things I could never have accomplished through deliberate effort: My mind is more clear, I have more energy available, I’m able to think more creatively, I feel more relaxed, and my aches and pains gradually shrink back to much more manageable proportions.

Lately I use this instruction-mantra not just when I’m on my meditation cushion, but when I’m typing e-mails, when I’m in conversations, when I’m doing the dishes, when I’m shopping, when I’m working, when I’m driving: Let go of control and allow everything to be as it is. It’s amazing how much it helps.

If you get to experimenting with these ideas, I’d really enjoy hearing how it goes. I know many friends who have been helped by them in one way or another. I wish you luck in your journey. Feel free to write if you have questions or want to know more about something.

People who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don’t.

Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. Brain scans they conducted reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input.

In one area of gray matter, the thickening turns out to be more pronounced in older than in younger people. That’s intriguing because those sections of the human cortex, or thinking cap, normally get thinner as we age.

“Our data suggest that meditation practice can promote cortical plasticity in adults in areas important for cognitive and emotional processing and well-being,” says Sara Lazar, leader of the study and a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. “These findings are consistent with other studies that demonstrated increased thickness of music areas in the brains of musicians, and visual and motor areas in the brains of jugglers. In other words, the structure of an adult brain can change in response to repeated practice.”

Keep reading »

Thanks for the link, Marsh.

UPDATE: Looks like this study has made the front page of Mudita Journal before. And from the same tipster. Perhaps if I meditated more, I would have noticed sooner.

It’s a topic that interests me, as I’ve long been fascinated by the fact that peace sometimes requires something that looks an awful lot like war — and perhaps, occasionally, even war itself.

Her post begins:

“conflict is essential to the development and growth of man and society. it leads either to the construction or destruction of an entire group or state. . . if there is no conflict – internal or external – there can be no growth.”
-sun tzu, the art of war

thinking about this quote brought a conversation from many years ago to mind. at the time, i was an idealistic new college graduate in my 20s and was tutoring high school and middle school students. one particular student challenged me when i talked about peace as an important ideal. he defended war, and he called it a completely natural thing. “war is even something that happens within our bodies,” he told me. that teenager so eloquently left me flustered. Keep reading

See her full post for more.

Perhaps I should write a post about it, sometime, for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar, who see it as a “mystical” concept, or who are skeptical that it has any value. Meantime, I know a few of my readers are acquainted with Adyashanti — or “Adya,” as students often call him — and his teachings.

In any case, a friend said the following to me today during a chat conversation, and it struck me as worth repeating:

nobody can choose to be enlightened

but spirituality is not so black and white

enlightenment is a gradient

even adya says the once and for all sudden enlightenment is extremely rare

it’s a gradual process of openings

that, i’m committed to

continuous opening

curiosity about my experience and how it unfolds

and all the great things that come about as a result: adventure, discovery, love, peace, etc

thats both a spiritual life, and a worldly life

Very well said — and something I agree with entirely.

It turns out she has a blog as well, called A Peaceful Human Race. Reading it, I was moved by this post:

for the last couple months, i’ve been reading the gentle art of blessing by pierre prandervand.

a little excerpt from the book can give you a taste of what this book is about, or you could click the title of the book above, order, and check it out yourself.

pradervand enthusiastically shares the journey of his discovery and practice of blessing as an everyday art. as his ideas have begun to sink into my own mind and way of being, i’ve realized how fantastic blessing is as a tool to transform what would otherwise be a painful and conflicted interactions.

when i first started reading the book, life presented me with an opportunity for blessing. a student came into my office one day and informed me that he’d gone to the administration to complain about me. as he told me about my unfairness in grading, my adrenaline started to pump, and the knee jerk reaction to defend myself and point out his deficencies started moving towards action.

luckily, i recognized this as an opportunity to put my passion for peace into practice, and i stopped myself. instead of picking up my own sword and fighting back, i could choose to bless him. i could see his integrity, his goodness, his desire to connect and succeed. i could see his blame as merely one small part of all he was bringing into my office, and i could honor and recognize how much more there was to him and to what he was saying.

as i resisted my initial conditioned response, i sat quietly and worked to hold a loving space. i detected a little surprise from him that i was so calm, and the entire encounter was over as quickly as it began. i’d be lying if i said it didn’t cause me some anxiousness, but overall, the discomfort on my end was considerably less than during tense student situations in the past.

the real testament to the power of this practice came as the semester continued. Keep reading »

I feel inspired to read the book.

So in that sense I think the issue of suffering is important: I think denials of it lie at the root of many problems.

I do wonder, though, if this gets at what you are talking about. I sense you may be referring to something more.

Good points. And yes, I am groping for something more, here.

In a nutshell, it’s this: I have come to the view that suffering, if you respond to it correctly, will open you to a sense of deep and profound connection with the world.

Responded to incorrectly, suffering will cause you to close and pull inside.

Responded to correctly, you have no choice but to open to it, feel the emotions at a deep level, and allow your conceptions of the world — your ideas of separateness, isolation, ego, and the many neuroses they carry with them, such as depression and anxiety — to fall away.

I’m describing it in conceptual terms, but it is an experiential observation. It’s not something I’ve arrived at by thinking, but by doing it over and over and observing the results.

When I feel fear or pain, and I surrender to it completely, and I feel the emotions fully, I fall out of my self and am left with a sense of openness and connection to the world that feels transcendental.

Is it possible to feel that openness and connection without suffering first? Probably. And I envy anyone who has that opportunity, however rare. (Or maybe it’s what we all feel as infants? I’m not sure.)

But mostly I look around and I see people who have suffered (and responded well to it) displaying this openness. And I see people who have suffered (and not responded well to it) displaying closure and stunted spiritual growth.

Nobody experiences life without suffering, so the question is: do you allow it fully into your experience, allow it to transform you, to teach you, to open you? Or do you close and try to withdraw from it?

And to me that’s what it means to acknowledge the significance of suffering — to open to it and allow it to transform you. Respond to it like a teacher, or a form of corrective feedback, or a therapy. If you don’t do this, then you miss the greatest spiritual lesson life has to offer.

So I guess what I’m saying is the complement to what you’re saying. You said that denials of suffering lie at the root of many problems. And I’m saying that fully embracing your suffering, when it inevitably happens, gives you the most profound opportunities for aliveness and growth.

I need to say more about what is means to embrace suffering. I don’t mean wallowing in self-destructive thinking, or moping around depressed, or developing a new identity for yourself as “someone who suffers.”

What I mean is a very specific way of being present with the emotions (learning to locate and be present with them in your body but not getting caught up in thinking about them) and then learning to feel them in a very pure and intense way, so the emotion can move through you freely rather than getting trapped inside.

This ties in with another post I hope to be able to write soon, about how best to respond to pain and fear. Coming soon….

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon… I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals, or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness, and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Thank you, Johann.