Highland Mindfulness Group

Kindly submitted by Jennifer Coombes

Does Meditation Work?

To change our health and lives for the better, Pema Chodron (2005), a contemplative practitioner, says, we are to start where we are in life, and with those emotions and thinking patterns we have, for it`s not about starting meditating, (e.g. meditation is a consciousness discipline, a particular way of paying attention purposefully, in the moment, non-judgemental, with acceptance of what is, compassion for the self and others.), when we have supposedly got it all together, when we are OK. You may be suffering in some way right now, be the most violent, addicted, jealous, anxious, neurotic, fearful, panic stricken, angry, depressed, unhappy person, who dislikes themselves, but this is the place to start mindfulness, (e.g., mindfulness is at the heart of meditation) practice, just where you are. Why do this ? Because, Chodron (2005), knows, that through meditation practice, mindfulness has brought about change in health, in herself and others. The suffering, feeling and thinking that is under a story line, will apply to everyone to a greater or lesser degree, individuals are not unique, all have a story line. So the feeling ashamed, angry, anxious, sad, fearful, lonely, depressed etc, is the starting point. People are where they are in their history because of life’s circumstances and their particular reaction to events. Shielding their hearts with an armour of learned habits,(e.g. blaming others, projecting inner disowned stuff onto others), denying painful emotions and suffering. In practice, no one has to `try` to reach a goal, target or to try to deliberately transform or change anything, just attend, with whatever you are experiencing, `mindfully`, then hearts, and lives will change for the better through meditation practice, says Chodron (2005).

At first glance, Chodron`s words may sound interesting, or challenging inner investigation, to be avoided. You may even say, that is too simple, too good to be true, and how can mindfulness practice be good for my health, it is against all we have been taught in life? Anyway, if it were true why have we not heard about this decade ago from medical centre practitioners, surely they would be treating everyone with this thing called meditation, if it were a valid health intervention? The ego often demands further discussion before any motivation towards meditation practice can take place.

If mindfulness, which has its roots in the ancient practice of meditation, can enable health and life changes, why, indeed, has this intervention in the past not been incorporated within medical health promotion services? There is a complex explanation.

Western scientific or orthodox medicine, (e.g. a view that health is the absence of disease and that medical treatment can remove it and restore the body to good health), has been pervasive, and elements of this approach have in the past, underpinned professional training of many health workers, Naidoo & Wills (2000). McKeown & Lowe`s (1974) data shows sanitation and nutrition, were responsible for reduction in mortality in the last century, but medicine’s contribution to long term health and well being has been minor. Tarlov (1996) claims medical services have contributed about 17% to the gain of life expectancy. Medicine has been an exercise in professional power to the exclusion of alternative approaches to health, Stacey (1988). It has been a means of social control, with disease, madness and deviancy used to maintain the status quo in society, Gabe et al (1994). Medicine upholds a specific form of capitalist economy, and for a state to thrive and have social order, health workers have been required to help provide this, by toeing a specific line Doyal & Pennell (1979). More and more patients have sought humane alternative therapies, from professionals who give them time, and treat holistically, but this has been endangered, as medicine became responsive to imperatives of big business and pharmaceuticals. So in the past, funding, provision or interest in providing contemplative or complementary practices as valid interventions within a medical arena has been rare. Further, health authorities in the UK have a policy requiring scientific evidence of effectiveness, before new forms of interventions are funded, Fitter(1997). Politics in health, Naidoo & Wills (1996), say, are in play and health services are managed within local plans to meet service targets, determined and set by agents of the state. Health and interventions are therefore not a neutral activity, Kuhn (1962) and Chalmers (1982), argue. Researchers bid for funds and provide research findings acceptable to the funders and academic community, which in turn are influenced by political considerations and consensus.

With a scientific community maintaining that anything that can`t be tested under laboratory conditions is not valid, there was no impetus to channel funding into testing effectiveness of meditation practice to alleviate presenting problems. Drug research which was evidence based and attracted funding, seemed acceptable and pertinent. Therefore, alternative approaches to health and well being were either discredited or left to other sectors of society to pursue.

However, in the last twenty years in the West, meditation has become a discrete term, with very cautious application within academic medicine and psychology. Often advocated by those wishing to marry orthodox and complementary medicine, where the whole patient is treated and understood, not just a getting rid of the symptom, Featherstone & Forsyth (1997).

Some scientists who had an interest in meditation’s health benefits, had been working away in corners of laboratories, investigating alongside scientific orthodox practice, or set up trusts or sought funding from external sources to their profession for research, attempting to place contemplative practice, which they thought to be a valid health intervention, on the medical agenda.

These scientists who researched and tested mindfulness`s effectiveness now agree with contemplative practitioners like Chodron and the Dalai Lama, that there are health changing benefits. Further, they state they have valid research evidence to prove mental processes change beneficially in those practicing meditation. So to these scientists it is now a relevant intervention, and time, money and resources could be well spent, by providing practice within care establishments. It could also be a business advantage to medicine, (or NHS UK), treating emotionally distressed individuals early, through referrals to meditative practice, which could save money, because it could prevent sickness getting a foothold, or lessen the effects, Goleman (1996), thus, possibly saving long term drug administration. This is a change in thought and research approach, maybe this turn around is political, with long term financial incentives convincing policy makers, to tentatively commence offering contemplative practice within a health service arena. Whatever, the signalled change will be welcomed by the growing dissenting voices, dissatisfied with invasive, impersonal mechanical, often risky medicine, Naidoo and Wills (1996), with autonomy in health subverted by total medicalization, Illich (1975). Illich argues medicine has indeed acquired an authority beyond its legitimate area of operation, to the exclusion of complementary/alternative practices, which should be available within the NHS or funded health services, because clients need to be offered a choice between prescription drugs and alternative therapies. Doctors however, have been bound by certain set approaches to health and medicine that were in vogue. With lack of, or no funded referrals, within the NHS, to a range of complementary medicine, for many patients there has often been no affordable alternative to health change, except approaches within the medical model. Doctors and health workers bound by policy and scientific medicine, unwittingly have contributed to ill health and lack of autonomy, on an epidemic scale, by training in managing people’s health with chemicals, says Illich (1975). Toxic medicine (e.g. prescription drugs), leads to iatrogenic illnesses, Illich (1975). Iatrogenesis which is, Clinical (caused by medical intervention), Social (e.g. loss of coping and right to self care) and Cultural, (e.g. loss of means whereby people cope with pain and suffering, through expectation generated by medical model of health).

The medical model of health in the UK (e.g. which focuses on disease, as opposed to health, and manages through medical interventions), is the dominant funded mode of helping, and Illich has some valid points. However, we would not be better off without a health care system or research. Practitioners and users of complementary therapies who are dissatisfied with impersonal, often dangerous prescriptions, argue, there needs to be a more holistic approach to health and funding for referrals to practices operating outside the orthodox profession of medicine, recognising mind, body and spirit which, challenges dualism, Naidoo and Wills (1996).

John Kabat Zinn, a meditation teacher, scientist, Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and founding executive director of the Centre for Mindfulness Research in Medicine, Health Care and Society and founding director of its Stress Reduction Clinic (1979) argues, meditation practice has proven health benefits, and now needs to be offered by doctors as a valid intervention. Its acceptance within health services is long overdue because, Kabat Zinn`s research, focusing on mind – body healing and the effects of stress on the brain, immune system and other areas of the body argues, these areas are satiated and helped through meditation practice and he has witnessed people change and heal. Further, he states there is evidence from neuro science showing meditation needs to be part of the healing profession’s took kit, because it reduces the power of destructive emotions in the lives of meditators. Neuroplasticity demonstrates that the old dogma which stated the brain, from about age two, loses functioning and it`s all down hill from the moment you`re born, is not true. The brain is not hardwired. Neuroplasticity has demonstrated that, when people meditate, regions of the brain are activated in a particular way. Scientists have discovered human beings are making functional neurons in important aspects of the nervous system, right up until the day they die. The brain is changeable and plastic. People are driven by a kind of `repetitive attending`. We need to be awake, says Kabat Zinn, mindfulness practice can do that awakening, because it helps everyone to be there in life, mindfully, Kabat Zinn (2008).

Another scientist, Richard Davidson, founder of the field of affective neuroscience, in his book, “The Emotional Life of Your Brain (2012) argues, people can change their life and health, by becoming aware of emotions and thoughts behind the emotions and meditation helps that process.

Davidson`s interest in meditation grew from university days, he was nearly kicked out of the scientific community for not being a serious scientist. However, perseverance and the working with the 14th Dalai Lama , Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, he made a remarkable scientific discovery, on his journey to prove human beings could change destructive emotions, through meditation practice. Davidson states he found a neuroscientific underpinning of mindfulness and compassionate practice, which enables, within the brain, change, which can lead to better health and well being.

In Davidson’s book,`The Emotional Life of The Brain` (2012) he explains that early on in his career, two critical observations focused his life`s core research. Firstly, he discovered that although human beings share a gamut of emotions as part of being human, each person responds differently to life, expresses emotions differently and brain functioning in fMRI scans reveals this. Davidson came to the conclusion, previous science of the mind was antiquated Newtonian determinism and wrong. His experimentation discovered the brain`s circuitry is involved in a range of positive and negative emotions, from happiness to depression, addiction, fears, phobias, self hatred and the viciousness of a mass murderer. His data evidenced that with meditation practice of only 4 weeks, the mind of 200 cohorts started to change positively and this was visible with fMRI scans, (Davidson took before and after scans). In the area of brain that shows positive emotion, increased activity occurred in the nucleus accumbens, (eg the pleasure centre, a collection of neurons and forms the main part of the ventral striatum. It is thought to play an important role in reward, pleasure, laughter, addiction, aggression, fear, etc ), a part of the ventral striatum, which predicts compassion and generosity,(or the absence of it). Whilst cohorts were being scanned with an fMRI whilst meditating on compassion, most striking was a dramatic increase in key electrical activity known as gamma, in the left middle frontal gyrus, a zone of the brain which Davidson’s previous research pinpointed as locus for positive emotions. He found that when people have high levels of such brain activity in the specific site of the left prefrontal cortex, they simultaneously reported feelings of happiness, enthusiasm, high energy and alertness. Also, high levels of activity in a parallel site on the other side of the brain, in the right prefrontal area correlate with reports of distressing emotions. People with a higher level of activity in the right prefrontal site and lower levels in the left are more prone to feelings such as anxiety, and worry. Everyone has a right left activation in prefrontal areas which acts like a barometer for moods, an emotional set point, the mean, around which daily emotions swing. There is an antidote to destructive emotions, it is meditation, which facilitates the activation of regions of the frontal lobe that suppress or modulate brain activity. However, he says, we firstly need to be aware of difference within individual brains to facilitate change, for example, where one person decompensates rapidly and has a hard time in recovering, others are quite resilient. People according to their initial brain development respond differently to treatments and interactions. Not every one is at the same stage emotionally, so an understanding of a person`s emotional style, which impacts the brain is essential to understanding where we are in our life`s journey. Emotional styles, in response to certain factors such as environment, culture, the way people interact with the child etc, Davidson believes develop throughout early and adult life, for better or worse. Childhood and adolescence are important periods in shaping brain development or damaging it and therefore play an important role in who will be vulnerable (or not) to health issues, how people will respond to treatments, and meditation practice, Davidson (2012). Professional carers must now cease losing patience with those who, don`t change at once, seem stuck, seem on a course of self destruction or who cope differently to expected scientific norms`. Davidson argued, everyone has a unique emotional make-up. Health practitioners need to be able to `spot` a particular emotional way of learned `reacting` in patients, to facilitate responses to interventions.

The second observation in Davidson`s research was that he kept meeting remarkable people, not remarkable academically or professionally, but because of their demeanour, their emotional style. These people were kind, generous, and compassionate and he felt valued, and the sole and complete focus of their empathic attention and time and he wondered why. He discovered, these people had a commonality, regular meditation practice. He asked each of them if they had been compassionate and empathic all of their lives, all said they had not, they had been selfish, angry, depressed, judgmental, critical, greedy and unloving people. The compassionate caring qualities he observed had been nurtured and cultivated by their meditative practices. This propelled Davidson into further research linking brain and meditation. This raised an important research question, `was it possible that a contemplative life could have changed the actual brain, the neural function, and emotions of people who were once anxious, depressed, selfish, unempathic, or were cruel in nature, and therefore meditation could have actually affected a person`s existence, health and well being, for the better`?. If so, there could be scientific evidence to be found if he married neuroplasticity research and meditation.

This question led Davidson into one of the fundamental mysteries, that is now becoming better understood, but which is still a breakthrough area of research, neuroplasticity, the idea that we can literally change our brains for the better through mental training.

So, Davidson recognizing that meditation and the mechanisms of neuroplasticity could be an organizing framework for understanding how destructive emotional styles could be transformed for the better set about intensive research. He discovered, whilst people were quite stable (e.g. positive or negative) over time, most adults, could actually change for the better through a systematic practice of specific mental exercises. He believed people could change their brains and reaction to events by transforming their minds, and there was no realm more important for that to occur than emotion. Emotional styles are also critical in our physical health, because mental and physical well-being were inextricably linked. People regress, according to their emotional styles, when they become challenged.

Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) in Davidson`s research was also tested and found to be less helpful or effective than actual meditation, CBT was a cognitive exercise and meditation was experiential, which actually altered brain functioning to enable a compassionate less anxious self to emerge.

`The Emotional Life of The Brain` (2012), by Davidson, describes 6 emotional styles that are rooted in basic neuroscientific research and literature.

The 6 styles are:-
Resilience: How rapidly or slowly do you recover from adversity?
Outlook: How long does positive emotion persist (or decline) following a joyful event?
Social Intuition: How accurate are you in detecting the non-verbal social cues of those around you, or in the group. How empathic are you?
Context: Do you regulate your emotions in a context-sensitive fashion. Can you behave with your boss, differently to a spouse or child?
Self-Awareness: How aware are you of your own bodily signals that constitute your emotions/feelings or are they suppressed, and you say you don`t experience them?
Attention: How focused or scattered is your attention, how mindful are you, how refined is your attention?

Davidson said each of the styles has arisen inductively from the large corpus of research, his colleagues and he had conducted using rigorous neuroscientific methods over the past 35 years.

The styles are not the obvious styles that correspond to well-known personality types such as `introversion` and `extraversion`, of the ordinary psychological theories Davidson said, but they explain the constituents of commonly found personality types. The fact that they are grounded in neural systems provides important clues as to how each style affects our emotional behaviour and how the styles can also impact downstream bodily systems important to physical health.

One important motivation for Davidson in getting his findings into the public arena was to bring into awareness habits of mind that scientists previously thought were not conscious. By describing the nature of emotional styles and their underlying brain bases, it is his fervent aspiration that it will help others to recognize emotional patterns in themselves and such awareness is the first, and often most important step in helping people change. We are in a perspicuous moment in history with the development of this science, he states, we have discovered the mind is not fixed, it can change (or heal) and he has, after living through many years of mind separate from the body theory in science, put the mind back into medicine and joined it with the body. The mind does affect the body, and health and well being. He said his research in areas of contemplative – neuroscience has been important because strategies derived from contemplative traditions can be useful in helping us to change negative brain circuits that underlie emotions. We did not think this was possible years ago.

In the years to come Davidson expects a dramatically increased level of research into meditation because it is beginning to be recognized as something that takes advantage of the plasticity of the brain, has relatively few if any side-effects, like the medication of today and has potentially very beneficial effects on health, the impact of which can be documented using the most rigorous scientific methods. Meditation plays an important role in modulating peripheral biology (biology below the neck) health and illness, and needs to be funded for use in health care centres.
Metaphysical causation practitioners, like Louise Hay, (1984), since the late 1970` have been hinting at the fact that dis-ease in the body is a mirror of inner thoughts, beliefs and emotions, and meditation and positive affirmations, (which attempt to positively re programme the brain), can change brain and emotional patterns, which were created at some stage in life.. The subconscious mind accepted whatever it was given, so as we think so we are. Whatever the problem is, people need to start where they are in life, working on compassion and loving the self, just as they are. Often people have been criticizing and beating themselves up and wondering why change is not coming about. It`s because they have been programming and re programming the brain negatively, from birth, and the brain and life has responded accordingly.
The body is always talking to us and the dis-ease has a corresponding thought pattern, says Louise Hay. Continuous modes of thinking and speaking produce body behaviours, postures, or dis-ease. In her book, You Can Heal Yourself (1987), Louise Hay explores how the mind based ego is running and controlling life. The mind can be a tool to use when needed but not to be allowed to run riot unconsciously and habitually, for the thoughts people think create their reality, the cause and effect law is no more evident than through this mental activity, which meditation can help stabilize.

Further research evidence of the benefits of meditation comes from Dean Ornish, M.D. a cardiologist and, founder of Preventative Medicine Research Institute; he discovered how opening up emotional lives can open up arteries. In addition to their quitting smoking, eating a low fat diet, and getting moderate daily exercise, (which showed compassion for the self), the participants in Ornish’s controlled one year study also practiced daily meditation, yoga and visualization practice for an hour or more. They also met in a support group twice a week to talk, share feelings about practice, thought to be important, to opening their hearts to other people. Meditation, Ornish discovered, can be used to reprogram the brain positively and change health for the good. In meditation individuals were taught to open their heart and be compassionate. Quite remarkably it was not totally the change in diet, but meditation practice, with a feeling or spaciousness and open heartedness that healed the body of disease and positively changed neural pathways in the brain, said Ornish (2000). With compassion in practice, patients started to relax and adopt an attitude of kindness, it also started to become easier to allow negative thoughts and feelings simply to exist, without closing the heart, beating up, being rigid and harmful to the self and others.
Ornish`s controlled study showed that arteriosclerosis (artery blockage) could be reversed without drugs or surgery. Meditation helped relax and quiet the racing mind and allowed patients to see where they had been hard of heart. It calmed and made people less reactive to situations or stressful events. Research also revealed that during meditation, blood pressure levels dropped and metabolism rates decreased. Ornish suggested that heart disease is no more a pump in need of repair, as medical science has tended to view it. Instead, illnesses of the heart are rooted in a profound fear, anxiety, isolation, separation and lack of unconditional love experienced by great numbers of people in modern society. They are isolated from emotions, other people, and from a greater force in the universe. “Many people,” Ornish says, “are in pain, spiritually and emotionally, which leads to addictive behaviours and destructive emotions. Without addressing that pain, it’s hard to get any further in life, people remain stuck. But when emotion, experienced just as it is, in all its force and when you show people ways of allowing that to just be as it is, without struggle or the trying to rid the self of the body`s messages, the transformation can, in many cases, be dramatic.
Williamson (2007), professor in clinical psychology, in the book, `Mindful Way Though Depression` states they have discovered that depression starts as a particular emotional response to events such as loss, defeat, isolation, humiliation, or feelings of being trapped by circumstances. Depression forges a connection in the brain between sad moods and negative thoughts (already programmed into the brain) and a brief sadness can be re awakened by a major negative thought or response to ill health. Aaron Beck (1976), decades ago, led pioneering research into how negative thoughts play a role in ill health. Moods are strongly shaped by thoughts and emotion. It is not `the events` in our lives that cause us stress or depression, but our fixed beliefs and interpretation about those events which become ingrained in the brain and keep replaying and awfulizing. However, mental strategizing (e.g going over events, what went wrong and how they should be different) and effort or struggling to pull oneself out of depression, is the very thing that drags people deeper into the mire and re enforces negative patterns. In meditation practice, Williamson et al (2007) said we need to start the healing process from where we are, our pain and suffering, learn the art of recognition of these difficult emotions, and accept them, without identifying with them. Cease struggling or trying to get rid of the bad feelings, engaging in judging, analyzing or beating ourselves up, only then when we are relaxed can we investigate emotions with curiosity. This process of non identification with destructive emotions, said Williamson, is healing.

When every `thought` absorbs your attention completely, when you are so identified with the voice of the past, in your head, in the moment and `the emotions` that accompany them causes you to lose yourself in every thought and every emotion, then you are totally identified with form and therefore in the grip of the ego, the conditioned self, and not here.” Ekhart tolle. This can lead to mental and physical ill health.

The recent scientific research into meditation’s benefits has implications for education, health, penal systems, caring professions, societies and world peace, if we can change negative, unwanted behaviour and enable health. Some scientists claim it has been a long and often difficult research journey to try to bring meditation practice into mainstream medicine or put it on the agenda of health services..

Having established meditation can help some create better health and changes neural pathways which can create a compassionate self, meditation is not about just sitting down to get relaxed and have a peaceful feeling. There needs to be recognition, acceptance, investigation and non-identification in practice, with a willingness to proceed into the underworld of inner life. There may be an upsurge in negative emotions, anxiety, tears and past suppressed reactions to events emerging, as the inner work of acceptance allows the pent up emotions to dissipate or `just be`. It is important to just notice the feelings of negativity without trying to fix them or reach a target or change in the self. Perhaps taking a friendly interest as an observer, in what is happening, allowing it to float by without being attached to the story line. However, many people are afraid of emotional pain and have engaged in defensive and addictive behaviours for years, in an attempt to rid themselves of their suffering. Therefore, understanding emotional styles and where people are stuck is necessary to facilitate tentative steps towards change. It is therefore important to have an experienced, knowledgeable meditation practitioner who will help guide you through the process.

So, if we start meditation practice just where we are, with all our destructive emotions, if we begin to surrender to ourselves, drop the storyline and experience what all this messy stuff is like behind the inner curtains, contemplative practitioners say destructive emotions will lessen. Therefore, we need to allow the painful emotions to surface, (not, as in the past, by suppressing or trying to get rid of them), then just breathe and connect with all feeling human beings, for if we know it in ourselves, then we can know it in everyone, Chodron (2005). Scientists, involved in research into meditation`s affect on the brain now say there is evidence there can be a shift, a leftward tilt in the emotional set point, with a compassionate self emerging, through practicing meditation. Meditators develop an inner locus for positive emotional states and become less vulnerable and reactive to life`s events, Davidson (2012).

Interested in taking responsibility for your health change, got the motivation to experience meditation (Goleman 2004), then maybe you are ready for change.

References

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Note: Neuroscience is the study of the neural mechanisms of emotion. This interdisciplinary field combines neuroscience with the psychological study of personality, emotion, and mood. Emotions are thought to be related to activity in brain areas that direct our attention, motivate our behaviour, and determine the significance of what is going on around us.