Meditation aficionados believe that it improves memory and concentration, helps relieve stress and anxiety, and also treats illnesses from depression to cancer. Let's see which of these statements are true and how neurosciences study the effect of meditation.
Meditation and religion
The concept of meditation combines various methods that help to achieve a state of deep concentration, physical relaxation, and the absence of any emotional manifestations. The most famous methods of immersion in this state are a certain rhythm of breathing, repetition of verbal formulas, as well as concentration on a material object (for example, a candle flame) or one's own physical sensations.
Meditation was originally an important part of religious practice. She is mentioned in the Vedas - sacred texts compiled in Sanskrit in the II and I millennia BC. e. Dhyana, the state of concentration of consciousness on the contemplated object, is still present in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. The purpose of the meditation was to "calm the mind." It was believed that experienced practitioners could completely stop any mental activity for a while.
Elements of meditation were present in other religions as well. Much attention was paid to her by the currents of Jewish mysticism: Kabbalah and Hasidism. In Sufism, the esoteric trend of Islam, the practice of dhikr is widely used - the repeated repetition of prayer formulas. When reciting dhikr, a believer can not only take a special prayer posture, but also perform rhythmic movements. Some forms of dhikr include dancing with a constant spin, singing, tambourines or flutes.
Jean-Baptiste van Moore, "Dancing Dervishes" (dance when performing the practice of dhikr).
The Eastern Christian practice of hesychasm, “smart doing”, is also associated with meditation. It is also a multiple repetition of prayer, during which the prayer controls his thoughts and feelings. From Byzantium, the hesychasm technique came to Russia. It is believed that the ideas of the doctrine associated with hesychasm may underlie some of the innovative techniques of Andrei Rublev's icons.
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Mindfulness Fashion
A wave of Western interest in Eastern spiritual practices arose at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, when they began to study Sanskrit texts. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, many Indian philosophers and public figures visited Western countries, delivered lectures at major universities in Europe and the United States, and founded centers for the study of the philosophy of Hinduism. Interest in Hinduism and Buddhism was reflected in the works of Freud and Jung - this is how psychologists began to study meditation.
In the 1950s and 1960s. the religions of the East have gained popularity among European and American youth. Translations of sacred texts were published, many young people went to India and Nepal in search of harmony and new experience. At the same time, new schools of meditation appeared, which adapted the practice for mass use. The technique of transcendental meditation has become one of the most popular - its founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, actively "promoted" his technique all over the world.
Study of tummo meditation.
A new surge of enthusiasm for meditation in the West began already in the 21st century, along with the growing popularity of yoga. According to the 2012 national survey Use and Cost of Complementary Health Approaches in the US, 8% of American adults and 1.6% of children surveyed practiced some type of meditation. Meditation is one of the five most popular "complementary" health promotion methods, along with yoga and breathing exercises.
In the 2010s, another round of the popularity of meditation began. It was triggered by smartphone apps based on the principle of guided meditation. These are audio or video recordings with voice commands guiding the process of relaxation and concentration. Such applications are most often based on transcendental meditation, which is not popular in the middle of the twentieth century, in the process of which a person repeats a mantra formula to himself, and another technique is mindfulness meditation. It implies focusing on the moment. To achieve this, the meditator concentrates on his own breath and body sensations.
The most popular meditation practices of our time, as a rule, have nothing to do with religion. The authors of the applications emphasize that their designs are based on scientific research. The goal of meditation is not to comprehend the supernatural, but to improve the state of the human psyche. The creators of new meditation techniques promise that their approach will help users to find peace of mind, resist stress, improve memory and the ability to concentrate at work. Meditators themselves sometimes attribute more impressive possibilities to the practice: for example, the ability to cure diseases and get rid of addictions.
The Science of Concentration: First Steps
Scientists began to investigate meditation with relatively modern methods following the surge of interest in the practice in the 1960s and 1970s. Since the interest of the general public in it was just emerging, the object of research was usually the "professionals" of meditation - in particular, Buddhist monks. Many of them have been practiced for decades, devoting several hours of concentration each day. The position of the early researchers was that if concentration can really have an effect on the functioning of the brain and body as a whole, the changes will be especially noticeable among meditators. However, this approach had a drawback: it was not easy to find a sufficient number of study participants.
For example, in the early 1980s, Harvard scholar Herbert Benson became interested in the eastern principle of "inner fire meditation" - tummo. The meditator concentrates on the feeling of warmth inside the body - it is believed that in this way a person can not feel cold for a long time. Tibetan monks who practice tummo wear light cotton clothing even in winter. Benson and his colleagues traveled to the northern Indian city of Dharmsala. There they managed to find only three monks who had been practicing tummo for years and agreed to participate in the research. The scholars had to obtain permission to work with monks personally from the Dalai Lama.
Benson received a positive result: the monks were indeed able to raise their own body temperature while in an unheated room. One of them managed to raise the temperature of a toe by 8.3 ° C and a finger by 3.15 ° C. An article about the experiment was published by Nature, one of the most respected scientific journals in the world. However, there were only three participants in the study, and their living conditions were significantly different from the everyday life of Westerners who practice meditation. Also, early studies rarely included a control group, so even the reported positive effects could be the result of other characteristics of the meditators' lifestyle or simply coincidence.
How is meditation being researched today?
Dozens of new studies on meditation appear every year. For example, in a 2015 review published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 180 scientific papers are described only on the mindfulness meditation technique. Most were published in the 2010s.
As meditation becomes more popular, in the 21st century scientists have the opportunity to explore more than just “professionals”. Many new experiments are being carried out with people who have never practiced any meditation technique. One group receives instructions and exercises, the other remains control and leads the same way of life. The method of long-term research is also used, when the condition of the participants is monitored several times over a certain period. Such works help to establish what changes can really be caused by meditation.
Much modern research includes tests for a specific type of problem. For example, participants in one experiment were asked a task based on the Stroop effect. This is a delay in reaction when reading color names, which occurs when the color of the letters does not match the written name (say, the word "red" is written in green letters). The test for the length of this delay is used, in particular, to diagnose age-related changes in the brain. Participants in the study were asked to indicate what color the letters were in the suggested word lists. Those who practiced any type of meditation completed the task faster. Scientists noted that success depended more on how much time a person devoted to concentration per day. The total amount of time spent meditating was not that important.
The most important question is how meditation affects the structure of the brain. Today scientists have more and more high-precision instruments that allow them to observe the processes taking place in the human brain. Neuroimaging technologies are actively used - a group of methods that allow obtaining detailed images of the structure of the brain and spinal cord. Thanks to the methods of computed and magnetic resonance imaging, scientists can see how different areas of the brain change under the influence of meditation.
The authors of the study, published in 2011 in the journal Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, said they were able to record changes in the brain structure of people who took a two-month course of mindfulness meditation. The participants in the experiment increased the density of gray matter in the hippocampus and posterior cingulate cortex. No such changes were found in the control group.
One of the functions of the hippocampus is to regulate emotions. Scientists have suggested that consistent meditation practice can help people better control how they feel. It is also known that the density of a substance in the hippocampus decreases in patients with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The dorsal cingulate cortex is involved in the formation of autobiographical memories (such as family and friends). It is also associated with the Default Mode Network (DMN).
This neural network is active in those moments when a person is not busy solving a specific problem, but is inactive - resting or dreaming. Its functions are not fully understood, but researchers believe that DMN may be involved in developing plans for the future or in self-awareness processes. Not so long ago, Cambridge scientists suggested that this network can serve as the "autopilot" of the brain - to help us perform tasks that have been brought to automatism.
What can meditation really do?
Many studies, including the Stroop test described above, show that meditation can actually improve memory and the ability to concentrate. Perhaps she can help control certain emotions. It is not yet possible to predict how noticeable these improvements will be for a particular person. The effect of exercise depends on many factors, including a person's health status and the stress level in their life.
Meditation can also be beneficial for those with mental health problems. A recent study led by psychiatrist Elizabeth A. Hoge showed that after two months of regular meditation, patients with generalized anxiety disorder had significantly decreased levels of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). This substance affects the synthesis of cortisol, a hormone involved in the development of the stress response.
According to a 2016 meta-analysis of studies on the effects of meditation on depression, mindfulness meditation significantly reduces the likelihood of recurrence of a depressive episode in patients with recurrent ("recurring") depression within 60 weeks of follow-up. At the same time, experts emphasize that meditation is not a panacea. If the patient needs a course of antidepressants, concentration exercises cannot replace medication. The author of the meta-analysis himself recalls that there are many forms and degrees of intensity of mental disorders. The scientist proposes to consider meditation as one of the possible forms of psychotherapy and apply it taking into account individual characteristics.
Claims that meditation itself can cure cancer have been criticized by scientists many times. Researchers point out that any attempts to treat cancer with "alternative medicine" are dangerous: trying to get rid of the disease without the help of proven medications or surgical treatment, patients miss the time when the disease can still be defeated. The only area where meditation can help cancer patients and cancer survivors is to improve their quality of life. According to a 2013 study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, meditation has helped women breast cancer survivors sleep better and reduce pain.
Natalia Polezneva