The benefits of meditation that are scientifically validated include:

• improved cognitive function, learning and memory
• better focus and ability to pay attention
• stress reduction
• reduction of depression, anxiety and pain
• increase in compassion and open-heartedness

In the past, studies of meditation were shaky, as they had to rely on self-reported effects of the meditation practice. Moreover, many of these studies were performed by institutions that preached the benefits of meditation. Although their results may well have been valid, there is room for scepticism the studies had no answer to. More recent studies use MRI-imaging of the brain, and appear to be watertight. They measure changes in the brain directly, which then link to the benefits people report. Meditation meets neuroscience.

One of the pioneers in this field is Sara Lazar, who, with her team, was the first to document the changes in the brain that occur over time when beginning a meditation practice. One of her studies (Hölzer, Lazar et.al. 2011) shows that when people participate in an 8-week meditation course, their brain changes in a number of areas. Firstly, the hippocampus thickens, this is an area of the brain important for learning and memory, as well as for emotion regulation. Secondly, the temporo-parietal junction thickens, an area of the brain important for compassion and seeing different perspectives. Finally, the amygdala shrinks. The amygdala rules the fight-or-flight-response and is a key area of the brain when it comes to stress. A smaller amygdala means you will feel less ruffled when under pressure. You won’t be on ‘high-alert’ all of the time. You’ll be more emotionally resilient.

In effect, the simple practice of meditating for just under thirty minutes a day for eight weeks made the participants in the study more intelligent, happier, more compassionate and more relaxed. The participants reported these changes in their mental state, which the researchers could validate by looking at the wiring of the brain.

The study corroborated previous findings on the effects of meditation, with two main advances: it measured these changes directly; and it showed that such changes could be achieved by people that had no previous experience of meditation, and in only eight weeks (it takes about six weeks of practice for change in neural pathways lock in, though considerably less time to start to feel the benefits).

So, what exactly IS meditation?

Meditation is simple. It is a conscious decision to focus on one particular part of your present experience for a length of time. Whenever your mind wanders and starts thinking about something else (which it will do), you bring your attention back to whatever you chose to focus on. And you keep doing it until your time is up.

That’s it.

Many schools of meditation use the breath to focus on, but you can also use the body as a whole, or specific parts of the body such as your nostrils (no kidding). Some more esoteric schools use a mantra for the mind to focus on. Once you have an established practice you can also focus on your feelings, emotions and even your thoughts. The trick is to not engage with anything you are focusing on, but instead simply observe it. If you’re focusing on your thoughts, say, the practice is to notice the thought (‘Ah, I’m having a thought about my deadline’), let it be, and watch it drift by. You are training yourself to not buy into that thought (‘OMG I have a deadline tomorrow and there’s no way I am going to meet it!! I don’t even have time to meditate!’). No. You observe it, let it be there for as long as it wants to be there, and let it go to the best of your ability, once the time is right. It is practicing non-doing.

You can see how meditation might help you break the stress-cycle. You are training your ability to not get stuck in automatic patterns of thoughts and feelings and bodily reactions, by noticing them and allowing them to fade, instead of investing in them and energising these loops. You gain mastery over your experience by practicing non-doing.

The key is to not intellectualise the process. You don’t want to be sitting there analysing every thought pattern or every breath or every feeling. All you need to do is observe your breath, or observe that you have these thoughts or feelings. Don’t analyse them. It doesn’t matter what the content of the thought or emotion or feeling is. Simply acknowledge their presence, and be with the experience.

Although meditation is simple it’s not easy. What I have outlined above is what we are practicing, and there is no perfect. We are so used to getting caught up in our thinking. The difficult part is to try not to do that, and to keep bringing our attention back to whatever we chose to focus on. To do this well, it’s useful to meditate with a patient and kind attitude. If not, it can be a frustrating experience! More about how to cultivate such an attitude tomorrow.

How does my PhD benefit from meditation?

In my opinion, of all the benefits, the single most important benefit of meditation is that you learn to work with your mind. A PhD is never finished (until it’s finished and then there will be lots of other things to worry about). It’s always there waiting for you to worry and obsess about. It is such a mental game. Meditation can help you train your mind to focus on your work when you want to, and to not focus on your work when you are doing something else. You get to decide whether you want to think about your work or not. You get to decide when your workday is over. You get to decide whether you want to continue to worry, or whether you’ve had enough and would like to focus on something else.

Meditation is not a miracle cure in the sense that worry and obsession will leave you instantly and forever, or at all. It isn’t binary. But you will have more tools and range to work with your mental state. And you will have a practice in place in being more compassionate towards yourself when the going gets rough. It will help you relax, even when you are under pressure. As we will see next week, mental relaxation will also help you do your best creative work, and allows for breakthroughs in your thinking.

The only caveat: meditation is a practice. For meditation to be beneficial you have to actually sit down and do it. (It personally took me a while to appreciate that reading and thinking about meditation isn’t going to do the trick. Not so easy for the always-analysing academic). Try committing roughly half an hour (or less if that means you will do it) daily to sitting still and meditating.

Today, before or after work – practice your meditation. Worth it!

References

B. K. Hölzel, S.W. Lazar et.al. (2011) Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density, Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, Volume 191, Issue 1, 36–43

For a more extensive list of references see the article by Hölzel and Lazar – it has a really nice matrix with an overview of previous research and references.