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Meditation Associated with Increased Grey Matter in the Brain

Meditation is known to alter resting brain patterns, suggesting long lasting brain changes, but a new study by researchers from Yale, Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows meditation also is associated with increased cortical thickness.

The structural changes were found in areas of the brain that are important for sensory, cognitive and emotional processing, the researchers report in the November 2005 issue of NeuroReport.

Although the study included only 20 participants, all with extensive training in Buddhist Insight meditation, the results are significant, said Jeremy Gray, assistant professor of psychology at Yale and co-author of the study led by Sara Lazar, assistant in psychology at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“What is most fascinating to me is the suggestion that meditation practice can change anyone’s grey matter,” Gray said. “The study participants were people with jobs and families. They just meditated on average 40 minutes each day, you don’t have to be a monk.”

Magnetic resonance imaging showed that regular practice of meditation is associated with increased thickness in a subset of cortical regions related to sensory, auditory, visual and internal perception, such as heart rate or breathing.

The researchers also found that regular meditation practice may slow age-related thinning of the frontal cortex.

from Yale press release: Meditation Associated with Increased Grey Matter in the Brain

> image from the Centerpointe Research Institute site - Holosync programs for brain training and meditation enhancement

> more related products etc on page :
mental fitness

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To meet everything and everyone through stillness instead of mental noise is the greatest gift you can offer to the universe. I call it stillness, but it is a jewel with many facets: that stillness is also joy, and it is love.

Eckhart Tolle .. [site: eckharttolle.com]
*The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

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Life as an actor can be very demanding physically, emotionally and psychologically, and Graham has been following a spiritual practice that helps her keep growing as an actor and a person: TM or Transcendental Meditation.

She notes "I'm not really religious, but feel I have spirituality. I meditate twice a day for twenty minutes. I've been doing it for six years, and I've gotten into the habit of finding the time for it. Sometimes it's hard. But it definitely pays off for me." ..........from interview with Heather Graham

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Author and intuition consultant Nancy Rosanoff also asserts the value of making a time and place for stillness:

"Because our culture bombards us from every side to keep busy, we really do have to make an active effort to do nothing."

Rosanoff suggests encouraging the incubation period of the creative process by finding activities that will "take your mind off the problem:

Take a day off, get some exercise, cook a nice meal.

"In addition, there are some things you can do to help access your intuitive side: playing an instrument, meditating, doing yoga, and yes, even sleeping. You can't force an illumination; don't even try."

[from "The Key to Creativity", Intuition mag., issue 8]

book: Nancy Rosanoff. Intuition Workout : A Practical Guide to Discovering and Developing Your Inner Knowing

image from book: North America the Beautiful

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About six or seven years ago.. I started to define myself as a seeker. And I'm continuing to do that. ... What's interesting to me about all of [eastern spirituality] is the query, the asking of questions about why we're in this. ...

For me, it's really about being a seeker, which by definition means having questions, not really having answers. Just being aware of the questions. ...

I've had meditation experiences that were kind of outrageous and fun. Enough to whet my appetite. ...

Basically, it's the experience of oneness, a visceral rather than intellectual experience. And the deep knowing that everything is OK. Everything matters.

And there's no separation between anything. But this kind of stuff all sounds weird when you read someone else talking about it.

I'll just say human beings in general can have a very intense experience of God all the time...

Meg Ryan Us Weekly, Dec 2001 - posted on rollingstone.com

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It is a commonly held view that meditation is a way to shut off the pressures of the world or of your own mind, but this is not an accurate impression.

Meditation is neither shutting things out nor off. It is seeing clearly, and deliberately positioning yourself differently in relationship to them.

Jon Kabat-Zinn
**Wherever You Go There You Are

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"Taking an inward path is not about cultism or blind faith. The deepest teachings are about radiant awareness and the inherently joyful freedom of being. It's not just about maintaining a quiet mind.

If all you want is a quiet mind, there is a huge pharmaceutical industry that would be happy to serve that need... Starting on a spiritual path means leaving the superficial currents and getting into deeper waters of real sanity."

Lama Surya Das - author: Awakening to the Sacred : Creating a Spiritual Life from Scratch

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David Lynch on meditation

Director David Lynch is launching the David Lynch Foundation.. which will fund transcendental meditation classes and research into the effects of yoga on body and mind.

The filmmaker.. hopes to raise $7 billion within a year, which will go towards forming "peace-creating super groups of 8,000 meditators" around the globe, to make people calmer, less anxious and more intelligent.

He tells website PageSix.com, "This is not a pretend thing. Our government spends seven times that on killing, calling it defending, and making machinery and technology to kill human beings in the name of peace.

"But today's students are even more stressed out. Their schools are hellholes. They're getting pathetic educations. They're not going forward with full decks of cards. But when they meditate, they will start shining like a bright, shiny penny, and their anxieties will go away.

"By diving within, they will attain a field of pure consciousness, pure bliss, creativity, intelligence, dynamic peace. You enliven the field, and every day it gets better. Negativity recedes."

"I have been 'diving within' through Transcendental Meditation for over 30 years. It has changed my life, my world. I am not alone. Millions of other people of all ages, religions, and walks of life practice the technique."

contactmusic.com 20/07/2005 and quotes from :

David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based
Education and World Peace
"Developing the full creative potential of every student"

> book: Science of Being and Art of Living: Transcendental Meditation -- by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

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.. My meditation practice has helped build my energy and create a more compassionate, positive way of responding to others.

It's provided access to what's going on inside me in a much clearer way. ...

I practive Vipassana insight meditation. The focus is on getting as close as possible to the truth of this moment. I prefer not to use the word spirituality, which probably means something different to everyone.

In the magazine business, where there's always so much going on, I use my practice to center myself. If I don't meditate, my energy dissipates. I get edgy.

Amy Gross, Editor in Chief,
O, The Oprah Magazine [subscription]

**from the book : Positive Energy : Ten Extraordinary
Prescriptions for Transforming Fatigue, Stress,
and Fear Into Vibrance, Strength and Love -
by Judith Orloff M.D.

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The contemplative life isn't something objective that is "there" and to which, after fumbling around, you finally gain access. The contemplative life is a dimension of our subjective existence.
Discovering the contemplative life is a new self-discovery. One might say it is the flowering of a deeper identity on an entirely different plane from a mere psychological discovery, paradoxical new identity that is found only in loss of self.

To find one's self by losing one's self: that is a part of "contemplation." Remember the Gospel, "He who would save his life must lose it"?

Thomas Merton / related site The Monos Community / Thomas Merton books

related page [on this site]: Buddhist psychology

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EFFECTIVE MEDITATIONS FOR...STRESS RELIEF

DVD titles

You begin to see your moods and your attitudes and your opinions. You begin to hear this voice, your voice, and how it can be so critical of self and others.

There is growing clarity about all the different parts of yourself. Meditation gives you the tools to look at all of this clearly, with an unbiased attitude.

A lot of having compassion toward oneself is staying with the initial thought or arising of emotion.

This means that when you see yourself being aggressive, or stuck in self-pity, or whatever it might be, then you train again and again in not adding things on top of that -- guilt or self-justification or any further negativities.

You work on not spinning off and on being kinder toward the human condition as you see it in yourself.

Pema Chodron - from Interview with Bell Hooks - on shambhala.com site --

more quotes by Chodron in article: On Fear

> book - *The Places That Scare You

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As a psychotherapist and meditation practitioner.. I have gone back and forth
between two different perspectives -- sometimes regarding the psychological inquiry
into self as diametrically opposed, even antagonistic, to the spiritual aim of going
beyond self, and at other times seeing it as an extremely useful complement to spiritual work. ...

There is often a tendency to use spiritual practice to try to rise above our emotional
and personal issues—all those messy, unresolved matters that weigh us down.

I call this tendency to avoid or prematurely transcend basic human needs, feelings,
and developmental tasks spiritual bypassing. John Welwood

book: Toward a Psychology of Awakening

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Founded in 1985, Agape combines aspects of Western and Eastern religions, and it emphasizes meditation and prayer as a means for practitioners to discover themselves as an agency of God.
"This particular church has such a wonderful feeling of celebration that you can't help but be pulled into that commitment, and for me it's a daily commitment," says Christina Applegate, who was first taught to meditate by her mother when she was seven and now does it each day, whether at home or in her trailer.
"It just pulled me in to wanting to learn more about myself and have a deeper connection with my spiritual self.
"And it really saved me from being.. a typical child actor who grows up on a television show."

Premiere, March 2002

website: Agape International Spiritual Center

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Buddhists who meditate may be able to train their brains to feel genuine happiness and control aggressive instincts, research has shown.

According to Owen Flanagan, professor of philosophy at Duke University in North Carolina, Buddhists appear to be able to stimulate the left prefrontal lobe - an area just behind the forehead - which may be why they can generate positive emotions and a feeling of well being.

Writing in today's New Scientist, Professor Flanagan cites early findings of a study by Richard Davidson, of the University of Wisconsin, who used scanners to analyse the active regions of a Buddhist's brain.

Professor Flanagan said the findings are "tantalising" because the left prefrontal lobes of Buddhist practitioners appear to "light up" consistently, rather than just during acts of meditation.

"This is significant, because persistent activity in the left prefrontal lobes indicates positive emotions and good mood," he writes. "The first Buddhist practitioner studied by Davidson showed more left prefrontal lobe activity than anyone he had ever studied before.

"Buddhists are not born happy. It is not reasonable to suppose that Tibetan Buddhists are born with a 'happiness gene'. The most reasonable hypothesis is there is something about conscientious Buddhist practice that results in the kind of happiness we all seek," he writes.

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.. Another study of Buddhists by scientists at the University of California has also found that meditation might tame the amygdala, the part of the brain involved with fear and anger.

Professor Flanagan writes: "Antidepressants are currently the favoured method for alleviating negative emotions, but no antidepressant makes a person happy. On the other hand, Buddhist meditation and mindfulness, which were developed 2,500 years before Prozac, can lead to profound happiness."

from article: Can Buddhists transcend mental reservations?
by Steve Connor, independent.co.uk 22 May 2003

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) images from Brain and Emotions Research at UW-Madison wisc.edu

... related page:...Buddhist psychology

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articles:

How to Use Music and Art as a Relaxation Technique Meditation - By Susan Masters
The power of art induces a calm state of mind, this is a well-known fact. The capacities of any beautiful object, be it a flower, a painting, a piece of music, a movie or a well-written book, help us let go all the negative thoughts and the daily preoccupations.

Meditation Associated with Increased Grey Matter in the Brain [Yale press release]