Mindfulness Meditation

Meditation practice is regarded as a good and in fact excellent way to overcome warfare in the world: our own warfare as well as greater warfare. ~ Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Meditation is practice; practicing to stay in the present, learning to stay with discomfort and not squirm, flinch, or freeze. There is a perpetual struggle in grasping for joy and avoiding sadness, grasping for pleasure and avoiding pain. The struggle generates negative emotions, which produces discomfort. The volition of pushing away discomfort fuels the struggle. The mind becomes like a spinning top, not present in one place, not synchronized with our body nor the environment and situation presently at hand. We think we are moving through life in a linear way toward improvement or at least maintaining what we value. In fact we're caught in this circular spinning. No matter who we are, we're caught in this process. Mindfulness is a state of attention, which is not conducive for getting caught up in thoughts and sensations. With mindfulness it is as if one is watching these flow by like a stream or the road on which we travel in the sustained present, sometimes referred to as the now.

We live in a time when destructive negative emotions such as fury, fear, and hatred are giving rise to much suffering and devastation throughout the world. The daily news is disturbing with the grim results of the effects of such emotions. What can be done to stop or at least slow down this seemingly spinning out of control state of our world? Look at history; haven't these destructive emotions always been part of the human condition? What can an individual do that could possibly make a difference and move toward overcoming them? There are practical ways to familiarize ourselves with the patterns of arising of these emotions and destructive impulses. Becoming familiar with these patterns in and of itself will begin to tame them. Sitting meditation, also known as mindfulness - awareness practice, is a support for doing this.

Mindfulness meditators have a 2,500-year-old history of investigative exploring of mind and methods to free mind from being caught in the power of these negative forces within. More recently, neuroscientists have begun investigating how the qualities of happiness, serenity and loving kindness that arise from the practice of mindfulness meditation are reflected in the brain. Using sensitive brain scanning techniques, these neuroscientists are beginning to provide some reproducible evidence.

It has been established that two areas of the brain are the main seat for emotions, mood, and temperament. The amygdala - twin almond-shaped organs in the forebrain - and its adjacent structures are part of the quick triggering processors that deals with fear, anxiety, and surprise.[1] The generator of anger seems to rest here. The second area contains the prefrontal lobes, recently evolved structures lying just behind the forehead.[1] It is now understood that these are crucial to the development of emotional response as it has long been known that these structures in the brain are primarily involved in behavior control and planning. The left prelobe lights up on scanning when the individual is reporting positive emotions and stable mood. When this area of the brain is active there is less production of the stress hormone cortisol, faster recovery from negative emotions, and higher levels of certain immune cells. The right prelobe lights up with persistent negative emotion and mood swings, the stormy psychological upheavals. It is felt that each person has a natural 'set point' which determines baseline frontal cortex activity level.[2]

Richard Davidson , a brain researcher at the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, found that the prefrontal lobes of experienced Buddhist practitioners of mindfulness techniques, lit up on scanning in a consistently interesting way. The 'light up' of the left lobes persisted when meditation practice concluded. In fact, the first Buddhist practitioner in this study had the highest amount of activity in the brain centers associated with positive emotions that had ever been recorded in that laboratory. As part of this study, Jon Kabat-Zinn, founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, developed an eight-week course taught to the stressed out volunteers who had been randomized into that group. The control group did not take the course or get any mindfulness practice instruction. Both groups were studied at the end of eight weeks and then in four months. By the end of the study, the meditators brains showed a pronounced shift toward the left frontal lobe, while the nonmeditators did not. It seems that mindfulness meditation shifts this set point balance in the prelobes and forebrain to the favorable direction.

Paul Eckman, a renowned researcher on basic emotions at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, has begun a similar study. He observed and measured the ability of a seasoned meditation practitioner to suppress the startle reflex while meditating. Gunshots went off out of view and failed to startle this individual while doing his mindfulness practice. Dr. Eckman said he'd never seen anyone stay so clam during such a disturbance. He has found that in general meditators don't get as shocked as nonmeditators to such unpredictable loud sounds.[2]

Kirk Warren Brown and Richard M. Ryan, researchers at the University of Rochester, studied different populations of people, including college students, working adults, meditators, and cancer patients using a tool they developed called the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale. This measures the effect of mindfulness on mental health. Negativity, irritability and other effects of excess stress were lower in the meditators. The cancer patients who received mindfulness meditation instruction and practiced it, reported lower levels of stress and improved mood even with changing pain and fatigue.[3]

Earlier studies showed mindfulness practices to be beneficial in reducing stress that had the effect of reducing anxiety even when associated with panic [4][5], reduce fibromyalgia pain symptoms[6], and reduce certain chemicals in the body associated with an increased risk for heart attack.[7].

We train our body through diet, exercise and relaxation, so why don't we train our mind? Training our mind though mindfulness meditation can allow us to actually use our mind though mindfulness meditation, rather than be used by it.

The discipline of mindfulness meditation has been used tried and true not only for thousands of years but in many cultures. In numerous texts, both ancient and contemporary, one will read that disciplining the mind is likened to disciplining a horse.[8] The meditation practice puts us in the saddle when we sit down on the meditation seat. Over and over the mind will buck and throw us off. Over and over we come back to the present moment, willing to ride with whatever is there. Fundamentally it is so much better to ride it than to have it ride us. Interestingly we always have that choice, moment by moment... We can stay on the spot or be thrown off by our own mind. In fact nothing else throws us off no matter how much we would like to blame something else. It is our own mind that throws us off and rides us into the habituated grooves we've worn down for ourselves.

There are many different techniques to apply to practice mindfulness meditation. One that I recommend is Shambhala Training. This is a series of weekend programs that is secular and would be found to be easily accessible to most people. Contact Shambhala Training International in Halifax, Nova Scotia at (902) 425-4275 ext. 23 or go to their web site at sti.shambhala.org for a schedule of Shambhala Training and the next Level 1 weekend program nearest to you.

REFERENCES

[1] The Color Of Happiness, New Scientist, vol 78, issue 2396 - 24 May 2003, page 44.

[2] Judy Foreman, A Look at the Science Behind Meditation, Boston Globe, April 22, 2003.

[3] Matthew Daneman, UR Professors Study Benefits of Mindfulness, Democrat and Chronicle, April 22, 2003.

[4] Tenzin Gyatso, The Monk in the Lab, Dharmsala, India.

[5] Kabat-Zinn, J., Maasion, A. O., Kristeller, J., Peterson, L. G., Fletcher, K. E., Pbert,L., Lenderking, W. R., Santorelli, S. F., Effectiveness of a meditation-based stress reduction program in the treatment of anxiety disorders., Am J Psychiatry, 1992, July;149(7);936-943.

[6] Kabat-Zinn, J., Lipworth, L., Burney, R., The clinical use of mindfulness meditation for the self regulation of chronic pain, J Behavioral Medicine, 1985, June; 8(2); 163-190.

[7] The Natural Health Perspective tm, Resilience.

[8] Mipam, Sakyong, Turning the MIind into an Ally. Riverhead Books,New York, NY, 2003, 49-50.