Meditation

Just Breathe

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“When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still, and the yogi achieves long life. Therefore, one should learn to control the breath.” ~Svatmarama

 

There are two basic forms of meditation, focused meditation and open monitoring. For the beginner, most teachers employ the focused meditation strategy. This involves placing attention on a single object of meditation and holding it there. Focusing on the breath is the most common object for focused meditation. But, there are many others including single thoughts or mental objects, or even mantras.

 

Although there has been research comparing focused to open monitoring meditation, there has been very little attention paid to different objects of focused meditation. The question has not been answered as to whether it is better to focus on the breath or some other mental object. The whole idea of focusing on an object is to eliminate wind wandering. So one way to compare the effectiveness of different objects for focused meditation is by comparing their relative abilities to prevent mind wandering or conversely to suppress thoughts.

 

In today’s Research News article “Better control with less effort: The advantage of using focused-breathing strategy over focused-distraction strategy on thought suppression”

Ju and colleagues randomly assigned undergraduate students to a focused breathing condition or a focused mental object (blue sports car) condition. Students were instructed to focus on their respective object for 2 3-minute sessions and report each time their mind wandered. The students were then measured for thought intrusions during a thought suppression task. They found that the focused breathing condition produced significantly fewer mind wanderings and thought intrusions than the focused mental object condition. For the focused mental object condition, the higher the participants working memory capacity the fewer mind wanderings and thought intrusions. This was not true for the focused breathing condition. This suggests that focusing on a mental object requires mental resources and employs a ‘top down’ strategy while simply focusing on the breath does not.

 

So, it appears that focusing on the breath requires less mental resources and is more successful in preventing mind wandering and thought intrusions than focusing on a mental object. This suggests that the ancient practice of focused breathing meditation became so popular for a reason. It is easier to do and it produces better results.

 

It should be kept in mind, however, that the students were only asked to focus for 2 3-minute periods. It is possible that the superiority of focusing on the breathing may only be true for beginners over very brief periods. There is a need to repeat the study with experienced meditators and for longer periods of focus. Nevertheless, it has become common practice with open monitoring meditation to always begin a session with focusing on the breath and only later moving into open monitoring. The current results suggest that this may be very good practice, helping to get the meditator focused, with minimal mind wandering before moving on to open monitoring where it is more difficult to maintain focus and keep the mind from wandering.

 

So, just breathe to better focus in meditation.

 

“So don’t beat yourself up the next time you find yourself far away from where your mind was supposed to be. It’s the nature of the mind to wander. Use it as an opportunity to become more aware of your own mental experience. But you may still want to return to the present moment—so you can come up with an answer to that question everyone is waiting for.” – Wendy Hasenkamp
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are available at the Contemplative Studies Blog http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/

Add Spirituality to Meditation and Improve Migraines

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“Migraine is a disorder of a hyper-excitable brain, and it makes sense for people with migraine to adopt a stress-reducing . . . One behavioral intervention that may be useful, not only for migraine, but also for life in general, is what is called mindfulness meditation.” – John Wendt

 

Migraine headaches are a torment far beyond the suffering of a common headache. It is an intense throbbing pain usually unilateral, focused on only one side of the head. They last from 4 hours to 3 days. They are actually a collection of neurological symptoms. Migraines often include: visual disturbances, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, extreme sensitivity to sound, light, touch and smell, and tingling or numbness in the extremities or face. Migraines are the 8th most disabling illness in the world. They disproportionately affect women with about 18% of American women and 6% of men suffering from migraine. In the U.S. they affect roughly 40 million men, women and children. While most sufferers experience attacks once or twice a month, 14 million people or about 4% have chronic daily headaches. Migraines are very disruptive to the sufferer’s personal and work lives as most people are unable to work or function normally when experiencing a migraine.

 

There is no known cure for migraine headaches. Treatments are targeted at managing the symptoms. Prescription and over-the-counter pain relievers are frequently used. There are a number of drug and drug combinations that appear to reduce the frequency of migraine attacks. These vary in effectiveness but unfortunately can have troubling side effects and some are addictive. Behaviorally, relaxation and sleep appear to help lower the frequency of migraines. Mindfulness practices have been shown to reduce stress and improve relaxation (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/stress/). So, they may be useful in preventing migraines. Indeed, it has been shown that Mindfulness Based Stress reduction (MBSR) practice can reduce tension headache pain (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/09/07/headaches-are-a-headache-reduce-them-with-mindfulness/).

 

Wachholtz and colleagues have previously shown that adding a spiritual dimension to meditation can increase the effectiveness of meditation for increasing pain tolerance. In today’s Research News article “Effect of Different Meditation Types on Migraine Headache Medication Use”

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Wachholtz and colleagues randomly assigned migraine sufferers to four conditions, spiritual meditation, internal secular meditation, external secular meditation, and progressive muscle relaxation. The differences between the meditation groups was solely a phrase that the participants were asked to repeat a few times at the beginning of the meditation. The phrases were for spiritual meditation, “God is peace,” “God is joy,” God is good,” and “God is love,” or alternatively substituting the words “Mother Nature” for God; internal secular meditation, “I am content,” “I am joyful,” “I am good,” “I am happy;” and for external secular meditation, “Grass is green,” “Sand is soft,” “Cotton is fluffy,” “Cloth is smooth.” Practice continued 20 minutes once a day for 30 days.

 

They found that over the 30 days of practice all groups had a decrease in the frequency of migraines and the amounts of pain medications taken, but the spiritual meditation group had a significantly greater decrease in frequency and medication use than the other three groups. None of the treatments appeared to change the severity of the migraines. Hence, adding the spiritual dimension to the meditation enhanced its effectiveness with migraines. Unfortunately, once a migraine began, nothing altered its magnitude or duration.

 

There is evidence that meditation can reduce pain (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/pain/). But, it is not known how the addition of simple spiritual phrases at the beginning of the meditation might improve its effectiveness. It is possible that the spiritual phrases were more effective than the secular phrases in focusing attention for the meditation session and thereby making it more effective. It is also possible that the phrases increased the individual’s ability to let go of struggling by turning over responsibility to a higher power. But, these are pure speculations. It will take further research to clarify the mechanism of action. But, it is clear that adding a spiritual dimension to meditation increases its effectiveness against migraine headaches.

 

So, add spirituality to meditation and improve migraines.

 

“although mindfulness is often thought of as a method of spiritual enlightenment, the underlying principles for healing are based on science. In a nutshell, mindfulness is capable of changing our brain chemistry, which impacts each and every one of our systems and organs.” – Cynthia Perkins
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Mindfully Control Inflammation

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“I don’t think anybody would argue that fact that we know inflammation in the body, which comes from a lot of different sources, is the basis for a lot of chronic health problems, so by controlling that, we would expect to see increased life expectancy … but if we’re not changing those things and just taking ibuprofen, I don’t know if we’re really going to make any headway in that, I feel like there are probably a lot of factors that we could change without medicating with risk.”– Josie Znidarsic

 

The immune system is designed to protect the body from threats like stress, infection, injury, and toxic chemicals. One of its tools is the Inflammatory response. Its primary effect is to increase blood circulation around the infected area, dilating the blood vessels around the site of inflammation. It also produces gaps in the cell walls surrounding the infected area, allowing the larger immune cells, to pass. It also tends to increase body temperature to further fight infection. This response works quite well for short-term infections and injuries and as such is an important defense mechanism for the body. But when inflammation is protracted and becomes chronic, it can itself become a threat to health.

 

Chronic inflammation can produce autoimmune diseases such as colitis, Chron’s disease, arthritis, heart disease, increased cancer risk, lung disease, sleep disruption, gum disease, decreased bone health, psoriasis, and depression. Needless to say chronic inflammation can create major health problems. Indeed, the presence of chronic inflammation is associated with reduced longevity. So, it is important for health to control the inflammatory response, allowing it to do its job in fighting off infection but then reducing its activity when no external threat is apparent.

 

Contemplative practices appear to relax the physical systems of the body including the immune system, reducing inflammation. Mind-body techniques such as yoga, Tai Chi and meditation have been shown to adaptively reduce the inflammatory response (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/inflammatory-response/). In today’s Research News article “Mind-body therapies and control of inflammatory biology: A descriptive review”

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Bower and colleagues review the published research literature on the effects of mind-body practices on the inflammatory response. They found mixed and inconclusive results for circulating and cellular markers of inflammation but consistent findings for gene expression inflammatory pathways. These studies consistently demonstrated that mind-body practices including tai chi, yoga, and meditation produced a decrease in inflammatory gene expressions and does so in diverse populations of practitioners.

 

Bower and colleagues suggest that mind-body practices alter gene expression through their well-documented effects on the neuroendocrine system. These techniques are known to reduce the activity of the activating portion of the peripheral nervous system, the sympathetic system, to reduce the release of stress hormones, particularly cortisol, and to lower perceived stress (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/stress/).  Mind-body practices are also known to improve emotion regulation (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/emotions/) and reduce depression (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/depression/), and anxiety (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2016/01/02/distress-produces-less-stress-with-mindfulness/). All of these effects occur via alterations of the nervous system by mind-body practices. The reduced activation and heightened relaxation then reduce the inflammatory response.

 

Regardless of the explanation, it is clear that mindfulness practices reduce potentially harmful inflammatory responses. So, mindfully control inflammation.

 

 

“The mindfulness-based approach to stress reduction may offer a lower-cost alternative or complement to standard treatment, and it can be practiced easily by patients in their own homes, whenever they need.” – Melissa Rosenkranz

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Meditate to Respond More Effectively to Self-Praise and Criticism

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 “If you’ve ever felt too depressed to solve a problem, it might be because your brain is having a hard time regulating your emotions. One solution? Mindfulness training.” – Ruth Buczynsk

 

Meditation is known to improve the physical and mental health of practitioners. To some extent, it does so by improving emotion regulation (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/emotions/). This improvement involves fully experiencing emotions, not suppressing them, and responding to them in a rational and adaptive fashion. In other words, meditators appear to be able to feel and work with their emotions responsibly, non-judgmentally, and with acceptance, and not react in ways that are harmful to themselves and others.

 

Emotion regulation is in part improved in meditators by helping them to take things less personally. Meditation tends to reduce self-referential thinking (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/self/). Mindfulness tends to reduce self-critical thinking and their emotional aftermaths and improve self-esteem. As a result, meditation tends to reduce responses to self-related thoughts, ideas, and stimuli. This improved emotion regulation contributes to many facets of the individual’s mental health.

 

Meditation is also known to alter the nervous system. Actions that are repeated often tend to produce changes in the nervous system in a process called neuroplasticity and meditation is no exception. It tends to increase the size, activity, and connectivity of structures in the nervous system that are involved in attention and emotion regulation, frontal cortex regions, and decrease the size, activity, and connectivity of structures involved in mind wandering, self-referential thinking, and stress, the so called default mode network  (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/neuroplasticity/).

 

In today’s Research News article “Altered processing of self-related emotional stimuli in mindfulness meditators”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1155866777770580/?type=3&theater

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811915008794

Lutz and colleagues investigate emotional regulation responses in the nervous system of long term meditators (> a year of regular practice) in comparison to meditation naïve participants. As expected the meditators were higher in mindfulness especially in observing and non-reacting, self-compassion, and emotional awareness. The participants were then presented with personality descriptor adjectives that were either positive (attractive, handsome, funny) or negative (unattractive, unsightly, ugly) and recorded the responses of the nervous system to the stimuli.

 

Self-relevant items either positive or negative, but particularly positive, produced greater activation of the Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex in the meditators. The mindfulness component of non-reacting was positively correlated with activation of the Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex in the meditators but not the naïve participants. Finally, they found lower functional connectivity to posterior midline and parietal regions in the meditators compared to the naïve participants during both types of self-relevant items.

 

The meditators stronger activations of the frontal regions suggest that they have stronger self-awareness and focus on inner feelings. It also suggests that they have greater emotion regulation with non-reactive attitudes towards these experiences. Since the posterior structures of the default mode network in the nervous system are associated with self-referential thinking, the decreased connectivity to these regions in the meditators suggest that they have lesser self-focus than meditation naïve participants.

 

In sum, these results indicate that meditation produces changes in the brain that allows for greater emotion regulation and less thinking about self. These neural changes may in part account for the improved mental health in meditators. They are better able to cope with emotions and respond to them constructively and take everything less personally. So, meditation appears to change the brain making it better able to respond more constructively and less personally to emption laden events.

 

So, meditate to respond more effectively to self-praise and criticism.

 

“mindful attention does not inhibit initial evaluations insomuch as it limits the automatic expansion of initial evaluative reactions into activation of a broader set of implications about the self and the world.” – Norman Farb
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Meditate to Improve Attention by Changing the Brain

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“meditation may increase our control over our limited brain resources. To anyone who knows what it’s like to feel scattered or overwhelmed, this is an appealing benefit indeed. Even though your attention is a limited resource, you can learn to do more with the mental energy you already have.” – Kelly McGonigal

 

Meditation practice has many psychological, cognitive, and physical benefits. It has been shown to improve attentional abilities so that we can better maintain our attention when needed and reduce the strong human tendency for mind wandering (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/attention/), the enemy of focused attention. This allows us to better attend to the present moment, what’s happening now, rather than be dominated by thought, memories, and plans for the future.

 

In the last few decades, scientists have discovered that the brain is far more malleable than previously thought. Areas in the brain can change, either increase or decrease in size, connectivity, and activity in response to changes in our environment or the behaviors we engage in. This process is referred to as neuroplasticity. Alterations in the brain can be produced by contemplative practices. The brain appears to change in response to meditation and other contemplative practices. Indeed, mindfulness practices have been shown to not only alter how we think and feel but also to alter the nervous system (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/neuroplasticity/).

 

In today’s Research News article “Increases in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and decreases the rostral prefrontal cortex activation after-8 weeks of focused attention based mindfulness meditation”

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Tomasino and colleagues investigate neuroplastic changes to the brain when individuals who have no experience with meditation engage in an 8-week meditation program. The participants’ brain activity during meditation was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (f-MRI) before and after the meditation training. They found that at the end of training the participants showed greater activation of the right middle frontal gyrus and the left caudate/anterior insular cortex. They also found that the practice decreased activation in the rostral prefrontal cortex and in right parietal cortex. They further demonstrated that these altered brain activities were produced by the focused meditation component and not a body scan component of the practice.

 

The increased activity observed in the prefrontal areas makes perfect sense as meditation is an attentional practice and the prefrontal areas have been previously shown to be associated with attention. So, practicing attention alters the brain areas responsible for attention. The decreased activity observed in the rostral prefrontal cortex also makes perfect sense as focused attention is antithetical to mind wandering and the rostral prefrontal cortex has been shown to be involved in the “default mode network” that is activated during mind wandering. So, practicing attention also decreases activity in the brain areas responsible for its opposite, mind wandering. So, meditation practice was found to strengthen the activity of the exact areas of the brain that are known to be increased by attentional activity and reduced activity of the areas known to be increased during mind wandering.

 

Hence, meditation practice by naive individuals appears to alter their brains to better maintain attention and restrain mind wandering. The fact that the brain has been changes suggests that the improved attentional ability will be maintained even when the individuals are not actively meditating. This make the practice far more useful as it has more long-lasting effects.

 

So, meditate to improve attention by changing the brain.

 

“Meditation provides experiences that the mind can achieve no other way, such as inner silence and expanded awareness. And as the mind gains experience, the brain shows physical activity as well—sometimes profound changes. . . . the research has begun to show that meditation can also produce long-term structural changes in the brain. No longer is the “hard wiring” of neural circuits so dominant. The brain can alter its wiring in “soft” ways, thanks to a trait known as neuroplasticity, which allows new pathways and even new brain cells to appear.” – Deepak Chopra

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Improve High Level Thinking with Mindfulness

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“Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.” – Og Mandino

 

In the modern world education is a key for success. Where a high school education was sufficient in previous generations, a college degree is now required to succeed in the new knowledge based economies. There is a lot of pressure on students to excel so that they can be admitted to the best universities and there is a lot of pressure on university students to excel so that they can get the best jobs after graduation. As a result, parents and students are constantly looking for ways to improve student performance in school.

 

The primary tactic has been to pressure the student and clear away routine tasks and chores so that the student can focus on their studies. But, this might in fact be counterproductive as the increased pressure can actually lead to stress and anxiety which can impede performance. A better tactic may be the development of mindfulness skills with contemplative practices. These practices and high levels of mindfulness have been shown to be helpful in coping with the school environment and for the performance of both students and teachers (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/school/). So, perhaps, mindfulness training may provide the needed edge in school.

 

In today’s Research News article “Effects of a Mindfulness Meditation Course on Learning and Cognitive Performance among University Students in Taiwan”

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4657094/

Ching and colleagues took advantage of the natural experiment provided in a private university which required a semester long mindfulness course as a core course for all students. The course taught meditation, body scan, and everyday mindfulness skills. They compared students who completed the course in the fall semester to those who were scheduled to take the course in the spring semester. They measured the students with the College Learning Effectiveness Inventory (CLEI) which measures psychosocial factors including thoughts, feelings, or behaviors related to academic outcomes and also measured performance on the cognitive tasks of vigilance, choice reaction times, spatial working memory, and memory scanning.

 

The study demonstrated that the mindfulness training produced significantly higher scores on the CLEI suggesting improved attitudes and behaviors impacting learning and academic performance. In addition, the mindfulness training produced improved performance on the cognitive tasks, including increased accuracy in the vigilance, choice reaction time, and spatial working memory tasks. These results suggest that mindfulness training can improve cognitive performance in college students and improve their psychosocial attitudes toward and adjustment to college life. Although actual grade performance was not investigated, the improved skills would predict better academic performance.

 

There are a number of known effects of mindfulness practice that could be responsible for the improved cognitive and psychosocial skills in the college students. Mindfulness training has been shown to directly affect cognitive skills (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/cognition/), social skills (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/social-behavior/), and psychological well-being (see   http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/well-being/). In addition, mindfulness training is known to reduce the physiological and psychological responses to stress (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/stress/) which may reduce the anxiety produced by the pressures of college. Finally, mindfulness training is known to improve sleep (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/sleep/) which is known to be a problem for college students. So, it appears clear that mindfulness training has many desired effects that promote school performance and thus mindfulness training should be considered for incorporation in school curricula.

 

So, improve high level thinking with mindfulness.

 

“Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men.” – W. E. B. Du Bois
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Improve Your Stress Responses with Mindful Awareness

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“Researchers estimate that stress contributes to as many as 80 percent of all major illnesses, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, endocrine and metabolic disease, skin disorders, and infectious ailments of all kinds.” – Prescription for Nutritional Healing 4th edition

 

The mind and body are intimately connected and can never be completely separated. This can be witnessed in how the brain and the hormonal systems interact. The stress response is a case in point. Difficult, challenging, outside situations affect the mind which responds by producing psychological and physiological stress responses. These include the release of stress hormones such as cortisol. This prepares the body to fight off the potentially damaging stressors. This is normally a good thing, but if it persists over a prolonged period the stress response itself becomes damaging and a source of disease. Hence, it is important to not block the stress response but to insure that it doesn’t become a chronic condition.

 

The stress hormones including cortisol not only affect the peripheral physiology, they also affect the brain. The hippocampus and prefrontal cortex are particularly sensitive to cortisol. These are also sites that are affected by meditation (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/01/this-is-your-brain-on-meditation/). In addition, it has been shown that meditation reduces the psychological and physiological responses to stress (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/stress/). So, it is possible that meditation has its effects on stress responses in part by altering the brain structures that respond to stress hormones, that it changes the brains response to stress hormones.

 

In today’s Research News article “Can the neural–cortisol association be moderated by experience-induced changes in awareness?”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1151081218249136/?type=3&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4649618/

Lau and colleagues separated meditation naïve adults into two groups, an awareness-based compassion meditation (ABCM) group and a relaxation group. The groups practiced for six weeks for comparable amounts of time. Following practice, they found that the meditation produced a significant increase in mindfulness while the relaxation actually reduced mindfulness. These changes in mindfulness were significantly related to cortisol levels with high mindfulness associated with low cortisol. In addition, they found that both increases in mindfulness and decreases in plasma cortisol levels were associated with increases in the synchronization of spontaneous brain activities of the Hippocampus. In other words, mindfulness moderates the ability of cortisol to affect the hippocampus. Hence, meditation increased mindfulness that in turn decreased both blood levels of the stress hormone cortisol and the ability of cortisol to affect brain function.

 

These results demonstrate that mindfulness affects the stress response, with higher mindfulness associated with lower levels of stress hormones. But, they also demonstrate another effect of mindfulness on the stress system. High mindfulness was associated with a greater effect of cortisol on the activity of the hippocampus. These results then demonstrate that mindfulness has a direct effect of reducing stress hormone levels and also indirect effects by affecting the influence of the stress hormones on the brain. This is a clear case of mind-body interaction.

 

The findings of Lau and colleagues demonstrate two physiological mechanisms through which mindfulness practice has powerful effects on reducing psychological and physiological responses to stress. These results further support the use of mindfulness practice to improve stress responding and thereby improve health and well-being. These effects of mindfulness on stress may be a major reason why mindfulness training is so beneficial to a wide array of health conditions.

 

So, improve your stress responses with mindful awareness.

 

“Cortisol could be described as “Miss Misunderstood” of hormones. Elevated levels of cortisol is not always bad. Low levels of cortisol is not bad either. Cortisol is there for a reason. The body uses cortisol to deal with stress and pain and it fluctuates according to the body’s demand. The problem arises when the stress is not dealt with for an extended period of time and as a result the body’s stress adaption mechanism breaks down and cortisol levels go crazy. In order to prevent such a fate, stress reduction could definitely offer significant help.” – YawnCentral

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Improve Heart Disease with Mindfulness

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“Think about it: Heart disease and diabetes, which account for more deaths in the U.S. and worldwide than everything else combined, are completely preventable by making comprehensive lifestyle changes. Without drugs or surgery.”- Dean Ornish

 

Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer, claiming more lives than all forms of cancer combined. “Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women. About 610,000 people die of heart disease in the United States every year–that’s 1 in every 4 deaths. Every year about 735,000 Americans have a heart attack.” – Centers for Disease Control.

 

A myriad of treatments has been developed for heart disease including a variety of surgical procedures and medications. In addition, lifestyle changes have proved to be effective including quitting smoking, weight reduction, improved diet, physical activity, and reducing stresses. Contemplative practices, such as tai chi and yoga, have also been shown to be helpful for heart health (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/cardiovascular/). In addition, mindfulness practices have also been shown to be helpful for producing the kinds of other lifestyle changes needed such as smoking cessation, weight reduction, and stress reduction.

 

One problem with the employment of mindfulness treatment programs to treat disease is that they require patients to meet frequently with professional therapists in either individual or group settings. This can be inconvenient, costly, and time consuming. So, it would be very helpful if mindfulness based techniques could be successfully delivered over the internet. In today’s Research News article “Web-Based Mindfulness Intervention in Heart Disease: A Randomized Controlled Trial”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1149633058393952/?type=3&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4671576/

Younge and colleagues test whether a web-based mindfulness training program can be successfully used for the treatment of cardiovascular disease. They compared a randomly assigned group of patients with heart disease undergoing usual medical care plus a 12-week on-line mindfulness training to a group only receiving usual care. The mindfulness training program included different meditations, self-reflection, yoga, and practical assignments and suggestions for using mindfulness in day-to-day life. They found that the mindfulness intervention group had significantly improved exercise capacity, compared to usual treatment, as measured with a 6-minute walking test of cardiovascular function. The improvements included decreased heart rate and blood pressure.

 

The fact that mindfulness improved exercise capacity is important as it is well known that a well-designed exercise program is fundamental to the treatment of heart disease. This combined with the proven ability of mindfulness training to help with the other lifestyle changes that are helpful for heart disease suggest that mindfulness training should be included in a heart disease treatment program. The fact that the mindfulness training was delivered over the internet is very important. This markedly improves the convenience, affordability, and availability of this treatment to patients.

 

So, improve heart disease with mindfulness.

 

“If you knew you could change your lifestyle and diet and avoid heart disease and other things, you should do it.” – Laila Ali

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Observe Mindfully and be Less Stressed

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“I wanted to share the experience of how yoga and meditation have transformed my life, how they have enabled me to observe who I am, first in my body, and then emotionally, and on to a kind of spiritual path.” – Mariel Hemingway

 

Stress is universal. We are constantly under some form of stress. In fact, if we don’t have enough stress, we seek out more. There appears to be an optimum level of stress for which we strive. If our stress level is too low, we feel bored and do things to increase it, such as riding a roller coaster, going out to an action movie, thrill seeking, engaging socially etc. On the other hand, if your stress level is too high, we feel tense and do things to decrease it, such as resting, taking depressant drugs like alcohol, withdrawing from social interactions, taking vacations etc.

 

Stress actually can strengthen us. Muscles don’t grow and strengthen unless they are moderately stressed in exercise. Moderate mental stress can actually increase the size and connectivity of brain areas devoted to the activity. Moderate social stress can help us become more adept in social interactions. Moderate work stress can help us be more productive and improve as an employee, etc. So, stress can be a good thing promoting growth and flourishing. The key word here is moderate or what we called the optimum level of stress. Too little or too much stress can be damaging.

 

Unfortunately for many of us living in a competitive modern environment stress is all too often higher than desirable. In addition, many of the normal mechanisms for dealing with stress have been eliminated. The business of modern life removes opportunities for rest, working extra hours, and limiting or passing up entirely vacations to stay competitive. Persistently high levels of stress are damaging and can directly produce disease or debilitation increasing susceptibility to other diseases. Chronic stress can produce a condition called distress which can lead to headaches, upset stomach, elevated blood pressure, chest pain, and problems sleeping and can make other diseases worse.

 

Stress is epidemic worldwide, but particularly in the United States. It has been found that over two thirds of Americans experienced symptoms of stress such as fatigue, irritability or anger, or changes in sleeping habits. Forty-three percent of all adults suffer adverse health effects from stress and 75% to 90% of all doctor’s office visits are for stress-related ailments and complaints.

 

It is beyond the ability of the individual to change the environment to reduce stress, so it is important that methods be found to reduce the individual’s responses to stress and thereby reduce the conversion of stress to distress, reducing the damaging effects of chronic stress. Contemplative practices have been shown to reduce the psychological and physiological responses to stress (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/stress/). Because of their ability to relieve stress, mindfulness trainings are increasingly being practiced by individuals and are even being encouraged in some workplaces.

 

Exactly what aspects of mindfulness are effective for stress are not known. There have been identified five facets of mindfulness; observing, describing, non-judging of inner experience, non-reactivity to inner experience, and acting with awareness. In today’s Research News article “The “Observing” Facet of Mindfulness Moderates Stress/Symptom Relations Only Among Meditators.”

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Neale-Lorello and colleagues investigate the relationship of these five facets of mindfulness with perceived levels of stress and physical symptoms of distress. They further separated their participants into experienced meditators and non-meditators. They found that meditators were higher in mindfulness, lower in perceived stress and had fewer physical symptoms than non-meditators demonstrating the efficacy of meditation for stress relief.

 

They further found marked differences between the groups in the relationships of the facets of mindfulness with stress and physical symptoms. In the non-meditators all of the facet except observing were negatively associated with both perceived stress and physical symptoms while for meditators none of the facets were associated with perceived stress while only non-judging and acting with awareness were negatively associated with physical symptoms. To some extent the lack of significant findings for the meditators may be the result of the fact that the meditators were already low in perceived stress and physical symptoms.

 

In a more complex analysis they found, not surprisingly, that life stress was positively associated with physical symptoms. But, this was not true for the meditators who were also high in the observing facet of mindfulness. “This result implies that mindfulness meditation training may allow people who attend closely to their experience to separate out the objective contents of what is observed from their cognitive and/or emotional reactions to them. Such a parsing would free up resources that might otherwise be expended on negative emotional responses … leaving the more mindful individual better able to deploy effective actions in response to stressors.” (Neale-Lorello).

 

These findings indicate that meditation increases mindfulness reducing the impact of stress on distress; physical symptoms. It does so, in part by increasing the observation of experience which appears to buffer the meditator from the negative physical effects of stress. So, meditation increases mindfulness, reduces perceived stress and physical symptoms and buffers the individual from the ability of stress to produce distress.

 

So, observe mindfully and be less stressed.

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

“You begin by letting thoughts flow and watching them. The very observation slows down the mind till it stops altogether. Once the mind is quiet, keep it quiet. Don’t get bored with peace, be in it, go deeper into it.” – Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

Beat Pain with Mindfulness

psyjdc 1 Comment

 

“A common but unfortunate saying is that the pain is in your head….this saying implies that it’s not real, but fabricated. This is not true. However, pain is located in your head, within your brain. When you have pain, the brain is very active processing it. How your brain processes it determines the pain you experience. So yes, your pain experience is in your head, but it’s real. It can be measured, and it can be changed for the better.” – Adriaan Louw

 

Mindfulness practices including meditation have been shown to reduce perceived pain (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/pain/). The studies that examined mindfulness and pain, however, did not include any control conditions to account for the effects of a placebo or participant expectations about the efficacy of the treatment. The placebo effect is powerful and can produce outcomes that are very similar to those produced by different forms of treatment including therapy and drugs. This effect is based upon the psychological tendency of people to produce outcomes that conform to their expectations. So, if the participant believes that a treatment will make him/her better, it will, regardless of whether the particular treatment is actually effective or not.

 

The placebo effect presents a difficult issue for treatment research and most studies do not include any mechanism for assessing the expectations of the participants. Thus many reported positive results may in fact be due to the placebo effect rather than an actual effect of the treatment. So, it is possible that the reported efficacy for mindfulness training to reduce perceived pain may in fact be due to a placebo effect. Even if a treatment is actually effective, the placebo effect may be so strong that the true effect cannot be distinguished from the placebo effect. It is very difficult to separate the two.

 

A potential method for examining whether an effect is due to a treatment or a placebo is to look at the neural mechanisms underlying the two.  In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness Meditation-Based Pain Relief Employs Different Neural Mechanisms than Placebo and Sham Mindfulness Meditation-Induced Analgesia”

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http://jn.sfn.org/press/November-18-2015-Issue/zns04615015307.pdf

Zeidan and colleagues implement this strategy and investigate the neural systems that respond to meditation vs. placebo for pain. They actually implement three control groups, placebo conditioning, sham mindfulness meditation, and book-listening for comparison with meditation and also record functional neuroimaging for each group while responding to an experimental pain condition. The placebo condition involved telling the participant that they were being administered a pain killing cream which was in actuality an inert petroleum jelly. The sham meditation condition only instructed the participant to close their eyes and breath and meditate but without specific instructions as to how to meditate. The experimental pain procedure involved the application of a non-damaging hot probe. During the application of the probe the participants rated their pain and also had their brains scanned with functional MRI.

 

They found that only the meditation group had an increase in mindfulness and that all groups except the book-listening control group had decreased pain intensity and pain unpleasantness ratings. The meditation group, however, had the largest decrease in perceived pain and pain unpleasantness. They also found that different neural structures were activated with the pain manipulation with the different conditions. Meditation produced a greater activation in brain regions associated with the cognitive processing of pain, including the orbitofrontal, subgenual anterior cingulate, and anterior insular cortex. While the placebo produced increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and deactivation of sensory processing regions. Sham meditation did not produce significant neural activity, but rather greater reductions in the respiration rate.

 

These results are interesting and important. They demonstrate that meditation is more effective than either a placebo or a sham meditation in reducing perceived pain and pain unpleasantness. In addition, they demonstrate that there were different neural mechanisms involved in the effects of each on pain. The fact that they work differently in the brain indicates that meditation’s effectiveness at relieving pain is not due to a placebo or subject expectancy effect or to the conditions of meditation. Hence, meditation is an effective treatment for pain.

 

So, meditate and beat pain.

 

“Your brain plays a major role in controlling your pain. How you are feeling or what you are thinking about your pain has a direct impact on what happens to the pain signal in the spinal cord, and thus has a huge effect on how much pain you feel.”- Charles Argoff

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies