It’s fashionable these days to offer mindfulness moments or meditation sessions in corporations, schools, yoga classes, etc., but among committed Buddhist practitioners, it should be noted that there are many different types of “just sitting.” Practices are often focused on particular challenges that the mind poses in terms of attention, tied to breathing, others to complex visualizations, or focused attention on a single topic or thought process like compassion or equanimity.
So let’s examine one of the simpler practices to begin with: merely resting in awareness. In this practice, the sole goal is to simply be where you are. To eliminate (to the extent that you can), all other distractions, and be in the present. This is much harder than it seems. The mind wanders furiously, but when done successfully, neuroscientific research has found that this practice has some really specific effects on the brain, and its resulting thought patterns.
Scientific Findings & Practical Effects
Neuroscientists have found that in highly-trained meditators, simply focusing on the present moment, causes the brain to phase-lock into highly synchronized gamma waves. In essence, it calms the noise of the mind, and so when you introduce an external stimuli, it matches the phase that the mind is in, and it can be more clearly seen. It produces a deeper impression on the mind, because whatever that subject is, can be “called out” as it were.
It’s like the difference between dropping a stone into a calm lake (where you can see the ripples clearly as they pass across the entirety of the lake), versus dropping it into a turbulent lake (where the waveform gets lost among the chaos). So if you rest in that awareness, and then intentionally call your attention to a single idea, like compassion for others, this produces a much greater synaptic impact. Just as you remember a singular moment in your life where emotions were heightened above the underlying noise, what this does is calm the noise itself, so that you can focus on a topic apart from intense emotional stressors. You get all of the impact, with none of the disturbance.
This is particularly useful in those who regularly encounter intensely stressful situations. People experiencing depression, or PTSD following extreme events like war or rape, or constantly disturbing environments like prison, see great benefits from mind training. This is not meant to replace drug therapies, but can definitely improve the response to medication, and ultimate help wean people off meds, or at a minimum interact more productively with that medication.
What medication tends to do in the mind is level everything out. It tends to mute the reaction to the stressor, but doesn’t necessarily calm the underlying turbulence. To use our lake metaphor again, it’s like forcing the surface to calm down for a set period of time, while the lake underneath is still wildly churning. Meditation does the opposite. It doesn’t seek to mute the stressor, rather it calms the underlying turbulence and distances you from it long enough for you to see it clearly, analyze what’s happening, and gain control over it yourself. In essence it puts you back in the driver’s seat in a situation that may have felt completely out of your control.
One technique used to help children with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is to have them listen to a one-minute recording of a series of pings. They wear noise-cancelling headphones to create a silent bubble, and then a periodic bell sounds. They’re told that whenever they hear the bells, they are to do one thing, bring their mind back to the present. They are instructed that whatever wandering the mind has done, when you hear the bell, bring your focus back to where you are, in the present moment. Researchers found that subjects who used this simple method were not just using it periodically, but began to wear the headphones for extended periods of time. For some, it meant that medication became either no longer needed, or lower dosages were required to produce the same results. In others, it simply meant that they were more conscious of when to regularly take their medication, and the fact of that task became less fraught with stresses itself.
Another example of where mindfulness training has been highly effective, is in prison. Prison is one of the most stressful environments on Earth, and regrettably, America locks up more people in that environment than any other country. We clearly have a problem in terms of a prison pipeline, but mindfulness may offer one piece of a solution for those impacted by it, and hopefully reduce recidivism.
One of the things that happens when a person is under long-term stress (such as prison time, or the poverty that contributes to it), is that negativity remains perseverant in the amygdala. This part of the brain controls emotion, and when overwhelmed, violent lashing-out is often the result. In such conditions, mental reactions to an event can actually stay actively firing synapses in the brain, long after the event in question has passed (as in the case of PTSD).
Researchers have found that when mindfulness training is used in prisons, participant’s ratings on the Hostility Index lowers dramatically. In fact, they can now directly measure a correlation between the number of hours of mindfulness practice, and the rapidity with which the amygdala recovers from a stressful trigger event. Much more study is needed (and should be adequately funded) in this area, but initial test programs have fared very well, and the positive results they’re producing, are encouraging. Frankly, anything positive in that environment, should be pursed with a vengeance.
Additionally, for people suffering from depression, mindfulness helps with addressing the horrible problem of endlessly recursive thoughts. People who are depressed, tend to repetitively focus on negative, self-harming thoughts. Again, Big Pharma’s way of addressing this, has been to flat-line all the human emotional responses. Those on medication, often complain that both negative and positive feelings are muted, and life itself takes on a dullness. The problem with this approach, is that if your experience of medicating depression is that life has less color, you’re less likely to want to continue on medication, because the experience of it doesn’t just remove harm, it also takes away joy.
By contrast, mindfulness training calms the mental noise enough so that the participant can literally “catch a breath” from recursive thoughts, and distance themselves from them momentarily, enough to look at them objectively. It doesn’t eliminate the thoughts, but it does give the depressed person some well-needed distance from those thoughts. Whereas before they may have been drowning in uncontrollable negative thoughts about themselves, mindfulness training puts them above the fray just long enough to regain control. It expands your horizon enough so you can actually see that “you” are not your thoughts. It expands your palette of possible ways to be in relation to your thoughts, and breaks the vicious cycle of repetition.
In the brain itself, there’s a lot of activity in what’s known as the “Default Narrative Network.” This is where you, in essence, develop a story about yourself. After mindfulness training, brain scans reveal that activity in that narrative network of synapses decreases, and a new, lateral network opens up as a counterpoint. Again, the default network doesn’t shut down, but you’re at least offered a depersonalized conceptual alternative, without the use of drugs that might have other harmful side-effects.
There is also evidence that mindfulness training assists with cognitive augmentation. I mentioned the effects of stress on the amygdala, but the entire limbic brain and brain stem react to stresses with survival responses. Marines given mindfulness training prior to deployment, get help in protecting themselves from impaired cognition during battle stress situations. This not only helps them to recover better when they return to civilian life, it also helps them to be more effective soldiers. By that, I don't mean that they become better killers. Rather, I mean that because they are centered and mindful, they are less likely to accidentally kill civilian non-combatants even when in the chaos of battle. Mindfulness enables them to be more resilient over time, as well as to act more ethically and professionally.
So What Exactly Is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally. So let’s take that apart and examine each piece in turn:
+ Paying Attention in a Particular Way – Here, your putting yourself back in the driver’s seat. Another useful metaphor here would be a flashlight. Rather than it flailing around wherever, you can choose to direct it, and focus it’s attention on positive goals.
+ On Purpose – You drive your mind with intention, adding another layer of self-control to your thought processes.
+ In the Present Moment – No future, no past, only the now. Again, the now is where you have agency. You can’t alter the past or fully anticipate the future. So stressing over either is not helpful. Worrying about the future only means you suffer twice. Stay present. Meta-awareness. What is happening right now?
+ Non-judgmentally – This is hugely important too. We don’t forgive ourselves enough for trying to navigate the craziness that is the world, and making mistakes in the process. Deal with your human nature honestly. You’re going to succeed, fail, triumph and screw up. That’s life. But when being mindful, you must get some distance from those actions in order to view them objectively. So mindfulness calls us to center our attention, and JUST silently watch from a distance. It forces us to ask, “How much value do you decide to give something? What meaning to you apply to an event? Is this really the ‘worst thing ever?’”
The human mind has limits on how much it can pay attention to at any one time, how much shock it can absorb, how much negativity we can endure. All of the actions above help us to frame challenges better, and give ourselves the mental space to compensate for our inherent limitations. This is one reason why we should be interested in mindfulness training. This is about maintaining a capacity to deal with challenges. It makes you resilient.
Something interesting about those who are skilled meditators, is that scientists have found they also have greater mental plasticity. It should be noted that this is a neutral quality of the mind. Neuroplasticity and the relationship of the mind to the body are incontrovertible. Certain psychosocial factors influence the body. Example: Increased stress in the environment, can make an asthmatic person have a more intense reaction, with greater physical lung inflammation.
However, what this also suggests, is its inverse. If negative physical reactions can be provoked by uncontrolled mental stresses, then perhaps concentrated focus on compassion, equanimity, generosity, and self-care, can produce positive physical outcomes - if only just to make you feel like you WANT to get up, put some suntan lotion on, and take a walk in the Sun. There’s no downside to that one.
"It's not the strongest of the species that survives, or the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." – Charles Darwin