Meditation, stress, and the brain.
Tonight was class #1 of a 6-week introduction to Buddhist meditation course I'm taking at the San Francisco Buddhist Center. I've been experimenting with meditation on my own for maybe 6 months now, using various readings to guide my efforts, and have found that when I get into a groove of meditating fairly consistently during a couple/few straight weeks -- meditating 3 times a week, say -- I have a lower baseline stress level, and am more able to "see" my thoughts as I'm thinking (which is key to the process of interrupting and/or changing stress-causing thinking patterns). If I produce more compassion in the process, hey, that's a bonus.
But when it comes to the benefits of meditation, don't just take it from me. Consider reports like "Buddha on the Brain", from Wired, which reads, in part:
In June 2002, Davidson's associate Antoine Lutz positioned 128 electrodes on the head of Mattieu Ricard. A French-born monk from the Shechen Monastery in Katmandu, Ricard had racked up more than of 10,000 hours of meditation.
Lutz asked Ricard to meditate on "unconditional loving-kindness and compassion." He immediately noticed powerful gamma activity - brain waves oscillating at roughly 40 cycles per second - indicating intensely focused thought. Gamma waves are usually weak and difficult to see. Those emanating from Ricard were easily visible, even in the raw EEG output. Moreover, oscillations from various parts of the cortex were synchronized - a phenomenon that sometimes occurs in patients under anesthesia.
The researchers had never seen anything like it. Worried that something might be wrong with their equipment or methods, they brought in more monks, as well as a control group of college students inexperienced in meditation. The monks produced gamma waves that were 30 times as strong as the students'. In addition, larger areas of the meditators' brains were active, particularly in the left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for positive emotions.
Meditation, stress, and the brain.
Tonight was class #1 of a 6-week introduction to Buddhist meditation course I'm taking at the San Francisco Buddhist Center. I've been experimenting with meditation on my own for maybe 6 months now, using various readings to guide my efforts, and have found that when I get into a groove of meditating fairly consistently during a couple/few straight weeks -- meditating 3 times a week, say -- I have a lower baseline stress level, and am more able to "see" my thoughts as I'm thinking (which is key to the process of interrupting and/or changing stress-causing thinking patterns). If I produce more compassion in the process, hey, that's a bonus.
But when it comes to the benefits of meditation, don't just take it from me. Consider reports like "Buddha on the Brain", from Wired, which reads, in part: