Experiment #2: Meditating

Helpful benefits, some science that might explain why it works so well, and a simple meditation I like that's easy to do anywhere.

If reading time is hard to come by or you’re interested in a more human experience, there is a “Read-to-You” version of this article.

[Read-to-You Version] Experiment #2: Meditating

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About ten years ago, I started experimenting with meditation. I plan to continue for the rest of my life.

Of all of the M.O.N.K.E.Y. B.A.R.S., I have found meditation to be the most important. It is the cornerstone, the foundation, the fundamental frequency. If I could only do one of the M.O.N.K.E.Y. B.A.R.S., I’d do this one.

My practice has taken many forms and has gone through many iterations, but it’s the biggest reason why stress and anxiety that used to live “rent free" in my mind for weeks or months can now usually be dissolved within a matter of hours or even minutes — and it has done so much more than help reduce my suffering.

The benefits I’ve found in meditating regularly

There’s a saying:

“Control the breath, control the mind.”

Meditation, because it helps regulate the breath, has a byproduct of bringing the mind under control. I think this is why I, and many others, experience increased feelings of:

1. Peacefulness

2. Calmness

3. Steadiness / resilience to stress

4. Patience, gratitude, forgiveness with and for myself (or self-compassion)

5. Patience, gratitude, forgiveness with and for others (or compassion)

These effects are particularly useful to folks like me who experience high anxiety, but are also useful to anyone who experiences stress. In an article published by the Harvard Medical School, meditation was acknowledged to be:

“One of the easiest and most achievable stress-relieving techniques… A research review published in JAMA Internal Medicine in January 2014 found meditation helpful for relieving anxiety, pain, and depression. For depression, meditation was about as effective as an antidepressant.

But steadying the mind is really just the beginning.

Once the mind is not occupied by the “monkeys” of insecurities, doubts, and fears — or “mind stuff,” as Swami Satchidananda describes in his translation of The Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali — then we have more mind capacity and attention we can place elsewhere. I think this is why I, and many others, experience feelings of:

6. Greater insight

7. Sharper intuition

8. Greater Creativity

Not to be overly simplistic about it, but when I feel creative, I create things. When I’m exhausted, stressed, agitated, etc, I tend not to (or I do so begrudgingly and it feels like “work”). The greater intuition and insight that comes from meditating helps me lock into a creative “flow” more easily, which helps me create things I love, like music. Doing so makes me, and many others, feel:

9. Happy/joyful

10. Optimistic

11. Fulfilled

When I was exhausted, stressed, and agitated more often, I used to struggle with my energy levels throughout the day. I drank two cups of coffee (at least) and would have a wave of greater insight, intuition, creativity, which made me feel productive, but as any coffee drinker knows, the effect wears off. A crash would come about 90 minutes later and I’d have a wave of feeling groggy, unfocused, and/or even irritable. This decreased my insight, intuition, and creativity and made me less productive. It made days feel like a rollercoaster of highs and lows. Since meditating, I haven’t found the need for coffee because I, and many others, experience:

12. Increased energy

13. Sustained alertness throughout the day with no crashes

And as a result, notice:

14. More productivity

Over time, feeling happy, feeling steady, feeling peaceful, doing creative projects I enjoy, and getting into a creative flow regularly makes me, and many others, feel:

15. Connected to something deep within myself

16. Connected to something bigger than myself

17. A sense of purpose

Each meditation opens the door just a little bit wider to this connectedness, which is why I, and many other meditators, may feel:

18. A greater sense of spirituality

To summarize, I have found that the benefits others name about meditation have been true for me as well, including increases in my peacefulness, calmness, steadiness, resilience to stress, patience, gratitude, forgiveness towards myself and others (i.e. self-compassion/compassion ), insight, intuition, creativity, happiness/joy, optimism, fulfillment, energy, sustained alertness throughout the day, productivity, connectedness to something deep within myself, connectedness to something bigger than myself, sense of purpose, and sense of spirituality.

Why does it work?

Sometimes I think of meditation like a piece of technology or a hack that people figured out millenia ago and passed down through any means possible — spoken word, scripture, etc.

One of the oldest spiritual texts, The Upanishads, describes a meditation practice this way:

“With patience and serenity, the restless mind is gradually made calm and creative. This is the way [people] of wisdom, attain self-mastery, harmony, and peace.” (Svetasvatara Upanishad 2:9-10, translated by Swami Premananda)

The understanding of why it works so well might have gotten lost over the centuries, but there seems to be more and more science being done to give us answers!

Meditation seems to take advantage of our brain’s neuroplasticity. This 2-minute video helps explain it well, but essentially it’s our brain’s ability to “rewire” itself.

Neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson with the University of Wisconsin studied various forms of Buddhist meditation. His work was described in an article in The Wall Street Journal (January 10, 2003) by its science writer Sharon Begley:

“After eight weeks, and again 16 weeks later, EEG measurements showed that activity in the frontal cortices of the meditators had shifted: There were now more neuronal firings in left than right regions nestled just behind the forehead. That pattern is associated with positive feelings such as joy, happiness, and low levels of anxiety.”

This suggests that the more we meditate, the more we activate the parts of our brain that help us feel joy, happiness, and low levels of anxiety. The more we activate those parts of our brain (i.e. through regular meditation) the stronger those parts get until the “rewiring” shifts the way we experience the events and people in our lives.

Another neuroscientist, Dr. Sara Lazar with the Harvard Medical School, describes how “meditation can literally change your brain” in this wonderfully concise and fascinating 8-minute TedTalk. I totally recommend watching it.

Dr. Lazar studied people who had never meditated before and had them do an 8-week meditation-based program where they meditated 30-40 minutes per day.

Three noteworthy things happened.

Growth in the learning, memory, and emotional part of brain

Dr. Lazar’s brain scans showed that over the eight weeks, the left hippocampus became larger in the people who meditated (red) and stayed about the same for the people who didn’t (blue).

She describes that the hippocampus:

“…is the area that’s important for learning and memory, it’s also important for emotion regulation. What’s interesting is that there’s less grey matter in this region in people who had depression and PTSD.”

This helps me understand why meditation has helped with my bouts with depression.

Growth in the perspective-taking, empathy, and compassion part of brain

Dr. Lazar’s brain scans showed that over the eight weeks, the temporo-parietal junction became larger in the people who meditated (red) and stayed about the same for the people who didn’t (blue).

She describes that this region is:

“…important for perspective-taking and empathy and compassion.”

This helps me understand why I have experienced greater feelings of patience, gratitude, and forgiveness for myself and others (compassion and self-compassion).

Shrinkage in the “fight-or-flight” part of brain

One of my favorite things Dr. Lazar observed in her studies is that meditation reduces the size of the amygdala, which is the “fight-or-flight” part of our brain. She says:

“The change in the amygdala is… representing the change in the people’s reaction or relationship to their environment… They still had their stressful jobs, all the difficult people in their lives were still being difficult, and the economy still sucked, but their amygdala got smaller, and they were reporting less stress.”

This helps me understand why I feel greater steadiness and resilience to stress even as the world has gone through a pandemic, economic instability, and political polarization.

Lots more, but…

There is a LOT of data on this and it’s worth learning more about it, but that said, I experienced meditation’s benefits long before I started investigating what makes it work. Do we need to know why gravity works for us to experience gravity?

I keep going back to the idea that meditation is a technology that generations before us figured out and passed down. Someone figured out how to hack our brain to make life more enjoyable, less stressful, and filled with wonder. They passed it onto the next generation and each generation kept passing it down — and it’s been happening for thousands of years.

So let’s keep it going…

A simple meditation for anytime and anywhere

Perhaps the best evidence of meditation’s benefits is what we can observe and feel within our own mind, body, and life.

Trying it for ourselves couldn’t be easier. In fact, there are so many ways to meditate, it might even feel overwhelming!

It doesn’t have to be complicated. I’ll be writing about some of my favorite meditations in future articles, but a simple and effective one I recommend that can be done anywhere is this:

1. Decide how long you want to meditate and set a timer with a soothing alarm bell. If you’ve never done it, try doing it for two minutes. Two is better than none. Five will have more effect than two. Ten more than five. Twenty is a pretty standard recommendation to build up to.

2. Sit in a comfortable place where you can make your back straight. Sitting on a chair with your feet on the floor is perfect. If you can comfortably sit on the floor, that works too.

3. Make your spine as straight as possible.

4. Place your hands gently in your lap.

5. Close your eyes.

6. Move your attention to the earth under you. (As Swami Satchidananda says in his translation of The Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali, “We can achieve steadiness through meditation on the infinite – anything great, huge, well-settled, and well-established. Tiny things always shake. So, we can think of the earth, or of how steady a huge mountain is.”)

7. Bring that earth energy (your attention) up into the base of the spine.

8. Keep your attention there for a couple of breaths and allow yourself to feel calmer and more centered.

9. Then, breathe in and move that energy (your attention) up the spine to the center of the forehead, behind and a little above the eyes.

10. On the “out” breath, move the energy (your attention) back down to the base of the spine.

11. Continue with “in” breaths that move the energy (your attention) up and “out” breaths that move the energy down between those points until your timer rings.

Then, rinse and repeat. I’ve been experimenting with meditating regularly for years. At the beginning, I found that one day was better than no days. One week had more of an effect than one day. One month had more of an effect than one week, etc.

My spiritual teacher and meditation instructor, Swami Nityananda, in her book Awake: The Yoga Of Pure Awareness, says this:

"If you seem to encounter anything other than pure light and pure love, meditate more."

I don’t know about you, but I encounter plenty of things that are other than pure light and pure love, which is probably why spiritual teachers say meditation is the practice of a lifetime. The exciting news is that we begin to feel the effects quickly and they grow over time.

So I plan to keep my meditation experiment going. If you also experiment with meditation or are planning to, I’d love to hear about your journey. What meditations do you like? Have you found any interesting scientific studies on it? Tell us in the comments below and we can crowd-source the information.

Happy meditating, and I hope you have a very happy day!

With love,
Jonathan

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