This is Your Brain on Meditation

that I need to do it. Um. So Usually it comes up in the chaos of life and uh, and then I start to think about how horrible I am at it. So so you can't actually sit and and do like you or you don't normally sit around and do like, say two our meditation. No no, But I

do it from time to time. And the reason is because if I can just get ten seconds, ten seconds, five seconds, doesn't matter of some sort of state in which my mind goes blank and doesn't you know, fill up with groceralists or goofy thoughts or you know, my back hurt or something like that, then I feel like that is is a huge wind um or at least, you know, I come away with feeling a little bit clearer and lighter. Yeah, well, for my own part, I'm

also not uh seemingly capable of lengthy meditation. And uh and for for a while I was trying to do like a little meditation every morning, and then I kind

of thought out of the habit of it. But that that was particularly nice, where you just sort of, you know, get up, I have my coffee and my smoothie, and then go into the sun room for you know, a couple of minutes and just try and not think about anything and just sort of sit there and let this is gonna I mean, a lot of this is gonna sound kind of hippie did people were going to tie everything back in the science, but kind of let life sort of happen to you and and and sort of

lessen your role as a participant in life for just a few minutes. And then, of course, and then I started thinking about, oh, well, you know, I'm recording a podcast this morning, or who what am I blogging about today? Or you know, what is the cat doing over there

by the window? That kind of thing. But but yeah, it's kind of like, hey, you're talking about you think about it during the chaos and it is kind of the idea of rising above the chaos in the same way that, uh, you could have a fierce storm on Earth and if you were in an airplane, you could fly above the cloud cover and everything would be clear.

And the basic idea of meditation is that so much of our life is that storm, and we are always capable of rising above it, you know, and and experiencing life as it as it actually is without all these emotional storms. I think I always think about Unfortunately Kenna Reeves um, because he plays at Hearthor right, and there's just one scene in the movie. Yeah, yeah, I'm not

familiar with this of adaptation. Um yeah, I'm like gonna, I'm sorry, I'm not not talking about the Matrix right now, although he did play I kind of said Hearthur and that right, Um, But he's in the middle of this maelstrom, like literally this storm that is blowing up around him, and he's meditating and he's you know, completely unflappable and

has moved into some sort of trance like experience. And this one, you know, we know that, um that this sort of level of meditation is something called like Nirvana, right or somebody which is one of the It's the highest level that you could ever achieve. And that's what made him said, Arthur Right or Kiana Reeves either one. Um, but you know that the idea is that you can block out the world and just refresh. He plays it

hard to got him the Buddha. Yes, Okay, I'm pretty sure it was Kiana Reeves, because I define it funny that he picks roles that don't have a lot of dialogue in them, and this was one of them. He just had to sort out there and look pretty and it's kind of yeah, he had to sit there with his eyes closed. Well, it's interesting that we ring up movies because I think before I actually tried meditation or even really had an idea of what it was, which

was a long stretch of my life. Uh, so far, I just had meditation was the kind of thing like a shell in Monk might do in a movie before I started whipping people's butts. That you know that that was basically the only real idea that meditation was this cool Eastern thing that people in movies sometimes did, and they looked real serene and cool when they did it, and uh, and so I did have the right idea

that it was somehow involved calmness and focusing the mind. Well, see, I think that's the interesting thing about meditation is it means something different to each person and there are a million different ways to meditate and techniques and ways to use it. But of course, when we see it in the purest sense in the East, you know from which it came, we see it as particularly like in Japanese and Buddhism, um um, there's really no goal of reaching

this ultimate state of being or nirvana. It's just about sitting. For them, it's about sitting period, right, um. But we know here in the West that we've been using it as a fantasy at right, Like, okay, if you want to lower your stress, then you should meditate. If you

wanna get rich, you should meditate. If you want to get skinny, get you know, the laundry list of this kind of a magical thing that can solve any problem, which it's not right And and of course there is this mystical aspect to it because when you do, when you can get instant some sort of state like that, and and your brain is engaged in that, it does feel like something that's special, special, and mystical um, an experience that only you are having right well, and it

is tied into various religious traditions, um, even showing up in some Christian traditions. And like some there comes a point where prayer crosses over and really becomes more of meditation. Uh. And let me back up just a second to talk about two distinct types of meditation, just to give a deeper idea of what we're talking about. Um. There is

uh concentrative meditation, and then there is mindful meditation. And the Now the analogy I like to think of is uh, think of a clear vortex, like a clear vortex of water, um, the kind that might exist in a in a soda container after you've put filled it with water and shook it up, you know, like a whirlpool, and it's clear,

all right, No no bubbles that don't complicate the metaphor so. UM. Now imagine taking say a blue die and pouring that in, and that blue die represents um worrying about the future. And then let's say you put in a green die as well, and that die represents uh fretting about the past and so and then there are other dies as well having to do with other concerns and worries in your life, and the more you put in into it, that the vortex just becomes blacker and blacker and just

you know, in this horrible brown color. And part of the idea of meditation is that is it so much of our life is like that. We're this vortex of thought with all these things wrapped up in it. And yeah, and those that's the and that's the guys, that's the lens through which we view the world. And so the goal of meditation is to simplify that vortex. And the concentrative approach is uh generally actually involved stuff like um,

repeating mantras, uh, focusing on a single word. And it's the idea here is like, instead of putting all these different dyes into the vortex, I'm gonna put a single die. I'm gonna put this single um, I don't know, uh, pick a color, pink, pink die. We're gonna put this single pink dye that is this mantra or this phrase or just this ome that that's going to replace the muddle of red and green and blue. So so the

vortex cannot disappear. Because the vortexes are thought process the vortex is us and the vortex is the way we view the world. But if we can focus it on one thing, then it simplifies everything. Okay, So it's reductionism, yes, And then there's mindful meditation, and mindful meditation UM is about recognizing the flow of experience, the thoughts, the sites,

the sounds. So in this one, it's not as much about focusing putting a different color into the vortex vortex, but focusing on the vortex itself really, So so that's okay. So the Maelstrom is the Maelstrom, and it is what it is, yeah, and just realizing that the Maelstrom and like and realizing what's happening with So that's that's that's the way I kind of tend to view the two different different versions here. So those are essentially two different

kinds of meditation, okay. And I think it's interesting too to look at this, like what's happening inside the actual brain? Um, just to give us an idea. We know that the brain always has some level of electrical activity going on, measurable electrical measurable right right, And the kny G can measure that activity, and so you have different types of

brain waves UM from slow to fast. You have delta, theta, alpha, and bed beta, and we know that delta is associated with deep sleep, and on the other end of the spectrum, we know that beta is associated when UM, you're working

on a goal oriented task. Right, So during meditation, what we do know is that Theta waves right there there, couched right there next to delta, those are the most common brain waves in the frontal and middle parts of the brain, which are responsible for monitoring other thought processes or mental processes. So in other words, this part of the brain is basically dialing down the awareness of the other brain UM. And of course we're seeing this not

in just like a casual meditators. We're seeing this and people who are highly experienced meditators UM. And then we also see that alpha waves show up in the posterior parts of the brain and this indicates a wakeful rest UM. A study described in Science Daily brain Waves and Meditation makes the connection that the brain wave activity is much more changed in groups of meditators than groups who just relax UM. So the extrapolation is that the brain is able to relax and focus a lot more in this

meditative state. So there's definitely a difference because some people think, well, can I just sit there and relax, I can watch TV, I can read a book, or I can just sit there, but not necessarily meditate. The fact is is that you still have your brain engaged different parts in in um thinking, right. Yeah, Like people often talk about well, I'm just gonna go home and turn off my brain and by that and I mean watching TV. But yeah, it's it's different things

are going on. So while if you're just trying your hand at meditation, or or certainly if you're inspired to give meditation to try after listening to this podcast, and by all means, do and write us and tell us what you think. Um, just you know, you may find yourself setting there going, well, I'm sitting here doing nothing. I sure could whip out my smartphone and check my email as long as I'm setting here, or or I could start thinking about this or it wouldn't be better off,

you know, catching up on the show. I just started watching an HBO or some thing. But but that's you're then you're engaging different parts of your brain, and you're you're bringing in a lot of mental activity that you're ideally trying to remove. From that vortex, right, because they're bombard at all the time. Right. And actually I think this is probably a good time to talk about memes, right. Yes, Um,

we've talked about Susan Blackmore. She is m ameticist and um, she's built on Richard dawkins selfish gene premise that our genes carrying carry on only to perpetuate themselves sort of regardless of the Organismy hair too, she has multicolored hair. She's pretty wonderful. It's just from like a rock star of this area. Um. And Dawkins also said that we've

created a cultural equivalent in something he calls memes. So this is the spread of ideas that compete to become part of our cultural fabric, and not even just our cultural fabric, but on an individual basis, the things that you hear, the words, the ideas that sort of uh come together in this mosaic for each person. Um, those are all competing things, right, and um, it's a it's the brain chatter really that we experienced on a day

to day level. And it's the songs we hear, it's the conversation we pick up, it's the imagined dialogues in her head right, um, And it's the effort of the brain to to sort of, you know, steer the car left when you're actually reremembering a past event or a conversation. These are all the things that are crowding us up. And Susan Blackmore talks about memes extensively, and she actually talks about teams, to which she says, is technology just

giving us iterations of memes? Which is for another day. But memes and meditation is something really important to her because not only she in a metasis, but she is she's like a zen meditation practitioner twenty five years now. Yeah. And in John Horgan's book Rational Mysticism, he actually interviews her about her view on memes and meditation, and this is sort of him summarizing her thoughts on the topic. He says, we do not perceive the world directly as

it truly is. We actively constructed. We construct ourselves to our ordinary waking self is as artificial, invented, and illusory as the ethereal double selves. We hallucinate in dreams and out of body experiences. Once we learn this fact and fully realize it in every moment of our lives, we can wait from the meme dream, and this is something she talks about all the time, the meme dream. All of this information that we're trying to um just percolate

in our brains. Um. And and remember too, this is interesting when you think about the fact that of what we perceive when we enter a room isn't necessarily coming through our eyes. It's actually how we are interpreting and inferring the data that we see. So again we've we've got all this happening at once. So according to Blackmore, she says that mentation is not going to make you smarter, richer, healthier. It's really about pruning back those memes. Yeah. Yeah, and

it's um again. It brings back down this idea of there's there's the world as it is, and then there is the world as we see it, and that the world as we see it is influenced by all these memes and all these thought processes and UH and meditation often comes back to the idea of turning a lot of this off and and seeing the room as the room. Yeah. And actually Blackmore has a bone to pick too with with meditators and um in meditating in general, which we

will get to right after this quick break. This presentation is brought to you by Intel sponsors of tomorrow. Yeah. Actually Blackmore can argue, shoot, and in fact will that it's nearly impossible to get consistent data to tell us a coherent story about the effects of meditation. And one part is, even though I swiftly divided meditation into two types, there are so many different styles of medica titation and

methods of meditation. I mean, just think of it, you know, talking about reducing the vortex to one single color instead of a dozen at once. Well, they're just they're just imagine that there are any number of colors you could make that vortex b um and so so there there's If you start looking around for ways to meditate, you will find lots of examples, and you can't study all of them in a scientific study. You have to pick something and go with it, and so you inevitably do

not have a complete picture of meditation as a global phenomena. Well, and her problem with it too is that once you try to quantitate results, you're trying to apply an agenda to something that doesn't necessarily have an agenda, right, because again, meditation is not it is not it should not be and it's more traditional forms. It should not be I will meditate now to try and make myself healthier. But it's not that kind of thing. And I don't know

why someone would talk like a robot will meditation. Well, that's your meditation voice. I think we've heard your dolphin voice, your meditation voice. Um. So yeah, I mean that's why she says you get wildly different data of sometimes when you have two different groups. And part of that too,

can be because the the actual sample group. Um. She tends to say that people who are seeking out meditators, they tend to be more anxious and neurotic than average, and I know, to report more problems in general, and to have taken twice as many drugs as non meditators. She's gonna say what kind of drugs or you know. But um, in other words, it's not necessarily the sample group that you want to test, uh, in order to get sort of like across the board, even reliable results.

Now this is her talking about in her experience, right, Because you have to understand that she's going to workshops into very intense like weekend retreats and so on and so forth. She's probably dealing with a different animal and in terms to the people that she's come across as a scientist and hum a practitioner herself. Yeah, and these are and she's she's dealing in these cases not with

casual meditators, That's right. These are people that maybe you have more intense personalities, who like her, you know, have been practicing this at this very high level for twenty five years or more. Um, so you know that's it's sort of a different animal. Well, then there's also the idea that, uh, did you point out that that people engaged in meditation are more often to be uh, they're more open to become immersed in an experience. Correct. Yeah, Yeah,

that's another thing. And that sort of brought up the whole placebo effect which we've talked about before. If you have a group that is ready, willing and able to do something, then it may not bear out the same results as another group that is like, oh okay, I'll just try out this meditation thing and see what sort

of results I get. Yeah, I mean just imagine the difference if you were to say, hey, guys, I need ten people like you advertising about I need ten people for a meditation study, and then so you get ten people are like, yeah, I totally will blow a Saturday on a meditation study versus if you just went out on the street and we're like, all right, you you

you you, and you get here meditation study. Now, it's going to be a rather different results that imagine, right, right, they're already sort of doing up this idea that they're going to have some sort of benefit from this, and particularly in group meditation, you see this too, because it's sort of another issue of community and socialization. Um. She talks about the Maharishi effect. Yes, yeah, And we're not going to pick on transcendental meditation because actually, as a technique, um,

it is supposedly very helpful. Um. But I think she is picking on Maharishi, referring to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, known as the Beatles Guru. I think, to most people, who is the founder of transcendental meditation? Yeah, I mean one of our problems here is that you have the Maryashi International University in Fairfield, Iowa, and they publish their own publications with different studies and regarding the effects of transcendental

medica meditation. So yeah, I eat non peer reviews. Yeah yeah, So no no challenge here so yeah, look look for that as you're looking at different results, you know, in different website, which is for the positive effects of meditation. Now the Mariachi Mariachi effect, that would be something entirely different. The my mind still wants to say Mariachi Maharishi. Yes,

the Maharishi effect. Um. This comes down to the most in its most phenomenal example would be that one percent of the population gets together, meditates and changes the world. This is a claim, right, that that there's less crime as a result of meditation. That's one claim, one percent less because these all the people okating can no longer be you know, only if you picked hard in criminals.

It seems like with that statistically match up. Okay, And of course the people have tried to run this through mathematical models and it's not burying out. That's not a surprise, right for for a number of reasons. Um. And then another claim is that they could influence the weather. Yeah,

and the last they could levitate. Yeah. Well, if you know enough about the weather, then the weather claim is just as ridiculous as as levitation, because the weather, whether it's such a complex system based on global phenomena and it's just really complicated. And I mean the idea that you can influence that with your thought, that's and and

influence that with meditation is rather far fetched. As far fetched I think as one individual rising above um the ground on like a I don't know, a cushion of pure thought. Yeah, And that's what black MOR's beef is, right. I mean she's basically saying, I am a practitioner. I do this. I think that it has its benefits. Um. But you know, you've got this other group that I was making sort of wild claims and detracting from from what actually is a helpful and useful practice. I mean.

The good news, though, I mean, okay, bad news is not You're probably not going to float into the air, right, You're probably not going to reach a sort of uh nervonic state which you're just gliding around on your own magic carpet. Right. Yes, that's bad news. The good news is that we already know about neuroplasticity, right. We know that we can change our minds to the degree that we can exercise so to speak, the muscles again, so

to speak, in our brain. And we've seen this when we talked about music in the mind and how in musicians, there are particular areas of mind that are much more developed than in other non musicians. You see the same thing with people who are highly competent meditators, that they are parts of their brain that can actually expand and um. And they've actually seen this in studies about compassion before,

the ability to become more compassionate. Well, and that's like you you look at the at the Buddhist teachings and I mean that's one of the core reasons for meditation, is the idea that compassion arises from all of this and that's world changing, right. I mean, you don't have to levitate to change the world. Yeah, yeah, that Yeah, the idea is that we we we erased this idea of self, the ego that steers this wrong sort of goes away, and then we're able to experience compassions. Yeah.

And it just made me remember to um, this this idea of compassion and oneness, right, because this is the sort of feeling and you've talked about before. They can religion and chanting again, this is in music too. These are these are all sort of things that help erase the ego and make you feel like you're something part of part of something that's bigger than yourself, right. Yeah, Like I've often heard like ego described as I mean, I think we've discussed in the past about like traumatic

experiences arising. Um, you experience something traumatic and then the memories really begin to take hold as you form a story about it, which is to say, I don't know. Like, let's say, um, uh, you know, somebody cuts you off while you're trying to drive to work, and that may be kind of you might have a like a reaction the vote, Well, that's irritating. But then if you were to continue to continue to stew over it, and you create the story where it's like, I somebody cutting me off.

You know this happened to me. I was in this situation where I was wrong. We create a story at which we're the center because we're the ego and uh and and our egos are almost all out of control and uh and and so we we end up caught up in that story. Right, Yeah, you're caught up in the story you have these emotions. Uh And In fact, there's another piece of information from Rational Mysticism by John Horny.

He talks to a guy named James Austin. He's a neural biologist, and he himself a Zen Buddhist, and he's the author of Zen in the Brain. And he talks about those events that you described um as a neural pruning if you can get rid of that experience through meditation um. This is from the book in Rational Mysticism Mysticism quote. He compares meditation to sculpture or etching, which also yates by taking away. He means this analogy literally.

He cites evidence from animal studies that neurochemicals such as L glutamate, aspirate, and nitric oxide can act as excito toxins which destroy specific types of neurons and specific regions of the brain by over stimulating them. Released by mystical experiences such as meditating. Right, um, excitic ns can be potent agents Austin rights prompting and kind of highly localized

etching away within certain vital regions of our brain. Right. So, basically, as we lose neurons, we also shed beliefs, obsessions, and emotions that distort our view of reality. Says John Horgan. This is a very fascinating book, by the way, for anybody who's interested and um science and mysticism. It's called

rational mysticism. But again, here's this idea, and it's sort of extrapolating on what Susan Blackmore said, which is, you know, you take all of these memes, you call them down and and here here on a you know, a logical level, it's being done. These excytotoxins are releasing this experience for you.

Another example that comes to mind as a study we were looking at two thousand seven U c L a study from psychologist Matthew Lieberman and uh and in this study suggests that that when you name emotions, you contame them. You can. It's it's kind of the idea, the idea of a lot of meditation again comes down to recognizing what's going on in your own thought processes and realizing, hey,

I'm being an egotistical jerk about this. I shouldn't do that, as opposed to just being an egotistical jerk and not realizing it, which is, you know what most people do? Um and, well, what everybody does at some point. And this is the mindfulness perspect right, that you're being mindful of what's going on in your thought process right, So how do you study this? Right? Well? Uh, lie Reman

took in his college. That colleagues, they took about thirty people and they hooked him up to F M R. Eyes and he showed them photos of men and women's emotional expressions. All right, And when the and and they would they would choose labels for these emotions that they saw in the picture, They're like, oh, well, that guy's matt, that guy's constipated, et cetera. I don't think constipation was one of them. I don't know. Maybe it is an emotion.

I don't know. But well, we've discussed before the digestion is is strongly linked to our mind, is your second brain. But anyway, so there, UM, when the participants would would choose labels for negative emotions, um, it would it would

stir activity in the right ventralateral prefrontal cortex region. This is the area associated with thinking in words about emotional experiences, so naming them, whereas activity in the amygdala, the brain region involved in emotional processing, uh, stuff there would calm down. So it's it's the direct correlation there is like I'm I'm realizing this is anger, and then I'm experiencing anger less for realizing It's like I'm stepping outside of it and looking at it, and then I'm giving just a

little bit of of of distance from it. You know. Well, that's interesting too, because if you've gone through meditation practice before a lot of times, um, you'll be advised to name something and let it go right. Um, Like a thought comes into your head, you say, okay, the color blue goes away, or something, some sort of remembrance of something that happened today, I was angry about something. It's sort of the same thing, right, because that's on the

on the road to meditation. You have to sort of name all these things and and let them float away from you in order to get in this I guess, cleaner space in your head. So it's interesting that once you do that, the amygdala kind of goes Okay, we're just gonna be calm here because we've done the job here of of tagging what we need to. Well, there you go, meditation. Now for the next two hours of this podcast, we're going to do a guide. Admit. Oh

wait now, very signaling me that that's out. Yeah, we were going to chant and everything. You're out of time for that, man, No real love, no, no, we're not doing it. It's gone canceled. Shut it down, all right, So um, yeah, we can't do that. Um and uh. And since we've gone a little long, I'm actually going to skip the listener mail as well, but we'll come

back to that in future episodes of course. And in the meantime, if you have any tidbits about meditation, um, you can come check out our Facebook and Twitter feeds. We are blow the mind on both of those and we would really love to hear from any We'd love to hear from from people who are just trying meditation for the first time and their own experiences with what

it's like. We'd also love to hear from people who have been meditating for ages, you know, people who feel like they're they're experts at it or or at least are well versed in it, and to hear what you have to say about this podcast. Yeah. Absolutely, And we also have a great article too about the Maharishi, the Beatles and what they all have to do with bringing yoga to the West. So just make sure that you pop it in our handy search bar any of those

terms Beetles, Yoga, Maharishi. Yeah, and if you're wondering about meditation in pain, we have an article called meditating before or during surgery Decrease your Pain by Julia Layton Um. You'll find that on the homepage as well. Yep, and please do drop us a line, and you can do so at Below the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner

of our homepage. The how stuff Works iPhone app has a RYE. Download it today on iTunes.