Wellness From Inside Inc
Ashtanga and Vinyasa Flow Yoga
Private and Group Instruction

Charlotte NC 28269
Phone: 704-877-0668
E-Mail: info@wellnessfrominside.com
Meditation Can Alter Brain Structure

Source: New York Times;March 2008

Kathy Sykes, a Bristol University professor, has long known that if she does not find at least 30 minutes a day in her frantically
overcrowded schedule to lie down and listen to music, she is grumpier, more tired and less able to concentrate.

What Professor Sykes, who holds the chair in the Public Engagement of Science and Engineering at Bristol, did not realise until
recently is that she was, in effect, practising a fairly crude form of meditation. She also didn't know that there was growing
evidence to show that this ancient practice can make people healthier and happier. It may even increase life span, alter brain
structure and change personality.

Ancient traditional therapies do not always stand up to close scientific scrutiny. But when Professor Sykes put meditation under
the metaphorical microscope for the second series of Alternative Therapies: The Evidence, which she is presenting on BBC Two
on Monday, she was surprised to find that the saffron-robed monks of Kathmandu and the white-coated scientists of Harvard
shared more common ground than might have been expected.

“Several people have told me that meditation can affect your emotions,” she says, “and one of the areas of the brain that scientists
are finding may be affected by meditation is involved in processing emotions, among other things. These are early days and we
need more trials, but this is potentially very exciting.”

There are signs that mainstream medicine has already started to sit up and take notice of meditation. Mindfulness-based cognitive
therapy (MBCT), which is about 80 per cent meditation, has been approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical
Excellence (NICE) for use with people who have experienced three or more episodes of depression. And MBCT is now offered by
some UK primary care trusts.

Finding a state of calm

About ten million people meditate every day in the West and, while there are many different techniques, the purpose is always to
focus the mind - sometimes through the use of a mantra, a sound or the breath - and promote a state of calm.

Although Professor Sykes had always found her own ad hoc methods useful, she noticed a change after her visit to Kathmandu
for instruction with Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk who has been meditating for more than 30 years. “It would be absurd to
say that I have learnt to meditate when people spend a lifetime doing that, but when I try to meditate now it does have a more
powerful effect,” she says.

“My dad died from cancer about two months before I made the programme, but I had not cried about him for a while because I
was just so busy filming. Matthieu had suggested I try to focus on unconditional love so, the next time I was trying to meditate, I
thought about that and inevitably about my love for my dad. Within milliseconds I was bawling my eyes out. It was quite an
intense experience and I found it comforting in my grief.

“Not long ago, I was on a crowded train where there was standing-room only going from Paddington to Bristol. I sat cross-legged
on the floor to meditate and felt like I was transported to a delightful place. It was glorious to feel it was possible to ‘escape' like
that.”

As a scientist, Professor Sykes wanted to know what was happening to her body to make her feel this way, so she checked into
the famous Massachusetts General Hospital, where Dr Herbert Benson, a Harvard Medical School professor, put her through a
barrage of tests.

After hooking her up to a range of monitors “like a lab rat”, doctors measured her resting pulse, muscle tension, respiration and
sweat. They then subjected her to some humiliating mental arithmetic on camera, during which her stress levels and all her
readings soared.

But after a short period of meditation, her pulse and breathing dropped below the resting rate. Dr Benson calls this the “relaxation
response” and believes it can help with a wide range of conditions, including heart disease, asthma, diabetes and infertility. “To the
extent that any disorder is caused or made worse by stress, regular elicitation of the relaxation response will counteract that
condition,” he says Meditation changes the brain.

For Professor Sykes, the most exciting part of her investigation took place in the laboratories, where scientists are demonstrating
that meditation appears to be associated with changes in the brain. These studies suggest that we could all benefit from regular
meditation.

MRI scans of long-term meditators have shown greater activity in brain circuits involved in paying attention. When disturbing
noises were played to a group of meditators undergoing an MRI scan, they had relatively little effect on the brain areas involved in
emotion and decision-making among those with the most experience of meditation.

“Attention can be trained in a way that is not that different to how physical exercise changes the body,” says Richard Davidson, a
professor of psychology and psychiatry at the Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Long-term meditation seems not only to alter brain-wave patterns: early research suggests that it may also result in changes in the
actual structure of the cortex, the outer parts of our brains. “We have found that brain regions associated with attention and
sensory processing were thicker in meditators than in the controls,” says Dr Sara Lazar, an assistant in psychology at
Massachusetts General Hospital.

“The data give credence to some of the claims of long-term meditators and suggests that meditation can play a role in reducing
stress, improving emotion regulation and perhaps slowing the effects of ageing on brains - slowing the normal decrease in mental
agility, ability to learn new things and memory that comes with age.”

It is possible, of course, that people with a thicker brain cortex in areas associated with awareness and sensory processing are
more likely to meditate. So Dr Lazar is investigating whether changes in brain structure can be detected before and after learning
the technique.

All this means that Professor Sykes will be sticking with meditation and thinks the rest of us should try it, too. “I find it incredibly
empowering to think that how happy we feel or our ability to focus or concentrate may not be fixed character traits but may be
skills that we can train and get better at,” she says. “This must be worth investigating. If evidence is found that meditation can help
us all to think better, to be happier and to be more compassionate, that would be amazing.”
information intact, without specific permission, when used only in a not-for-profit format. If any other use is desired, permission in writing from
Wellness From Inside is required.

Disclaimer: The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Wellness From Inside unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are
based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked. The information on this website is not intended to replace a
one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge
decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional.

* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or
prevent any disease.
If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult your physician before using this product.