Can Meditation Change Your Brain?

I have been practicing meditation on and off for most of my adult life. It has been a tremendous help when I’m stressed or experiencing pain, both physical and spiritual. In the last few years, however, I have added the practice of mindfulness, bringing that into my meditation as well.

Mindfulness is when you focus solely on the present moment, fully participating in what’s going on around you. For instance, when you have a conversation with someone, be fully involved in that conversation, and not thinking of the seven other things you have to do later. When you eat, eat. When you drive, drive.

In meditation, you’d take that same practice inward. While there are several types, the main one is simply to focus on your breath as it flows in and out of your body. It seems easy, but it can be very tricky to stay in the moment and keep gently bringing yourself back when you stray. This is why it’s called “practice.” I’m still practicing. But the calm and centered feeling that living in the “now” gives me has changed my life.

And some scientists are discovering from functional brain scans and other studies that in people who have been practicing mindfulness meditation long-term, it can change their brains (and maybe even affect their genes) as well.

Or at least these are some of the conclusions reported by Susan Smalley, Ph.D., geneticist and founder of the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center (MARC) at UCLA. She’s writing a book with colleague Diana Winston, titled “The Science, Art and Practice of Mindfulness,” due out in 2010. (DaCapo Publishing)

In an interview with Dr. Patricia Fitzgerald for her Huffington Post blog, Dr. Smalley mentions some of the research done on mindfulness and meditation and the brain.

In one study, neuroscientists, led by Mike Irwin and David Creswell, compared questionnaires filled out by their research subjects about how mindful they considered themselves to be. Then they compared these self-reported scores to functional MRIs. The more mindful people said they were, the more activity was seen in the frontal cortex of the brain, which quiets their "emotional centers."

In another study done by Sara Lazar, MRIs of long-term meditators’ brains differed as compared to non-meditators – the cortex of their brains appeared to be thicker, suggesting that age-related cortical thinning could be slowed down by consistent meditation. And many more studies have been done on the effects of meditation, including mindfulness meditation. This neuroplasticity is the capacity of the brain to change as a function of experience. And researchers in the emerging science of epigenics are excited about some new studies that could link meditation to changes in genetic expression – the way genes can get turned off or on in the body. One example of this would be (and it has not been researched if this is caused by meditation or not) if you carry a gene for diabetes, it’s possible that certain lifestyle choices could keep this gene “off,” leaving you with less of a chance of developing the disease.

In sum, Dr. Smalley said, “There is a growing body of scientific evidence about mindfulness that I think is sufficient today to say: Try it, it's likely beneficial, harmless, free, and relatively simple.”

Read the full article here. If you’d like more information about mindfulness awareness, or would like to download sample meditations you can try, visit MARC’s web site.