Taming the Monkey Mind—How Meditation Affects Your Health and
Wellbeing
February 20, 2014
By Dr. Kelly Brogan
I have a monkey mind. As a mother, wife, physician, writer,
educator, and to-do-list-completer, I recommend that anyone
enter my mental space with caution. Even if I played none of
these roles, and was charged with sitting under a palm tree and
relaxing, that chattering racket of a mind would follow me
there.
The universality of this condition, however, is what makes
the practice of meditation so vital. You may, like me, roll an
internal eye when you hear the word meditation. The implied
holier-than-thou practice seems, at times, to have been co-opted
by a cult of hippiedom rather than a behavior ingrained in all
religions, performance, and waking relaxation.
Perhaps you will be persuaded, as I was, by some of the
compelling literature that suggests the simple act of breathing,
and attending to that breath, may be panacea enough to replace
your current anxiety prescription.
The Science of Meditation
Since we have come to appreciate the power of genetic
expression as more than simply the 20,000 genes you're born
with, we can now harness tools that optimize the "good" and
suppress the "bad."
It turns out that our in-born DNA interfaces with an
"exposome" or elements in our environment, and our conscious
behavior, dictating exactly how the book of you will actually be
written. With one fell swoop, things like spices, exercise, and
relaxation can accomplish what pharmaceuticals could only
fantasize about.
Some diligent researchers out of the Benson-Henry Institute
for Mind Body Medicine1
in Massachusetts have begun to illuminate the mechanisms of
meditation's effects, specifically the relaxation response
which can be achieved through various forms of meditation,
repetitive prayer, yoga, tai chi, breathing exercises,
progressive muscle relaxation, biofeedback, guided imagery, and
Qi Gong.
According to Dr. Benson, the relaxation response is, "a
physical state of deep rest that changes the physical and
emotional responses to stress (e.g., decreases in heart rate,
blood pressure, rate of breathing, and muscle tension)" and is
characterized by:
Metabolism decreases
Heart beats slow and muscles relax
Breathing slows
Blood pressure decreases
Levels of nitric oxide increase
Meditation Alters Your Genetic Expression
Forty years of research support these claims. Only recently
have the tools to assess gene-based changes been available. Far
from summoning their inner monks, subjects in the Institute's
studies simply pop in some ear buds and listen to a 20-minute
guided meditation, passively. The Benson-Henry Institute has
sought to quantify the benefits of the relaxation response by
assessing gene expression before, after 20 minutes, after eight
weeks of practice, and after long-term meditation routines.
In a series of papers, they walk us through the
anti-inflammatory effects of this intervention. Genetic study2
of eight-week and long-term meditators demonstrated evidence of
changes to gene expression – specifically antioxidant
production, telomerase activity, and oxidative stress – as a
result of the relaxation response.
They theorize that NF-kappa B gene sets may be the
messenger between psychological and physical stress wherein the
body translates worry into inflammation. It appears that the
relationship between gene expression optimization and relaxation
response is dose-related, so that increasing amounts confer
increasing benefit. Even after one session, changes were noted,
characterized by:3
"Upregulating ATP synthase —with its central role in
mitochondrial energy mechanics, oxidative phosphorylation
and cell aging — RR may act to buffer against cellular
overactivation with overexpenditure of mitochondrial energy
that results in excess reactive oxygen species production.
We thus postulate that upregulation of the ATP synthase
pathway may play an important role in translating the
beneficial effects of the RR."
These changes represent an orchestra of base and high notes
that synergize into a body-balancing harmony. The experience of
the relaxation response also appears to change brain plasticity
or cellular connections in areas of the brain associated with
stress response.
These changes occur based on internal recalibration of the
nervous system – with no manipulation of circumstantial
conditions, meaning stressors remain the same. According to
neuroscientist, Dr. Lazar,4
long-term meditation practice appears to be associated with
preferential cortical thickening:
"…brain regions associated with attention, interoception and
sensory processing were thicker in meditation participants than
matched controls, including the prefrontal cortex and right
anterior insula" and that these findings were further validated
by an eight-week intervention trial.5
Clinically, mindfulness-based meditation practice has been
demonstrated in randomized trials6
to improve depressive symptoms in fibromyalgia and to have
lasting anti-anxiety effects after only eight weeks of group
practice.7
So, What Is Meditation and How Do I Do It?
Having been trained in a very dichotomous New York-based
paradigm wherein patients are either medicated or they are put
on the couch indefinitely in service of psychoanalysis, the
notion of returning agency to the patient to heal themselves is
very appealing to me. Meditation can take many forms. It can
mean stopping for a momentary monitored inhale and exhale; it
can mean approaching conflict, tension, and stress with a
renewed mindset; and it can even mean using biofeedback
technology to recalibrate your nervous system.
The Heartmath Institute has played a vital role, for 20
years, in providing patients tools for the implementation of
mind-body resonance. Their research uses heart rate variability,
or the beat-to-beat changes that influence heart rhythms, to
assess the coherence between the brain and the heart. I have
written about the relationship between the brain and the gut,
extensively, but here is another union worth considering.
As it turns out, summoning up a feeling of gratitude
while breathing in a paced manner (typically six counts in and
six counts out), can flip heart rate variability into the most
optimal patterns associated with calm relaxation and peak mental
performance. They have validated the effects on ADHD,
hypertension, and anxiety including double blind,
placebo-controlled, randomized trials.8
Developing 'Witness Consciousness' Could Change Your Life
Biofeedback devices such as the emWave29
can help personalize your interventions and improve progress
toward toning that parasympathetic nervous system. For treatment
of significant pathology, I recommend these more formalized
interventions including computer-based coherence training.
However, liberating oneself from the day-to-day perceptions of
negativity, overwhelm, and loss may be far less complicated.
Perhaps, my favorite text on the matter of how to free
ourselves from the effects of stress is by Michael Singer,
called The Untethered Soul.10
He makes the bold assertion that happiness and freedom are the
result of cultivating "witness consciousness," a state of
willfully observing one's own mind, emotions, and behaviors,
rather than feeling that you are these things.
He deftly argues that focus and awareness is what makes
disturbances real – a hammer falls on your toe and your
awareness moves there, then you hear a bang, and your awareness
moves there. He implores the reader to experience pain as energy
passing through before the eye of consciousness, and tasks us
with the imperative to relax and release, stay centered, don't
get pulled in. Let the parade of thoughts and emotions pass by
without running along with it to see where it's going. You
remain a quiet observer of your neurotic mind and eventually,
the chatter starts to go quiet.
This is a means of defining our comfort zones more broadly,
appreciating the limitations of our preferences, and the
impossibility of matching up our external world with our
arbitrary internal definitions of what should be. I particularly
love his analogy of sitting by a river, noting a swirl in the
water. You could try to frantically smooth out the surface of
the water, continuously and senselessly, or you could reach in
to pluck the rock out, only to notice that it is your other hand
holding it there. We create our own distress, in many ways, and
then we try to use our brains and emotions to resolve that
stress. It doesn't work.
Here's What to Do When You Feel Stress
Notice and acknowledge your discomfort.
Relax and release it no matter how urgent it feels. Let
the energy pass through you before you attempt to fix
anything.
Imagine sitting back up on a high seat, in the back of
your head watching your thoughts, emotions, and behavior
with a detached compassion.
Then ground yourself. Connect to the present moment –
feel the earth under your feet, smell the air, imagine roots
growing into the earth from your spine.
Do this in a spirit of non-judgment because this isn't an
exercise done for mastery; it's a decision that you make every
time you feel disturbed inside. Michael Singer's prescriptions
can be found in a previous Huffington Post article he
wrote.11
Integrating these philosophies, practices, or movement-based
routines into your life may do more than support longevity and
optimal health. It may reverse chronic disease, eliminate the
need for medications, and most importantly confer a greater
sense of life satisfaction, happiness, and freedom to be here,
in the present, where the wonder of this never-before-existent
moment is unfolding before you.
About the Author
Dr. Kelly Brogan is boarded in Psychiatry/Psychosomatic
Medicine/Reproductive Psychiatry and Integrative Holistic
Medicine, and practices Functional Medicine, a root-cause
approach to illness as a manifestation of multiple-interrelated
systems. After studying Cognitive Neuroscience at M.I.T., and
receiving her M.D. from Cornell University, she completed her
residency and fellowship at Bellevue/NYU.
She is one of the only physicians with perinatal
psychiatric training who takes a holistic evidence-based
approach in the care of patients with a focus on environmental
medicine and nutrition. She is also a mom of two, and an active
supporter of women's birth experience, rights to birth
empowerment, and limiting of unnecessary interventions which is
a natural extension of her experience analyzing safety data and
true informed consent around medical practice. She is the
Medical Director for Fearless Parent, and an advisory board
member for GreenMedInfo.com and Pathways to Family Wellness. She
practices in NYC and is
on faculty at NYU/Bellevue.
Copyright 1997- 2014 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.