Mindfulness And Meditation In The Modern World

Today the study of meditation has entered research labs throughout the U.S. and the world. Scientists are exploring the brain states (using brain imaging tools such as fMRI and EEG) associated with meditation practice as well as changes in other body physiology (e.g. immune response, heart rate, blood pressure, etc.). The science is still relatively small, but findings are intriguing, including evidence that meditation influences brain structure and function, immune response, stress response, attention and emotional regulation. Overall, adding meditation to one's life appears to improve an overall state of well-being (happiness, if you will), reduce anxiety, and foster healthy relationships.

A geneticist I know describes Buddhist meditation techniques as a "technology with some 2,000 years of research and development." But, what does it mean to meditate? Do I need to sit on a cushion in a cross-legged position for a lengthy period of time to understand the nature of the mind? Perhaps yes, perhaps no, it depends on you and what works best for your investigation and discovery. Meditation is a tool of introspection and reflection, of discovery of the origin of individual thoughts, feelings, and experience.

Many scientists are studying a type of meditation called mindfulness: the practice of applying a moment-to-moment attention to experiences - as they arise (whether the experiences are of the senses, such as sound or taste, or experiences of the mind, such as thoughts or feelings). Science is revealing that this the simple practice of being more mindful promotes health and well-being, and it is entering mainstream medicine and wellness programs around the country (See Coming to Our Senses by Jon Kabat-Zinn).

At UCLA our mindfulness classes and workshops have been overwhelmingly well-attended. Why this great interest? I believe it is because we are a society under stress, immersed in technology, immersed in information, rushing, rushing, and rushing in life, struggling daily to find balance between home, work, and family. We have invested exorbitant time, money and energy into technology at the expense of attending to our abilities to attune to ourselves, other people, and the planet and to discover and reflect on our true nature - our values, virtues, and purpose in life. Attention to one's inner world requires tools, time, and creativity, just like a healthy body requires water, nutritious food, and exercise.

Meditation and mindfulness are tools for use by anyone requiring only a willingness and intent to practice. You can teach yourself, learn from a book, or attend a class. You can use the breath to practice, hone your attention and develop a more mindful stance in life. It is in the repetition of observing the breath (breathing in, breathing out), catching your attention as it drifts away, and returning it (with kindness) to the breath that awareness begins.

As a moment of silence is filled with thoughts of distraction, desire for noise, company, or movement, you begin to discover how your mind works. The hum of a clock elicits a cycle of thoughts and feelings of movement, again you begin to understand how your mind works. Over time and practice, you may gain patience, first a tolerance, then an embrace of a deeper understanding of your self and your relationship to the world. The repetitive pattern of 'discovery' can arise in everything you do, and you may discover that introspection and reflection have created a space between experience and your reactions to them, a space in which you can choose your response. Practicing over and over while sitting, while walking, or doing daily activities are part of learning to be more mindful. Everyday objects can replace the breath in practice. For example, you can eat mindfully, observing the texture, smell, and taste of each bite of food, giving it your full attention. In this way, mindfulness can be integrated into daily life, when talking, walking, listening, or relating to others, the planet, or yourself.

Perhaps mindfulness, meditation, and other mind-body practices (such as yoga and tai chi) are increasing in popularity in the West because they let us experience internal investigation, without it being so verbal in nature. They provide us with an awareness of the chatter within and around us, they provide us with a gift of listening, they provide us with great insight into our very nature. It is a misperception to think that meditation means silencing the mind, silencing thoughts or feelings; it is a process of learning about the mind, full of the complexity it holds.

As a scientist, I love the challenge of understanding my mind, from the inside, while learning what science tells us from the outside. The merging of these two approaches will yield knowledge far greater than either can alone.

To download free guided meditations, go to www.marc.ucla.edu.

Comments

[VictorLudorum]

officially the masonic society takes one by one its public to prosperity

and the temples of beief were felled by the palestinian prophets and their books that were aimed at ending fighting amongst homes families tribes over superiority and interpretation of former scrolls.

But soon these books aquired lot of different following and became symbols over temples to semoiticise publics into higher living.

long ago the temples were erected to rest assure the population of their following into the beautifull pyhsical body shapes of the preists and lords

today we can expeiment this by building a home and the architect effects the shape of mind and body children.
food that was the first uniting factor was followed by clothes and as man was wrapped in his third generation had applied vitself in service of the temples and cleaner skins longer shapely legs were matched to a another and a small holding was extended to live and bear children.
amongst the biggest of all virtues is the lesson of paitance and this is where meditation comes in.

meditations and awareness are sciences to retire and for our age when we go to bed it is a blessing to recount the days working .

in the book of the Alcoholics Anonymous 10 steps ,the science is explained in very explicit ways and there are other books as much as self hypnosis something that could really correct me unless i was content with my present state .

[Dap]

Dear Dr. Smalley,

What can I say... that's why I heart ya!

Excellent essay/post, I'm tired had along day but I wanted to drop in and comment to your eloquent post. Agape.

[MagisterLudi]

Self-knowledge is THE most important task humans have. All spiritual and religious traditions point to this( until they get corrupted by dull and slow-witted).
Yet, there are only several comments here , whereas spewing hate and paranoid suspicion draws hundreds of comments at places like Huffpo.
People get seriously attached to their own hates and prejudices while blaming others for the same.

Blaming others for one's own faults is easier than self-knowledge.

Nietzsche said:" My neighbor is not my neighbor, but my neighbor's neighbor, eh friends."

[wm1066]

There is an entire universe with-in when you meditate. I like to go into meditation when I work out at the gym, like being on the rowing machine, or meditative walking. What got me into daily meditation was a course of cortsteroids my doctor had me on, I had extreme anxiety and couldn't sleep and this lasted about a year. Meditation really helped. The kingdom of heaven is with-in!

[sonofsamstone]

The kingdom of heaven is with-in!

....free you mind and your ass will follow

(with apologies to george clinton)

[Purple Girl]

UMMMMMMMMMMM
If ever there was a time in history it is now for deep meditation and seeking enlightenment to stregthen US from within.

[Dudarino]

I'm reading Daniel Siegel's Mindful Brain. One interesting point he made is on education. It requires a shift - where the teacher is not the source of absolute knowledge. They should embrace uncertainty - like an explorer. Then the student gets curious and engaged. This is in fact the reality of our world.

Unfortunately folks - like our decider in chief, believe that are absolutely right and pose a danger to everyone.

[DemonicLaughterInc]

As your brother Stuart, always says,"I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me."

[simonfellows]

If you eat the right things( so that ones biochem and thus stress profile is biochemically malfunctioning) and have exercise exemplars that replicate what our genome 'requires' vis our evolution one doesn't need to perform a willful top-down exercise like mindfulness...it's one natural state.
2000 years ago aye lass you need to read more about evolution and hunting and thats believed where meditation came from..... BUT as per above..if one is not in biochem malfunction mode it's one natural state.

[MagisterLudi]

learning is about receiving data, praying is usually asking for things, but meditation is most importantly is "getting rid of" mental constructs and the mind's incessant white noise.
Meditation is especially popular among people who are interested in the spiritual and metaphysicial realms but distrust grasping mainstream religious organizations.

However, the seems to be an unhealthy blurring of lines between relaxation techniques (a pleasurable limpness) and meditation.
While relaxation often is by-product of true meditative state, it's should not be an intended goal. Why? because often when one desires to "relax" no relaxation is possible. Attaining without grasping.

[curiousasheck]

99.9% of the people on this planet quit when they discover they can not quiet their own minds or sit still without becoming "rest-less" for one minute.

This is the way it should be.

Learn some basic relaxation and mental control techniques before you start tinkering with the metaphysical realm.

[gardengoddess]

No, 99.9% of the people on this planet quit because they get too close to the truth of their inner selves and of the Universe, and it scares them to death.

I have a wonderful friend, a woman who's been a friend for over 20 years. She's kind, warm, generous, honest, reliable - and absolutely scared to death of anything metaphysical. She won't meditate with me, and I'm sure she thinks I'm crazy when I tell her I've communicated with my mother and all 4 grandparents - all dead. She shakes her head when I describe what each person is wearing, where they are, what they're doing, etc. She can't understand how I can give her the name of an angel who watches over me, and describe him for her in detail. It scared her to death when I told her a psychic friend of mine also described him to a group of people (none of whom I'd ever met before) and told them his name, which is the same name for him I was given. She saw me levitate about 3" off the ground and to this day still thinks it was some kind of trick.

I post all that to point to the fact it's FEAR that keeps people from true meditation and ultimately from being able to experience the true power of the Universe, or God, or Allah, or The Great Spirit, or The Way....it doesn't matter what the name is. Fear is our bigget enemy and the greatest deterrent humans have to making the best choices and living the happiest lives.

[bethinCary]

I've become so used to meditating that I can drift in and out of my own consciousness quite easily now. I only find that when I'm on the computer-I have to reign myself back in to an "in between" stage (I start misspelling/bad grammar) to conscious (which I usually end up over-correcting or not saying what I had meant to say). So it's been tricky to navigate-but I think I'm learning. Writing seems to enable me to best express myself since I am not the best communicator.
People think meditation is a chant, staring at shiny objects...I just think of it now as just daydreaming-being in the moment, as you've said, but allowing my mind to meander wherever it wants to go without me guiding it.

[cktirumalai]

The ancient Stoics thought a good deal and to powerful effect about the mind, meditation, and mindfulness.
I can recommend Epictetus' "Enchiridion," Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations," and Seneca's "Moral Essays."

[Wiredwilly]

Imagination has no interest in the Laws of Gravity or the Speed of Light.
Science studying meditation is like a mirror trying to look at itself.
Dr. Timothy Leary tried to tell his colleagues at Harvard, you can't study LSD,
you have to do LSD to understand what it's all about. Of course, no one listened.
The traditional objective, Scientific Method championed by Descarte simply doesn't work because mind is not bound by Newtonian physics.
You are correct, the merging of the two approaches seems the path of least resistance toward Enlightenment.
However meditation isn't all peaceful breathing and Love Bunnies.
The mind is more like a Supernova. One must be careful.
In this World of Iraq, police tasers, greed, and madness,
it's nice to read a thoughtful post on meditation.

[starboymikey]

Well, Leary never said "you can't study LSD," though he did insist that no one could really study it meaningfully without trying it. Of course this changed the very nature of the studies Leary and his associates were leading in the late 50's and early 60's, since it was difficult to maintain the sort of scientific objectivity that researchers typically strove for once they actually took the drug.

For many researchers it was as if, before they took LSD they never really understood its effects, and once they took it they lost interest in maintaining their scientific objectity, perhaps because the terms of the inquiry itself seemed irrelevant to the actual experience, if not downright silly.

Being a less "explosive" and more controllable exercise in altering consciousness, the results of meditation may be easier to measure, and the experience is certainly easier to talk about than LSD.

[fairwitness]

Awareness may not be about silencing the mind, but it's the silence behind the mind, the observing awareness itself, which sees the crazy mind-chatter and self-obsessed fear-and-desire patterns and emotional responses to the crazy thoughts and finally, exhausted, detaches from them. Then the silence (which is who we are, really) is full of life and presence and the mind is laughably superfluous (and free, then, to be merely useful in apractical way).

"What we are looking for is What Is Looking".