The Shambhala Mountain Center sits nestled among the remote lakes and pastures of Colorado's Rocky Mountains, where for four decades it has offered instruction and retreat to serious students of meditation and yoga. Starting in February 2007, it became a scientific laboratory as well. The center began hosting the Shamatha Project, one of the most rigorous scientific examinations of meditation's effects ever undertaken. The Project is now beginning to yield its insights, and from early reports it appears that this ancient practice delivers benefits that go all the way down to the chromosomal level.
Many claims have been made over many years about the effects of meditation on health and well-being, but rarely have these claims been put to the test. Under the direction of Clifford Saron, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Davis, the Shamatha Project enrolled 60 experienced meditators in a three-month study. Half were randomly selected to receive intensive training and practice in meditation over the spring months of 2007, including two group training sessions and five or more hours of individual practice every day. Those who were wait-listed for the actual retreat served as controls -- an essential part of the rigorous experimental design that distinguishes the Project from previous meditation studies.
At three points in the three-month study -- before, halfway through, and at the end -- Saron and his many colleagues took a battery of behavioral and physiological measurements of both the meditators and the controls, who ranged from 21 to 70 years old. They have been crunching the data and analyzing the results, which are now emerging in peer-reviewed journals.
For example: Those who intensely practiced meditation got better at visual perception, and as a result their attention improved. UC Davis psychological scientist Katherine Maclean (now at Johns Hopkins) had all the volunteers perform a difficult visual discrimination task on a computer screen -- watching a parade of identical lines go by and spotting the slightly shorter lines that appeared occasionally. This 30-minute task is not only visually demanding; it's incredibly boring as well. But as reported recently in the journal Psychological Science, the meditators' increased visual acuity also freed up their limited cognitive firepower for vigilance; and their sharpened attention led to improved performance on the task. This improvement lasted for five months after the retreat was over.
That may not be all that surprising, since focus and attention are what meditation is all about. Less expected is the recent finding that intense meditation may also have anti-aging effects. Tonya Jacobs, a scientist at UC Davis's Center for Mind and Brain, has just reported (on-line in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology) that meditators show improved psychological well-being, and that these improvements lead to biochemical changes associated with resistance to aging at the cellular level. Specifically, an analysis of meditators' white blood cells showed a 30 percent increase in an enzyme called telomerase, a chemical essential to the long-term health of the body's chromosomes and cells.
The scientists emphasize that meditation does not lead directly to cellular health and longevity. Instead, the practice appears to give people an increased sense of meaning and purpose in life, which in turn leads to an increased sense of control over their lives and to less negative emotion. This cascade of emotional and psychological changes is what regulates the levels of telomerase, the anti-aging enzyme.
Positivity appears to be the link between meditative practice and a variety of health benefits. In a study scheduled for publication in the journal Emotion, UC Davis psychological scientist Baljinder Sahdra is reporting that meditation leads to a decrease in impulsive reactions -- another health improvement linked to psychological positivity. Impulsivity has been tied to an array of health problems, including addictions and other risky behavior.
It's well known that stress -- and distress -- lead to poor health, including a decline of telomerase and its healing properties. What hasn't been known -- and what these studies are beginning to document -- is the exact order of psychological and physiological events in this chain and, what's more, that this chain of events can be reversed.
Dr. Maoshing Ni: 11 Longevity Tips
Let me be the first to welcome you to the HuffPo and fan you for a great comment.
peace
*** It is not easy for beginners to do meditation without preparing the mind and body. I started practicing 'Focusing on breathing' when I was lying in the bed and wanted to sleep and when I woke up but still in the bed. In a few months, I could relax my body remarkably and gained significant comfort in mind and body. I could sit still cross legged for 30 min to an hour focusing on breathing using the counting mode described below.
*** COUNTING MODE: While breathing in normally, feel the faint coolness inside the nose and on the top lip. While breathing out, count slowly in the mind. First out-breath, count ‘o-n-e’, second ‘out-breath t-w-o-o’ and third out-breath ‘thre-e-e’. Now repeat the same steps: count ‘o-n-e’ during the first out-breath and so on. Continue the practice as long as you like. Every time you lose focus on breathing or counting, get back to the practice, by counting ‘o-n-e’ during the next out-breath.
*** The results have been beyond my wildest dreams. I now feel like I have a new body and mind!
*** The details of the techniques are described in my web site http://countingbreaths.com. Making an ultra soft beginning is of utmost importance to sustain the practice and its benefits.
However, the question of which meditation practice to take up becomes difficult as more people become interested and, inevitably, more people are looking to make money from this growing 'industry'. I think it will take quite some time before scientific study reaches the point where people can make informed decisions based on objective research.
As someone who meditates regularly, it's clear to me that my practice is helping me in many ways. I don't feel a need for scientific proof. I hope more people are able to find a practice that works for them. I think the world could be improved greatly if people took the time to care for themselves in this way.
Snerd
my training a gift in stress relief and relaxation. However, I'm now attending my local Buddhist
Center and learning how "to sit". These two techniques are world's apart... there's nothing relaxed
about a monk "sitting". There's a lot going on, and so far, I find it far from relaxing!
Actually, as you probably already know, this technique is designed to have you confront yourself as part of the process of break-through, break-down, etc.
Snerd
Good luck with your research!
p.s. Great avatar. Fanned!
the telomerase result i believe was from using Transcendental meditation (TM)
many years ago it was found that peopel practicing TM , maharishi's TM , regularyly for 5 years were
12 years younger biologically than their chronological age
tm.org click research top 100 studies or speak with doctors at mum.edu
about a control group i suggested that to university of alberta after it insisted on publishing a flawed study [ a meta-analysis of 800 studies done on meditation [ 600 done with TM ]] concluding results were inconclusive. this study the media reported and thereby did a lot of damage to a lot of people
some peopel there were upset with me for harrassing them about their total lack of understanding of what the word meditation even means . i asked asked them to settle the matter scientifically : ask TM teachers to instruct 1000 students in TM [ randomly assighned from every student at the university who wants to be part of a study] and compare to 1000 controls
A main reason TM faded into the background is because the so-called "research" that "The Movement" put forth was found by REAL science to be deeply flawed and biased. Another reason is because it's practitioners realized it doesn't produce any real benefits.
Studies in Germany demonstrated that the technique actually caused serious psychological and social problems, including severe depression and memory loss. (http://onwww.net/trancenet.org/research/toc.shtml)
From Wikipedia: "Independently done systematic reviews have not found health benefits for TM beyond relaxation or health education. Transcendental Meditation was held to be a religion by three different United States courts in two separate cases. Skeptics have called TM or its associated theories and technologies a 'pseudoscience."
If you want to burn a few thousand dollars to pay someone to teach you how to get a headache or become depressed, or you just want to pay to belong to a religious cult, then TM is definitely for you. If, however, you truly want to learn to meditate and gain real benefits verified by independent studies, save your money and your sanity and look elsewhere. I know; I did the whole TM thing for 15 years. What a racket...
I recommend Mindfulness Meditation (MM), Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM), Insight Meditation (Vipassanā) among others. They are freely available, cost little or nothing to learn, and have unbiased research supporting their effectiveness.
peace to all
TM ,,, aside from it's other serious problems .. visualizes the names of gods. over and over and over.. So it is never going to be suitable for public schools
Thanks for your educated opinion about TM. I've always been suspicious of any organization that teaches meditation for profit and your comments has verified my concerns.
Peace to you also.
• CME program on Managing Cardiovascular Risk: www.tm.cme.edu
James krag MD : “Just as there are many kinds of medication, there are also many approaches that are termed ‘meditation.’ The vast majority of the research on meditation has been on the Transcendental Meditation technique—and the findings clearly indicate that the TM technique works better than other researched mental techniques to promote health. If research shows that a specific medication helps treat a disorder, it would be irresponsible and illogical to conclude that all medications help treat that disorder. In the same way, research on Transcendental Meditation should not be generalized to include other techniques also called ‘meditation.’ We should intelligently choose what works and what is supported by research. Therefore I strongly support the introduction specifically of the Transcendental Meditation program into our nation’s schools and health care systems.”
http://www.tm.org/blog/