Day 32: Mindfulness

Welcome to 40 Days of Mindfulness and Compassion Day 32!

 

Lecture

It can be beneficial to return to mindfulness of breathing practice again and again. It is a subtle practice, and results typically manifest over time. There has been a lot of hype and hopeful research about mindfulness, but honestly, from a scientific and secular perspective, it is safe to say that we know a lot less than we don’t know. In other words, we are at a very early stage of research into mindfulness and related contemplative practices. And yet, there is an emerging body of research establishing the benefits of contemplative practices. In addition, there are countless first-hand accounts touting the benefits of mindfulness and other meditation practices.

In the first years of the twenty-first century, research into meditation conducted by neuroscientists really began to catch the attention of the wider community.  Richard Davidson, and others, examined neurocorrelates of meditation in “advanced meditators.” Participants were sought who had logged thousands of hours of meditation practice, and various experiments and studies were done with such individuals. Some of the results were quite amazing. One participant in these early neurosicentific studies, Matthieu Ricard, was labeled the “happiest man in the world.”

These studies demonstrated desirable “brain states” of advanced meditators. But, what about you and me? Maybe Matthieu Ricard was already the happiest man in the world because of genetics and/or social conditioning, and this is why he was able to go off and meditate for countless hours. To address this, researchers began to focus more attention on the effects of meditation practices on novice meditators. One of the more exciting avenues of research has to do with the “default brain state.”

The default state is basically what our brain is doing when we are not explicitly doing anything. To access the default state, participants are told to do nothing! The default state, or resting state, is what the brain does when not engaged in a goal-directed task.

The default mode involves the medial pre-frontal cortex, posterior cingulate, lateral parietal cortex, hippocampus. The medial pre-frontal cortex is the “Me” part of the brain. This is the part that processes information relating to ourselves and our experiences, and only highly-evolved species have this part of the brain. During default mode, we activate the neural pathways between the “me” part of the brain and certain parts of limbic system of the brain, which are associated with our survival instincts and emotions including stress, anxiety and fear. Basically, the mind ruminates, and jumps from the past to the present, and this rumination is often connected to the fear/threat system.

A brain employing mindfulness is using a DIFFERENT part of the brain than the typical default mode! We are still engaging our prefrontal cortex, but instead of it deploying our limbic system and amygdala (the part of the brain that is sometimes known as the ‘fear center’), it is activating our lesser-used sensory pathways. That’s what is activated when we are living in the present moment and noticing what we feel, hear, smell or taste. When we’re depressed, we’re using the same regions of the brain that we use in the regular default mode. So, when practicing mindfulness, the brain is being re-habituated to function differently. To some degree, we are bypassing traditional default pathways. And importantly, the default mode itself becomes transformed through mindfulness practice. For instance, after 8 weeks of meditation training, when told to “do nothing,” participants’ brains are more grounded in sensory experiences, and less tied to rumination and fear responses.

 

Meditation

Day 32: Mindfulness

 

 Self-Reflective Activity

Try to pause periodically throughout the day during your daily activities. Just pause and breathe for a bit, then very gently look at your current experience. Ask yourself: “How is my experience right now? What is the flavor of my experience right now? (You can substitute any word that makes sense to you for “flavor.”) Observe and gently note what is there.

 

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