My March Meditation Challenge

This month I started my most recent effort to develop a deep, lasting and meaningful meditation practice. Specifically, on March 11, 2013 I started a 21-Day on-line Deepak Chopra (with special guest Oprah!) meditation challenge. Yeah, I’ve read all the popular press on meditation. How it can help you deal with all the stress of living in New York City, relationships, work, travel—the list goes on and on. I read all about how it can make you calm yet more attentive, aware, alive—and even more creative. You bet I wanted some of that yummy meditation goodness in my life. What I didn’t expect was the astounding evidence that meditation—I’m talkin’ just a little silence during my day—could change both the size and the patterns of electrical activity of my brain.

Truth be told, I am a meditation practice flunky. About two years ago I did my very first serious 30-Day meditation challenge using a 9-minute “Ah” meditation from a You Tube video with Dr. Wayne Dyer, a famous meditation guru. I sat, listened and chanted “Ah” every morning along with Wayne for 30 days because 30 days was supposed to be the amount of time it takes to develop a new habit and make it stick. The good news was that I improved my breath control during that 30 days and by the end, I was able to sustain my “Ah” just as long as Wayne. I even got a little competitive about it, which I decided was not a good thing. The bad news is that after my 30 days was up I dropped my newly developed “habit” like a hot potato and never looked back. So much for that rule of thumb.

Then came my first Deepak Chopra 21-Day Meditation Challenge. I eagerly signed up on-line and was ready to listen every day and enter meditation bliss. This time, after only the first 2 or 3 days, I lost motivation and only listened sporadically for the rest of the 21 days. Ever the optimist, about 4 months later I tried another Chopra 21-Day challenge. Finally some good news – this time I managed to listen to and enjoy almost all 21 days of meditation (only missing 1 or 2 along the way). The bad news was that I was listening to the meditations at the end of the day right before bed and more often than not I would doze off toward the end of the mediation and wake up after the session was over. Not the best, but at least I started the meditations dutifully and even enthusiastically each day.

This month’s 21-Day Meditation challenge is different for two reasons. First, I decided to do the meditations first thing in the morning and this has worked beautifully. I did not miss one single meditation minute and instead of feeling sleepy first thing in the morning, it wakes me up and helps me to start my day in a wonderfully calm, open state of mind. The second thing that’s different is that between the last meditation challenge and this one, I did a little research on the effects of meditation on brain function. What I found was much more amazing than I had imagined.

Maybe the most shocking result comes from a study done on the brain’s electrical activity in a group of eight Tibetan monks with between 10,000 to 50,000 hours of meditation practice between them (Now THAT’s a whole lotta meditation!). They monitored the monk’s brain activity (using EEG) during quite baseline and during meditation and compared it to the brain activity in a group of “control” subjects who were given one week of meditation instruction and practice. Compared to the controls the electrical activity in monk’s brain was much more in synch relative to the control brains (think religious boy band). This just means that large areas of their brain were responding in a highly coordinated fashion. In fact, higher levels of brain synchrony were seen even during the baseline period, which jibes with one of goals of the monk’s training which is to try to stay in a meditative state at all times. So, yes, these findings suggest that long term meditation could have significant effects on the overall pattern of electrical activity in the brain.

But the most exciting finding for me as a novice meditator, is that there is small but growing set of findings showing that as little as 8 weeks of meditation practice can change the brain in positive ways. In one study, 8 weeks of meditation increased the size of 3 brain areas: the left hippocampus, posterior cingulate cortex and temporo-parietal junction. Another study reported that meditation increased activation in the anterior left hemisphere of the brain as well as improved immune functions in the meditators relative to the non-meditators. A third study reported that meditation resulted in decreased volume of the amygdala, as well as decreases in perceived stress level. The amgydala is a key brain structure associated with stress.

This information inspires me to step up my game from 21 days of meditation to 8 weeks or longer to ensure that some of these positive brain changes will happen in me.

This also raises the question of how the brain changes in meditation measure up to the brain changes seen with exercise, a major interest of mine and a major focus on this blog. This, in fact, is the perfect set up for my next blog post that will be direct head-to head comparison (a smack down, if you will) between exercise and meditation. Which is better? Do they do the same things or different things to your brain? What if you do both together?

So March was my month of blissful meditation. Stay tuned for the April and the Exercise Vs. Meditation Brain Smackdown.

Namaste

Wendy