Less Pain. More Zen.

Meditation is the key to waking up.

The brain’s fight-or-flight response is housed in the amygdala (the almond shape nodes located in each hemisphere on top of the brain stem), and has an intense, rapid reaction that categorizes our feelings (e.g. avoid or attack, pleasure or pain, run or fight). Scientific evidence illustrates via MRI scans that after 8-weeks of mindfulness practice (e.g. visualization, mediation, or autogenic training) the amygdala shrinks. When the amygdala decreases, the thickness of the prefrontal cortex increases – the headquarters for awareness, decision making, and concentration.

More evidence unfolds to the benefits of meditation specifically for military units, professional athletes, and medical personnel. Why? These groups experience pain, trauma, and stress at higher intensity levels. In this study, if you scan the brain of advanced meditators, they reported less pain; more zen. Neurologically, their brain scans showed the anterior cortex (pain region) and prefrontal cortex (awareness region) were “decoupled”. They were even asked not to meditate, and found their baseline states were definitely different. Advanced meditators being those with 40,000 hours of experience had a resting brain state, when scanned, that looked like a normal individual’s brain when meditating.

Meditation is an excellent opportunity to cultivate mindfulness. It’s a progressive approach taking time, tweaking, practice and consistency to clear out our negative thoughts. When practiced regularly and over years, meditation is proving to slow down age-related brain atrophy (the brain is a muscle) by positively affecting the immune system (body). Whether your meditation style includes Shamatha, Vipassana and Zazen, these Buddhist traditions truly fostered “waking up the brain” through deep concentration and quieting of the mind, stillness of the body, and calmness of the spirit.