Britta Holzel

In times of stress, we’re often encouraged to pause for a moment and simply be in the ‘now.’ This kind of mindfulness, an essential part of Buddhist and Indian Yoga traditions, has entered the mainstream as people try to find ways to combat stress and improve their quality of life. And research suggests that mindfulness meditation can have benefits for health and performance, including improved immune function, reduced blood pressure, and enhanced cognitive function.

But how is it that a single practice can have such wide-ranging effects on well-being? A new article published in the latest issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, draws on the existing scientific literature to build a framework that can explain these positive effects.

The goal of this work, according to author Britta Hölzel, of Justus Liebig University and Harvard Medical School, is to “unveil the conceptual and mechanistic complexity of mindfulness, providing the ‘big picture’ by arranging many findings like the pieces of a mosaic.” By using a framework approach to understand the mechanisms of mindfulness, Hölzel and her co-authors point out that what we think of as mindfulness is not actually a single skill. Rather, it is a multi-faceted mental practice that encompasses several mechanisms.

The authors specifically identify four key components of mindfulness that may account for its effects: attention regulation, body awareness, emotion regulation, and sense of self. Together, these components help us attend to and deal with the mental and physiological effects of stress in ways that are non-judgmental.

Although these components are theoretically distinct, they are closely intertwined. Improvement in attention regulation, for example, may directly facilitate our awareness of our physiological state. Body awareness, in turn, helps us to recognize the emotions we are experiencing. Understanding the relationships between these components, and the brain mechanisms that underlie them, will allow clinicians to better tailor mindfulness interventions for their patients, says Hölzel.

On the most fundamental level, this framework underscores the point that mindfulness is not a vague cure-all. Effective mindfulness meditation requires training and practice and it has distinct measurable effects on our subjective experiences, our behavior, and our brain function. The authors hope that further research on this topic will “enable a much broader spectrum of individuals to utilize mindfulness meditation as a versatile tool to facilitate change – both in psychotherapy and in everyday life.”

Meditation causes changes in brain structure

March 16, 2011

Read the rest of this article…

A study by scientists at the University of Massachusetts, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Bender Institute of Neuroimaging in Germany found that deep meditation for 27 minutes a day for eight weeks produced changes in the areas of the brain associated with memory, empathy, and stress.

Dr. Britta Hölzel was the lead author of the study, published in the journal Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging on Jan. 30. She says, “It’s fascinating to see the plasticity of the brain, and the practice of meditation can play an active role in changing the brain and can increase prosperity and the quality of life.”

“Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of tranquility and physical relaxation, doctors have long argued that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,” says Dr. Sara Lazar, a coauthor of the study.

Sixteen people participated in the study. They underwent a brain scan two weeks before and two weeks after the study. The magnetic resonance images of the brain structures of…

Meditation alters your grey matter, studies show

February 21, 2011

Read the rest of this article…

Move over cryptic crosswords and Sudoku, and make way for the ultimate mental workout. It’s called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR for short. Recent neuroscience research shows that novices using the method – developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in the 1970s – can get results in just eight weeks.

Brain-changing results, that is.

A 2010 study found that non-meditators who had eight weeks of MBSR training were more likely than a control group to access the brain region that provides a bodily sense of the “here and now” as opposed to the region associated with worry.

In other research published in January, brain scans of MBSR participants with no previous meditation experience showed increased grey-matter density in regions involved in learning and memory, emotion regulation, self-awareness and perspective taking.

Scientists don’t know whether changes in grey-matter density influence a person’s thought patterns or actions, notes Britta Hölzel, lead author of the second study and a research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital. But she adds that decreased grey-matter concentration in the amygdala – the brain region that controls anxiety – was correlated to lower stress levels reported by participants. “This is actually a link [between] changes in the brain and behaviour.”

Previous studies suggest MBSR is a boon…

for overall health. Research by Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the University of Massachusetts’ Stress Reduction Clinic, established the MBSR program as an effective medical intervention for chronic pain and stress-related illnesses such as high blood pressure. Scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that graduates of an MBSR course produced more antibodies after flu shots than did non-mediators, which indicated a stronger immune response. And in a 2010 study, researchers at the University of Toronto concluded that mindful meditation was as effective as antidepressants in preventing relapse from clinical depression.

Mindfulness meditation helps to reduce stress by providing insight, says Lucinda Sykes, a Toronto physician who has led MBSR courses since 1997. “Sometimes we’re having a stress response to situations that is actually more the result of our habits of perception and attitude rather than the circumstances themselves,” she explains.

But it may be premature to draw conclusions about the health benefits of MBSR, according to a meta-analysis of meditation research commissioned by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States. The report found that the majority of meditation studies published up to the year 2005 had methodological shortcomings.

Compared to some forms of meditation, however, MBSR is a highly systematic practice. The program consists of eight weekly group sessions and a full-day retreat. Participants commit to about 45 minutes a day of exercises that include gentle yoga, sitting meditation and a “body scan,” which involves directing attention to bodily sensations. Exercises at home are led by experts via CDs and participants are encouraged to contact program leaders in between sessions for extra coaching.

Unlike transcendental meditation and various chanting practices, MBSR is not based solely on focusing the mind, says Zindel Segal, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto who developed Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy to treat depression. Instead, mindfulness emphasizes awareness of thoughts, feelings, sounds and sensations from an internal observer’s perspective, without an attempt to judge or alter the experience. “You’re watching the moment by moment ebb and flow of emotions,” Dr. Segal says. “You’re not running away from them but you’re also not getting overwhelmed by them.”

Because it’s a specific method that takes practice, experts discourage beginners from trying MBSR without any guidance. “Most people are going to find it’s easier to do this with a group,” says Dr. Sykes, adding that MBSR alumni often begin a solo practice once they get the hang of it.

Dr. Segal cautions against attempting to “cannibalize” the MBSR program by experimenting with only one of the activities. Although the body scan, yoga and sitting meditation exercises are all designed to cultivate mindfulness, doing just one robs people of the chance to discover which practice is best suited to them, he says.

Dr. Hölzel says it’s unclear which exercises contributed to structural changes found in brain scans of MBSR participants, since the program was tested as a whole. “We cannot tease apart the specific effects of each of the components,” she says.

After the eight-week course is over, the recommended daily dose of MBSR depends on participants’ reasons for entering the program, Dr. Sykes says. Maintaining a new level of insight may be possible in just 10 or 15 minutes a day. But if the goal is to influence a biological variable, such as blood pressure, she says, “it’s likely that you’re going to get the best results if you practice 20 minutes, twice a day.”

Dr. Segal suggests it’s better to do mindfulness exercises for a few minutes each day than to be a weekend meditation warrior. A daily practice becomes woven into the fabric of life, he explains, whereas sporadic mindfulness “is not that fully integrated.”

Mindfulness exercises are compatible with spiritual traditions including Christianity and Judaism, notes Dr. Sykes. Although it’s based on a form of Buddhist meditation called Vipassana, MBSR is a secular program designed for health-care settings, she says.

“People don’t need to become Buddhist to nonetheless benefit from this practice.”

Get with the program

Eight-week workshops modelled after the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School are held in cities across Canada:

Toronto: Meditation for Health, www.meditationforhealth.com

Vancouver: MBSR B.C., www.mbsrbc.ca

Ottawa: Ottawa Mindfulness, www.ottawamindfulness.ca

Montreal: Living Arts, www.living-arts.ca

For people who shy away from groups, the MBSR method is outlined in books that include CDs, such as Bob Stahl’s A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook and Zindel Segal’s The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness.

Meditation appears to cause changes in brain’s gray matter

January 31, 2011

A mindfulness meditation training program can trigger measurable changes in brain areas associated with awareness, empathy and sense of self within eight weeks, a new study has found.

Mindfulness meditation focuses on nonjudgmental awareness of one’s feelings, sensations and state of mind, which often results in greater peacefulness and relaxation, the researchers explained.

They used MRI to assess the brain structure of 16 volunteers two weeks before and after they took the eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program at the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness. The program included weekly meetings to practice mindfulness meditation and audio recordings for guided meditation practice. The participants were asked to keep track of how much time they practiced each day.

The researchers also analyzed MRI scans of a control group of people who did not meditate for comparison.

The meditation group participants spent an average of 27 minutes a day doing mindfulness meditation exercises. The MRI scans taken after the eight-week program revealed increased gray matter density in the hippocampus (important for learning and memory) and in structures associated with compassion and self-awareness.

The investigators also found that participant-reported reductions in stress were associated with decreased gray matter density in the amygdala, which plays a role in anxiety and stress.

None of these brain structure changes were seen in the control group.

“It is fascinating to see the brain’s plasticity and that, by practicing meditation, we can play an active role in changing the brain and can increase our well-being and quality of life,” first author Britta Holzel, a research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston and Giessen University in Germany, said in an MGH news release.

“Other studies in different patient populations have shown that meditation can make significant improvements in a variety of symptoms, and we are now investigating the underlying mechanisms in the brain that facilitate this change.”

The study will be published in the Jan. 30 issue of the journal Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.

Wildmind is a Community-Supported Meditation Initiative. Click here to find out about the many benefits of being a sponsor.

How meditation may change the brain (New York Times)

January 28, 2011

Read the rest of this article…

Over the December holidays, my husband went on a 10-day silent meditation retreat. Not my idea of fun, but he came back rejuvenated and energetic.

He said the experience was so transformational that he has committed to meditating for two hours a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, until the end of March. He’s running an experiment to determine whether and how meditation actually improves the quality of his life.

I’ll admit I’m a skeptic.

But now, scientists say that meditators like my husband may be benefiting from changes in their brains. The researchers report that those who meditated for about 30 minutes a day for eight weeks had measurable changes in gray-matter density in parts of the brain associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress. The findings will appear in the Jan. 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.

M.R.I. brain scans taken before and after the participants’ meditation regimen found increased gray matter in the hippocampus, an area important for learning and memory. The images also showed a reduction of gray matter in the amygdala, a region connected to anxiety and stress. A control group that did not practice meditation showed no such changes.

But how exactly did these study volunteers, all seeking stress reduction in their lives but new to the practice, meditate? So many people talk about meditating these days. Within four miles of our Bay Area home, there are at least six centers that offer some type of meditation class, and I often hear phrases like, “So how was your sit today?”

Britta Hölzel, a psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and the study’s lead author, said the participants practiced mindfulness meditation, a form of meditation that was introduced in the United States in the late 1970s. It traces its roots to the same ancient Buddhist techniques that my husband follows.

“The main idea is to use different objects to focus one’s attention, and it could be a focus on sensations of breathing, or emotions or thoughts, or observing any type of body sensations,” she said. “But it’s about bringing the mind back to the here and now, as opposed to letting the mind drift.”

Generally the meditators are seated upright on a chair or the floor and in silence, although sometimes there might be a guide leading a session, Dr. Hölzel said.

Of course, it’s important to remember that the human brain is complicated. Understanding what the increased density of gray matter really means is still, well, a gray area.

“The field is very, very young, and we don’t really know enough about it yet,” Dr. Hölzel said. “I would say these are still quite preliminary findings. We see that there is something there, but we have to replicate these findings and find out what they really mean.”

It has been hard to pinpoint the benefits of meditation, but a 2009 study suggests that meditation may reduce blood pressure in patients with coronary heart disease. And a 2007 study found that meditators have longer attention spans.

Previous studies have also shown that there are structural differences between the brains of meditators and those who don’t meditate, although this new study is the first to document changes in gray matter over time through meditation.

Ultimately, Dr. Hölzel said she and her colleagues would like to demonstrate how meditation results in definitive improvements in people’s lives.

“A lot of studies find that it increases well-being, improves quality of life, but it’s always hard to determine how you can objectively test that,” she said. “Relatively little is known about the brain and the psychological mechanisms about how this is being done.”

In a 2008 study published in the journal PloS One, researchers found that when meditators heard the sounds of people suffering, they had stronger activation levels in their temporal parietal junctures, a part of the brain tied to empathy, than people who did not meditate.

“They may be more willing to help when someone suffers, and act more compassionately,” Dr. Hölzel said.

Further study is needed, but that bodes well for me.

For now, I’m more than happy to support my husband’s little experiment, despite the fact that he now rises at 5 a.m. and is exhausted by 10 at night.

An empathetic husband who takes out the trash and puts gas in the car because he knows I don’t like to — I’ll take that.

Mindfulness meditation training changes brain structure in 8 weeks

January 21, 2011