STORY BYSo, what were you thinking?
That’s the expression on peoples’ faces when we start our “what we did last summer” story.
Last July, we found ourselves in a tent with 200 other sweltering souls, at Red Feather Lakes, Colorado. The sides of the tent were peeled back to scrape some breeze out of the searing sky. The car thermometer read 105 degrees.
There we sat, or slowly walked seven hours a day.
So, what were we thinking! We weren’t. Thinking, that is. That was the point. Rather, we were focusing on meditation instructions given by a young “warrior of the mind.”
Most of the fellow students had made the journey to receive the teachings of the Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, leader of Shambhala, a worldwide network of meditation and retreat centers and author of Ruling Your World: Ancient Strategies for Modern Life.
Blair and I, however, were there to conduct our own piece of research—meditation’s effects on cognitive impairment and memory—using ourselves as subjects. Based on compelling medical research linking different meditation techniques to brain health and healing, we had both scientific and personal reasons for this kind of field work. Two years post-stroke, Blair is still knitting neurons that enable him to recover from aphasia, the loss of the ability to use language. He was more than merely curious to learn if meditation could help regain memory.
Prior to signing up for the retreat, we had never heard of the Sakyong (warrior) teacher. But medical researchers like Andrew Newberg, M.D., at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine were studying meditation’s effect on cognitive impairment. We were game.
Newberg is associate professor of radiology, psychiatry, and religious studies and principal investigator of a pilot study at Penn’s new Center for Spirituality and the Mind. The study examines the effectiveness of meditation on early cognitive impairment. The study will look at patients with mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer’s symptoms. Coupled with brain imaging, Newberg’s group hopes to find out if meditation over time can improve cognitive function and can show an association with real changes in brain activity.
The meditation technique taught to the participants in this study is called Kirtan Kriya, which is identified as one of the most fundamental types of meditation practice. It’s a repetitive chanting of sounds and finger movements designed to help the mind focus and become sharper. The participants will perform this meditation technique every day for eight weeks to see if there is a change in the brain’s response to different tasks. (Most single sessions of meditation last from 20 minutes to an hour.)
Newberg explains that this is a form of mental exercise that enables the brain to strengthen itself against processes working against it. He hopes to see improvements in baseline activity levels in the brain and evidence that patients might be able to activate their brains in a fuller, more dynamic way. Newberg’s hope is that this type of meditation will be a successful, low-cost additional treatment to current therapy.
The benefits of cognitive work for those recovering from stroke and other forms of traumatic brain injury are well-established. After a systematic review of the literature from 1998 to 2002, the Brain Injury Interdisciplinary Special Interest Group of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine concluded, “Future research should move beyond the simple question of whether cognitive rehabilitation is effective, and examine the therapy factors and patient characteristics that optimize the clinical outcomes of cognitive rehabilitation.”
Kirtan Kriya, the form of meditation used in the Penn pilot study, is only one meditation modality being investigated in a medical context. The June 12, 2006 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, concluded that transcendental meditation (TM), a style of meditation using a repeated word or “mantra” such as the universal “OM” to steady and sharpen the mind may have its place in the doctor’s office, as well. Authors Maura Paul-Labrador, MPH, of Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and Noel Bairey Merz, MD, medical director of the Preventive Cardiac Center, were among the first to describe the adverse effects of stress on the heart. Since then they have been studying ways to reduce stress.
In their study, TM was taught to 103 patients with established coronary heart disease patients. They were compared to a patient group who received an equal amount of time in a health education tutorial.
Throughout the four-month period, the patients were monitored for blood pressure, blood glucose, insulin resistance and heart-rate variability. The researchers found that those who meditated had lower blood pressure and healthier levels of insulin and blood glucose than those who received advice from a health educator. Although other studies have verified the benefits of meditation on the heart, this is the first study to show that it also may work on factors key to insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes. In other words, the MD and the OM are meeting up more and more often in interesting places.
Back at Red Feather Lakes, we asked Sakyong Mipham, “How does meditation affect memory?”
The answer made sense,” We remember the most when we are small children because we are so fully present to our experiences. As we get older, we are busier and less present, so we forget more. Meditation teaches us to be more present again, and so we remember more.”
The essence of all meditation techniques is focus, the very opposite state of mind of the modern multi-tasker. This means being fully present in the moment and aware of the moment—not planning, day-dreaming, regretting, fantasizing. It means not making tomorrow’s shopping list or listing yesterday’s mistakes. It means dwelling in the only moment we have: this one.
The research on the physical, psychological and emotional health benefits of meditation is voluminous and well-documented. New research ventures into understanding how the ancient technique of meditation can intervene in the process of deterioration of the brain is carrying this pioneering work to a new level. As for our own personal research at Shambhala, we came away feeling much clearer and sharper mentally. The book on Blair’s bedside table now is, The Mind &The Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force and we keep meditating every day.
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Dr. Blair Justice is professor emeritus of psychology at UT School of Public Health and the author of several books. His wife, Dr. Rita Justice is a psychologist in private practice in Houston.
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Five years into the study, nearly 50% no longer had metabolic syndrome. People who followed the AHEI guidelines the closest were nearly twice as likely to have reversed their metabolic syndrome. The results of the study were published in Diabetes Care, online July 29, 2010.
Dr. Alice Lichtenstein, an expert on diet and heart health from Tufts University in Boston who was not involved in the study said, "It's not about focusing on individual components of the diet, it's really the whole package, and that becomes important because it means that if one of the components of a healthy diet is to eat more fruits and vegetables, just buying a pill saying that there's a concentrated extract of fruits and vegetables is probably not what's going to help you."
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