The value of meditation

Maybe you've heard that meditation is good for you, that it can make you happier and healthier. And that's enough to get you interested but not enough to get you started.

How about this: It can save you money.

Rearchers at Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital looked at some of the large body of research that's found health benefits from meditation and other mind-body practices, like yoga and tai chi, and found people who used relaxation techniques were 43 percent less likely to visit the hospital, be ordered a medical test by their doctor and to need emergency care, compared to those who did not use the practices.

To determine that, the researchers analyzed 4,000 records from patients between 2006 and 2014, who followed a doctor's recommendation to use relaxation techniques such as meditation, yoga, and tai chi in addition to medical treatment for stress-related health problems. They also looked at the records of 13,000 patients whose doctors did not make these recommendations.

The researchers found that mind-body practices resulted in annual health care savings of $2,360 per patient, based on reduced emergency room visits alone.

They estimated overall annual savings -- taking into account the costs of hospital and doctor visits, and medical tests -- of up to $25,000 per patient.

"These practices can ... decrease the anxiety associated with many health conditions, lead to improved self-awareness, and may enhance other self-care behaviors," Dr. Michelle Dossett, a physician and researcher at the Benson-Henry Institute and one of the study's authors, told The Huffington Post. "These practices can decrease a wide range of stress-related symptoms and medical conditions."

Feel better. Save money. Become a nice person because you're less stressed. Good reasons to try meditation.

Real Happiness Week 1: Meditation in the maelstrom

I am already pretty happy at work. I like what I do, and I like the people I do it with. I know exactly what I'll be doing, but I never know what I'll be doing. (I'm a newspaper editor, and the schedule is the same every day but the content is different.) Nevertheless, I experience stress at work. I'd like to experience it less.

So of course I clicked on a link that offered seven ways to reduce stress at work. Unfortunately, most of the tips weren't applicable. And one that suggested reducing interruptions made me laugh.

I shared that with a co-worker, who comment, "But interruptions are our business." That and multi-tasking.

Which makes concentration, the first week in Sharon Salzberg's 28-day guide to "Real Happiness at Work," a challenge. At any given moment, I may be editing a story, talking to a reporter who has an update on another story, waiting to have a page proofread, and wondering if I can hold a story for a day. And in the next moment, I'm checking email, checking the wire services for breaking news, looking at faxes dropped on my desk, and answering a colleague's question about grammar or word use (what we call "style").

Sharon notes that "human beings seem to be cognitively unable to multi-task." When we think we're tracking several things at once, we're actually switching our focus rapidly from thing to thing. Multi-tasking, she says, can "stimulate us into mindlessness, giving the illusion of productivity while stealing our focus and harming performance."

I don't need a study to tell me that. I know that I do a better job when I'm not interrupted, when I can focus on one thing. But that's not the reality of life in a newsroom.

So I've been working with one of Sharon's "stealth meditations." I can't exactly find a quiet place to meditate in the maelstrom, but I can do this: "Feel your hands. See if you can make the switch from the more conceptual thought 'These are my fingers' to the world of direct sensation -- pulsing, throbbing, pressure. You don't have to name the sensations, just feel them."

I tried that this week, in those short breaks between tasks (frantic multi-tasking is interspersed with brief no-tasking) -- just feel my hands. And it brought me out of the swirl of thoughts, into the present moment, into my body. It let me come back with more clarity, less brain fog.

During February, Sharon Salzberg runs a 28-day meditation challenge based on her books Real Happiness and Real Happiness at Work. People who are taking part post abut their experiences here. Read, comment, take the pledge, or just lurk.

Meditation changes go deep

Blood samples of people who meditated regularly -- both longtime meditators and those trained in an eight-week class -- revealed changes in gene expression following meditation, according to researchers at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

They trained a group of 26 people in meditation techniques in an eight-week program with deep breathing, mantras, and cooncentration (letting go fo distractions), with recorded meditations after that. They also recruited 25 longtime meditators, and took blood samples before and after meditation sessions.They found:

The changes were the exact opposite of what occurs during flight or fight: genes associated with energy metabolism, mitochondrial function, insulin secretion, and telomere maintenance were turned on, while those involved in inflammation were turned off. These effects were more pronounced and consistent for long-term practitioners.

It's only gene expression that is altered, not the genes themselves, the researchers said. But these results also showed that the effects of the relaxation response become stronger with practice, typically twice a day for 10 to 20 minutes.

People who practice simple meditation aren't "just relaxing," explained the study's senior author, Dr. Herbert Benson (he of the aforementioned institute). Instead, they're experiencing "a specific genomic response that counteracts the harmful genomic effects of stress."

While this study only looked at one way of reaching this state, people have been figuring this out for themselves for thousands of years, through yoga, prayer, and other forms of meditation. Yet this is the first time researchers have been able to use basic science to show that these practices actually have an observable, biological effect.

Info from the Atlantic

More mindfulness = less stress

Focusing on the present rather than letting the mind drift may help to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, new research from the the University of California, Davis, suggests.

"This is the first study to show a direct relation between resting cortisol and scores on any type of mindfulness scale," said Tonya Jacobs, a postdoctoral researcher at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain and first author of a paper describing the work, published this week in the journal Health Psychology.

High levels of cortisol, a hormone produced by the adrenal gland, are associated with physical or
emotional stress. Prolonged release of the hormone contributes to wide-ranging, adverse effects on a number of physiological systems.

Mindfulness includes the ability to focus mental resources on immediate experience, which can be improved by meditation training.

According to Jacobs, training the mind to focus on immediate experience may reduce the propensity to ruminate about the past or worry about the future, thought processes that have been linked to cortisol release.
"The idea that we can train our minds in a way that fosters healthy mental habits and that these habits may be reflected in mind-body relations is not new; it's been around for thousands of years across various cultures and ideologies," Jacobs said. "However, this idea is just beginning to be integrated into Western medicine as objective evidence accumulates. Hopefully, studies like this one will contribute to that effort."

Call for calm

Imagine the stress faced by students at the nation's top universities, particularly one as competitive and proud as Harvard.

Now imagine the pressure on the people who have to deal with them -- faculty, administrators, other Harvard employees.

Ouch.

To ease the stress of administrative staff, Harvard's Office of the Executive Vice President announced three initiatives:

-- A six-week mindfulness at work class created by Jon Kabat-Zinn, creator of the popular Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.
-- One-hour workshops that can serve as refreshers for those who've taken the six-week class or as introductions or respite for others.
-- A staffed meditation "hotline."

The announcement says:

Finally, we have created a Guided Meditation Line, 4-CALM.  This telephone line, still in the beta phase, is live and waiting mindfully for the stressed masses to call for three- and four-minute guided meditations, pointers to other Harvard resources, and regularly changing reflections on stress and resilience.

I tried to find more details on the Guided Meditation Line because I was intrigued. No luck. Not even enough digits to make an outside call possible.

But with a little practice, you can be your own hotline. Feel a need for some calm? Find a place where you can sit without interruptions -- pick up your phone and call your answering machine. Notice your breath. Notice if it gets stuck anywhere in your body, if there are areas of tension. Know you can let it go. Watch your breath, treat your mind like a friend, and just be.

Meditation has lasting effects

The changes that take place in the brain during meditation -- reduced activity in the amygdala, which regulates stress response, for instance -- continue after a meditation session ends, according to a research study published this month in Frontiers in Neuroscience.

Researchers at Massachusetts General, Boston College, and other participating institutions also found differences in the brain activity of those who practiced mindfulness-awareness meditation and those who did compassion practices during meditation sessions.

“The two different types of meditation training our study participants completed yielded some differences in the response of the amygdala – a part of the brain known for decades to be important for emotion – to images with emotional content,” says Gaëlle Desbordes, PhD, a research fellow at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at MGH and at the BU Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology, corresponding author of the report. “This is the first time that meditation training has been shown to affect emotional processing in the brain outside of a meditative state.”

Participants in three groups took part in eight-week trainings in either mindfulness-awareness meditation, compassion meditation, or general health classes. They had brain-imaging tests before and after the programs as they viewed photographs.

In the mindful attention group, the after-training brain scans showed a decrease in activation in the right amygdala in response to all images, supporting the hypothesis that meditation can improve emotional stability and response to stress. In the compassion meditation group, right amygdala activity also decreased in response to positive or neutral images. But among those who reported practicing compassion meditation most frequently outside of the training sessions, right amygdala activity tended to increase in response to negative images – all of which depicted some form of human suffering. No significant changes were seen in the control group or in the left amygdala of any study participants.

“We think these two forms of meditation cultivate different aspects of mind,” Desbordes explains. “Since compassion meditation is designed to enhance compassionate feelings, it makes sense that it could increase amygdala response to seeing people suffer. Increased amygdala activation was also correlated with decreased depression scores in the compassion meditation group, which suggests that having more compassion towards others may also be beneficial for oneself. Overall, these results are consistent with the overarching hypothesis that meditation may result in enduring, beneficial changes in brain function, especially in the area of emotional processing.”

Read more at http://scienceblog.com/57623/meditation-makes-lasting-change-in-brain/#i4Hedt7PxM30TklV.99