Mindfulness Meditation: Good for Human Health?

Meditation has been going through a bit of a rebirth lately, especially when it comes to mindfulness meditation. Part of this meditation resurgence is due to the fact that so-called biohackers, medical experts, and scientists are either popularizing it or shining a scientific spotlight on to the practice. This blog post is going to go over the data which has been gathered so far and make an overall analysis of the topic. Hopefully, the reader will be able to decide for themselves if meditation is right for them by the time they finish reading.

What Does Meditation Do to Your Mind and Body?

There is some scientific evidence which suggests that meditation has the ability to alter your brain waves. There are five basic brainwave states that you're mind can be in at any given time. They include:

Gamma waves - Gamma waves are what you want your brain to be emitting when it's time to learn something new. This is the most hyperactive state the brain can reach. However, going too far into the gamma wave spectrum can provoke anxiety.
Beta waves - The beta wave state can best be described as calm, but alert. During the day, your brain spends most of its time in the beta wave state.
Alpha waves - The alpha wave state is still technically that of a thinking mind, but a relaxed and peaceful one. The best way to describe the alpha wave state is to compare it to the blissful feeling you get during a woodland hike, after intense exercise, or being with a lover.
Theta waves - The theta wave state is the shallowest level of meditation for the brain. Your consciousness transitions from thinking and verbalizing into a visual/meditative state. This state often comes with a feeling of drowsiness, but with practice, you can utilize your brain's ability to achieve deeper awareness and solve more complicated problems then you would be able to in a gamma, beta, or alpha state.
Delta waves - The vast majority of humans only enter a delta wave state during the deepest part of their sleep cycle. However, with years of dedicated concentration and practice, some experts can reach this neurological state while technically still conscious.

Spending more time in the theta and delta wave states - if reached through meditation - should help reduce anxiety and stress. It might make you more mindful, and increase the amount of time and energy you spend focusing on the present. This is a good thing, because many people who turn to meditation do so because they are plagued by painful memories from the past, worries about the future, or both. More often than not, people spend more time suffering from anxiety or wallowing in pain than figuring out a solution to the problem. Meditation, when practiced properly, may have the ability to take an anxious brain out of its overexcited state and put it into a healthier headspace.
There have been neurological studies done which show physical changes in the brain after both long and short-term use of meditation. In the long-term, a UCLA study discovered that veteran meditators retained more gray matter in their brain than people their age who did not meditate. In the short-term, as little as eight weeks according to a Harvard study, can cause positive growth in the hippocampus, which helps improve memory and learning. There were also structural changes observed in emotional regulation sectors, such as the amygdala. The parts of the brain which process stress, fear, and anxiety all shrank in test subjects by the end of this 8-week study.

Criticisms of Meditation

The biggest critics of meditation are demanding that people put more focus on the instances in which it does more harm than good. Based on certain types of research, there are alleged texts from as far back as the 16th century and earlier documenting cases where people suffer psychotic breaks after intense meditation. In Rhode Island, there's a rehabilitation center for people who have suffered extreme emotional distress do to their forays into meditation. Other critics of meditation have a two fold argument: that the scientific research which identifies meditation as effective maybe methodologically flawed, and/or the possibility that people can achieve the same neurological, psychological, and physiological benefits of meditation through doing other activities. It should be noted that most of the less rigorous studies come from outfits where test subjects are asked to report their results after limited meditation practice instead of measuring actual neurological response with an MRI. Furthermore, while things like exercise and antidepressant medication have been shown to produce similar health and wellness benefits to that of basic mindfulness meditation, exercise and antidepressants aren't for everyone. Some people, for one reason or another, may not be physically able to exercise sufficiently enough to trigger the physiological benefits. Furthermore, some people who suffer from depression and anxiety may not be able to take medication, or it might be against their religious beliefs. For these people, meditation may very well be the best - or only - option.

How to Meditate

The safest and simplest form of meditation couldn't be easier. It's recommended you begin with two to three minutes every morning, first thing after you get up. After about a week, you can start to add another 2 to 3 minutes in the evening, right before bed. As you get more used to it, you can increase the length of your meditation sessions up to 10 or even 20 minutes at a time. The most basic form of meditation can be done in a few easy steps:

Start by sitting in a comfortable chair, or on a comfortable spot on the floor
Close your eyes and start focusing on your breathing
If you're having trouble focusing on your breath, count along with each breath - one on the inhale, 2 on the exhale, and keep going until a count of 10. Repeat this for as long as your session lasts.
When you catch yourself drifting off and thoughts, acknowledge and immediately but gently bring your attention back towards the breath and counting the breaths. The more often you can successfully turn your attention away from racing thoughts and back to your breath, the more benefits you will reap over time.

We hope this blog post has been informative and useful for you, regardless of your views on meditation. Please bookmark our site and check back for future blog posts about health and wellness topics.