Meditate: Science or Tradition?

Meditation had always been a field of research in the spiritual realm and until the 90s there has been no exhaustive scientific research on this topic.

A relevant event occurred in 1991, when scientists Francisco Varela and Adam Engle, together with the Dalai Lama, created the Mind and Life Institute in the United States with the aim of exploring the interface between science and meditation. Another relevant event was in the late 90s, when neurologist Marcus Raichle incorporated techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging into the research of the default neural network.

From there there has been a progressive rapprochement between science and tradition. The scientific community has become aware of the detailed analysis of the mind that meditative traditions have been carrying out for centuries and has put meditation as another focus of his research

Currently, the scientific community in this field, led among others by Richard Davidson, is finding enormous similarities in the practical results of meditation between its advances in neuroscience and what was written in ancient texts such as the Satipatthana Sutta.

What does the meditation process consist of?

The meditation process is something simple to understand and, on the other hand, more difficult to do It is like making a “hole in 1” in golf, the instruction is to put the ball into the hole with a single stroke. It’s easy to understand, right? But not so easy to do and even less to do at will with each stroke.

The first thing you learn when you start is the set of meditation techniques; Perhaps the best known are those of focused attention, based on attending to an object in the present constantly and, when your attention goes away and you realize it, you return again.

But if one progresses properly, one realizes that Meditation is more than just bringing the mind to the object every time it gets distracted Meditation practice allows you to be in this world with a greater feeling of happiness, fluidity, presence and clarity.

In my experience as a meditation teacher I can say that The progression in learning is not linear, there are weeks in which a student makes a lot of progress and others in which it seems that he or she is going backwards. That is normal, since it is a very subjective experience and depends a lot on the emotional state of the student.

What are the benefits of meditation?

The benefit of meditation can be divided into four large areas, positive aspects that are obtained thanks to brain neuroplasticity. They are the following.

1. The attentional process

By increasing the capacity for sustained attention, meditation allows us improve focus and concentration

2. Body awareness

Decreasing the tendency to judge internal experience, helps us understand external experience and gives us a greater ability to make decisions

3. Emotional regulation

Experiencing what is present in the field of consciousness, observing these experiences without altering or reacting to them, allows us attend to unpleasant emotions or sensations from an attitude that generates habituation, acceptance and greater ability to sustain difficult emotions and regulate them.

4. Changes in the perspective of the Self

Observing without judgment and being equanimous, allows the disidentification of contents by consciousness; This fact happens when experiencing the changing and improper nature of reality. Experiencing oneself as something not separate from the rest changes the process of reperceiving oneself and facilitates change.

How does neurotechnology help in learning meditation?

An option that I discovered a while ago that allows students to progress more quickly is the application of neurotechnology, which consists of Using electronic equipment to analyze our meditation practice

With neurotechnology, something crucial is achieved in the learning process: having objective data. Thus, we can compare the numerical data of the practice with the subjective experience and with data from previous practices. Have accurate and real-time data about what happens in the brain (neurofeedback), and in the heart, in breathing (biofeedback) while you meditate allows the self-learning process to be smoother and faster

In my case, I use an electroencephalograph (EEG), which the student uses during meditations; In this way, of the four previous points, the first two and partly also the third can be worked on extensively. The fourth, from my point of view, is exclusively part of the spiritual realm.

With the EEG we detect the different types of brain waves and we mainly work on the Alpha waves, related to states of meditation, relaxation and calm, the Theta waves, which have to do with deep states of meditation and the first phases of sleep, and the Beta, related to states of alertness and active concentration.

The debate that is generated between student and teacher is interesting when the evolution of the different brain waves is observed with their attentional state, at what times they have been most concentrated or most distracted, how many times one is distracted, etc. And it is also relevant to know the body movement during practice, or how the heart rate changes in practice.

Meditation is fashionable, but… is it here to stay?

Everything is moving very quickly, and 10 years ago, when someone said they meditated, they were classified as someone strange or with a too spiritual life. 50 years ago, those who played sports or brushed their teeth were considered strange or very refined people, and let’s look now: we are all clear about the benefits of sustained practice of sports and good dental hygiene.

Perception is changing, just as it happened with sport or dental hygiene, and it is increasingly known that people who meditate obtain benefits by improving their health, their relationships and establishing themselves in their lives in a more conscious way.

The moment is coming when we are clear that we must take care of our mind and meditation is unstoppably joining other essential activities to enjoy good physical and mental health.

Science provides us with tools or vehicles that help us understand the path of life, it is what I call “technology at the service of consciousness.” And this adds to what is important, to what is transcendental, which continues to be living life every moment.

Author: Òscar Carrera, member of Mental Area.