meditation a key for unlocking the human brain

7/30/2019 Meditation a Key for Unlocking the Human Brain

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Meditation: A Key for Unlocking the Human Brain

Interview with Dr. Shanida Nataraja, author of The Blissful Brain

Author: Jair Robles

Meditation: A Key for Unlocking the Human Brain

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Interview with Dr. Shanida Nataraja, author of The Blissful Brain

Author: Jair Robles

Practicing some technique that allows quieting the mind and stilling the body hasbeen a fundamental part of most spiritual traditions. And their benefits are said to be

many and varied. But for a long time, these reports have mostly come from those who

actually practice such techniques and the religious or philosophical texts that promoted

them.

It was until very recent times that science began to look into the veracity of such claims

and attempted to understand both the physiological as well as the psychological effects

that such practices have on those who practice those techniques.

In an effort to compile the most important findings from

such research, and increase our acceptance and

understanding of the positive effects that meditation has on

our body and minds, Dr Shanida Nataraja published a book

called, The Blissful Brain.

Dr Shanida Nataraja has a BSc (First Class Hons.) in

Human Science and Neuroscience and a PhD in

Neurophysiology, both from University College London.She is currently Editorial and Scientific Director in a global

healthcare consultancy firm and is also a member of the

Scientific and Medical Network, an organization

promoting open exploration in science and human

experience, whose common objective is to deepen

understanding in science, medicine, and education through

both rational analysis and intuitive insights.

SuperConsciousness recently spoke with Dr Shanida Nataraja, about the most recent

scientific findings on the connection of meditation and the brain as well as the

implications that such understanding could have on healthcare, education and ourspiritual development.


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SuperConsciousness: How did you become interested in doing research on the

relationship between meditation and the brain?

Dr Shanida Nataraja: I grew up in a household in which meditation was very much

part of everyday life. Both my parents meditated and I was therefore exposed to anumber of different meditative traditions as I was growing up. At school, I became

entranced by science and this interest led to me doing a PhD in neuroscience to deepen

my understanding of how the brain gives rise to the human behavior that we can see. It

seemed almost a natural step for me to turn my attention to meditation, to explore

whether meditation has any effect on the brain, and, if so, what did that mean for us as

human beings.

SC: At what age did you start meditating?

SN: I meditated on and off when I was a child. I was very musical at a young age, and

playing the piano and singing were my way of de-stressing and centering myself. I thinkit was one of those things whereby, when you are a child, you dont necessarily want to

do what your parents do. So it was really only in my twenties that I would say I started

practicing mediation regularly.

SC: There is a large variety of meditation techniques and names given to these

techniques, and for someone who is not familiar and just beginning to explore

meditation this can be a bit confusing. How can we know that what we are learning

and practicing falls within what can be called meditative practice?

SN: Meditation, irrespective of the form it takes, has a number of defining

characteristics. If we look at all the different types of meditation, we can see that they

usually involve a technique or practice that is very clearly defined and is taught to the

practitioner. And in many cases, it is a mental technique that involves a reduction in

logical processing in the brain, as well as relaxation of the body as a whole. For me

meditation is anything that is a mental technique that promotes stilling the mind and

stilling the body. Importantly, it is a self-induced relaxation, in contrast to hypnosis, and

it is often taught within the framework of a spiritual tradition.

SC: What are the most relevant findings that science has discovered in regards to

the effects of meditation on the brain?


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SN: There are a number of key findings, and the first is that we have two sides of our

brain and each of those sides contains a different way of thinking and perceiving. In our

modern world, a lot of us tend to be very left brain focused. So were very rational,

analytical and strategic, and our society in many ways encourages those characteristics.

Meditation gives us a tool by which we can switch our brain activity from the left to the

right brain, because sustained attention is a right-brained function, and in doing so, we

gain access to a different way of thinking and perceiving. This is not to say that right-

brained activity is better than the left-brained activity, but it complements it. If you start

to look at where true insight stems from, it is from activity on both sides of the brain.

The other thing the research shows is that there are a number of changes in the brain

during meditation that can perhaps shed light on the subjective experiences that people

have when they meditate. For example, lots of people during meditation describe a

sense of leaving the concept of self, and a forming a connection with some kind of

reality that transcends their normal personal reality. We can see that during meditation

the parietal cortex, which is involved in maintaining that self/non-self-boundary,

actually become less active. This provides a concrete basis for an experience that

meditators have been reporting over the years. Other subjective experiences have also

been shown to have their basis in changes in the activity of specific areas of the brain.

meditation is anything that is a mental technique that promotes stilling the mind andstilling the body. Importantly, it is a self-induced relaxation, in contrast to hypnosis, and


SC: Has there been any neuro-correlation detected in the ability of precognition?

Is there any research that has identified an area of the brain thats activated when

people have precognitive images or thoughts of future events come to them?

SN: I dont know of any specific research that has looked into the areas of the brain

involved in precognition. Cornell Professor Daryl Bem recently did a study that

revealed that the human brain does seem to have some kind of innate precognitive

powers, but pinpointing where in the brain these powers arise is near to impossible. It isworthwhile noting, however, that what we do know is that people, when they have that


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kind of aha moment perhaps they have a problem that theyve been thinking about and

during mediation spontaneously they get an insight into that problem that insight

really seems to be the result of synchronous activity on the left and the right side of the

brain.

During mediation, you first have to still the mind and switch off all the thoughts, and inthat silence, having access to the right brain way of thinking and perceiving, as well as

the left brain way of thinking and perceiving, insights can spontaneously occur. I

imagine that what youre describing, in terms of precognition and having a sense that

something might occur or making a choice that in hindsight ends up being a good one,

does come back to having access to a different way of thinking and perceiving that is

offered by our right-hand side of the brain.

SC: Different instruments are being used to study the brain when people are

meditating, and you have mentioned that some of these instruments could be used

as tools for a person to get feedback as to how they are meditating. Can you talk

about these instruments and how they can be used as feedback tools?

SN: The technology that I describe in The Blissful Brain is really focused on two areas.

The first area is very simple; biofeedback. You have the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR)

meter, which basically measures the resistance of your skin, which seems to be an

indirect measure of your level of alertness. When you are alert and prepared to take

action, our whole body kicks into gear and parts of our nervous system kick in to make

us ready for response. What the GSR is able to do is measure that response and give us

a sense of how alert we are.

Especially now in our modern day

society, many of us are in a state of

constant alert. I think what the GSR can

do is give us more awareness of our

internal state. This technology can have a

lot of applications in terms of meditation

because a lot of people try different types

of meditation and cant quite find the

right type for them, or perhaps they are

unsure about whether using a mantra or the breath as an effective way of reaching this

state of relaxed alertness. And so what the GSR does is it gives the meditator insight

into whats happening in their body and mind and the impact that different techniquescan actually have on their internal state. Especially for beginners in meditation, using

the GSR can give the practitioner some insight into what techniques seems to be work

better than others.

The second type of technology that I describe is neuro-feedback. Thats feedback in

terms of being able to modulate the activity of the brain. Theres been a lot of work out

there that suggests that different patterns of brainwave activity can be correlated with

different states of awareness or states of consciousness. For example, we know that

alpha brain waves are very relaxing. If you are meditating, or perhaps relaxing in a hot

bath or something, your brain will be generating more of these alpha waves. If you are

being more creative and youre painting a picture or composing a piece of music, youregoing to have more theta waves. We now have this understanding of the kind of brain


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wave pattern that represents the different optimal state of brain functioning, the optimal

mix of brain waves types.

Knowing what the brain wave pattern is thats best for creativity or for relaxation has

allowed people to come up with technologies that basically entrain the brain to specific

brain wave patterns, thereby promoting creativity or encouraging relaxation. And youllsee that there are countless different systems and CDs out there that are focused on

either specifically increasing one of the different types of brain waves, or in fact,

reproducing a certain type of optimal brain wave pattern in people that has been

associated with high performance.

SC: Has there been any data or research done with instruments that measure the

effects mediation has on the environment around the people meditating?

SN: Well I think thats an example of where, despite our technological advances, we

dont yet really have the instruments that can detect that kind of effect. I know there

have been a lot of psychology experiments in terms of the effects that positive thinkingor prayer can have, even at a distance, or the effect of the laying of hands on patients.

So I think from that aspect were seeing some research, but certainly in terms of

meditation, I think the effects we are now picking up are the large-scale effects: the

effect that it has on the mental and physical health of the practitioner, both on the short

term or the long term; or psychological and emotional related changes, such as the

ability to deal better with interpersonal relationships or regulate ones emotional state

better. I think that is the focus at the moment. I just dont think we have the instruments

that can detect the subtle energy changes brought by meditation.

SC: When it comes to the effects of meditation in our body and particularly in

health, what are some of the most relevant findings that have come out from this

research?


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SN: Perhaps the most compelling evidence, certainly here in the UK, but I imagine it is

very similar in the U.S., is the potential role for meditation as a treatment for patients

with depression who continue to have depressive episodes, despite receiving a number

of different kinds of anti-depressants. And to me, that is really a key step forward for us,

in that, here you have an illness that is an area of huge unmet need, and meditation has

been shown to really help those people and give rise to a lot of benefit in terms of theiremotional state. Here in the UK, mindfulness based cognitive therapy (MBCT) it is now

accepted by some of the regulatory bodies that dictate the types of treatment available to

patients. So thats a real step forward.

There has been an enormous body of research thats looked into the health benefits of

meditation. Jon Kabat-Zinn has done research in a wide range of different patients,

including those with chronic pain, cancer, multiple sclerosis and anxiety. In all of these

patients, he has really shown that meditation can have a huge impact, in terms of not

only alleviating symptoms and enhancing quality of life, but also just improving the

individuals ability to cope with the disease or its treatment.

SC: You are an advocate for the use of meditation in different areas of our

modern-day life. What are some of the areas that you would like to see where

meditation is used?

SN: I think that meditation has a number of potential applications, if you want to

discuss it in that way. And I think that the most important one is in the context of

healthcare. Our modern healthcare systems are struggling under the burden of the

number of patients that are presenting with diseases, particularly chronic diseases. So

really there has to be some way of offering patients more holistic and supportive

therapies, without that being associated with a dramatic increase in healthcare cost. In

that respect, I see meditation as being a very cheap way of essentially giving patients a

tool that they can use that really empowers them to take responsibility for their own

health. Meditation can be part of a new healthcare system where the patient takes as

much of the responsibility as the doctor, not only tackling disease but also maintaining

health.

I also think that meditation plays a huge role in terms of optimizing our performance

and that is especially relevant in the case of the work place. We are now seeing a large

number of companies, such as Google, that are now providing meditation to their

employees. They believe that doing so is increasing productivity, reducing stress in the

work place, reducing absentees from work, and boosting peoples creativity. There is anincreasing body of evidence that shows that meditation is something that we can

consider offering to people in the workplace, in order to achieve higher performance,

but also to achieve that performance not at the cost of the individuals and the amount of

stress that they have to tolerate in their work environment.

meditation can have a huge impact, in terms of not only alleviating symptoms and

enhancing quality of life, but also just improving the individuals ability to cope with

the disease or its treatment.

I guess the final one is defining a role for meditation in our schools. If we are saying

that this is a tool by which we can optimize the performance of our brains, that we canaccess the left-hand side of the brain or the right-hand side of the brain and the two


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different ways of thinking and perceiving that those two sides of the brain offer us, then

why arent we teaching this technique to our kids in school? Increasingly we are seeing,

especially in the U.S. and in the UK, programs that are showing that delivering

meditation classes in the school help children interact with each other, process

information, and deal with the stresses and the anxieties of performance in the school

setting.

SC: With all the research thats been done, and the evidence produced on the

effects of meditation on our body, boosting our immune system, etc., what are

challenges that you have noticed from the medical establishment to implement

more broadly this practice as therapy?

SN: I think the key problem in many cases is being able to provide a compelling

argument to the funding bodies within the health system that dictate how the money is

spent and what treatments, including supportive treatments, can be made available for

patients.

The key is to be able to demonstrate to those bodies that even though the effect on

disease may not be as dramatic as giving an anti-hypertensive medication, for example,

that actually in the long run what youre doing is empowering patients, giving them a

tool that they can use to manage their health and support the other treatment that they

receive. Meditation addressing the psychological impact of disease on patients and their

need for psychological and emotional support. A level of patient care that unfortunately

due to time and resourcing pressure often gets overlooked.

If we are saying that this is a tool by which we can optimize the performance of our

brains, that we can access the left-hand side of the brain or the right-hand side of the

brain and the two different ways of thinking and perceiving that those two sides of the

brain offer us, then why arent we teaching this technique to our kids in school?

SC: From your personal experience as someone who has been practicing

meditation for some time, what are the benefits that you experience?

SN: I think the greatest benefit would be an ability to not respond to everything that

happens in ones life in a knee-jerk kind of way. The benefits of meditation extend far

and beyond the time you may actually sit in a room meditating. It is how that meditationpractice infiltrates your everyday life and thats where Ive seen the greatest benefits. In

the work place, I can see its benefits in that I dont become as stressed about deadlines

or client problems in the way that I used to. Being able to put things into perspective,

and being able to let go of that continuous striving and achieving, I would say is the

way I have benefitted the greatest.

In terms of my own health, Ive seen that meditation has taken me from being someone

who was borderline hypertensive, to someone who has perfect blood pressure. Thats a

very physical manifestation of the benefits of meditation.

SC: Are there benefits in practicing meditation as part of a broader spiritualperspective or does it really matter?


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SN: So far what we have talked about in terms of the benefits of meditation and the

effects on the brain and the body of the practitioner is one level of understanding theeffects of meditation. The effects of meditation on the spiritual well-being of the

practitioner, as well as the effects on their life and their way of interacting with the

world, is another layer.

Spirituality provides a richer context for the experiences that we begin to have as a

result of the practice of meditation. As meditation offers you access to a different way

of thinking and perceiving, a spiritual framework to the practice of meditation gives the

practitioner some way of reconciling the experiences that they have during their

meditation into their everyday lives. I am a strong believer that you can practice

meditation, especially the kind of non-denominational MBSR (Mindfulness-Based

Stress Reduction) that Jon Kabat-Zinn put forward, and you can derive benefits from


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doing so. However, there are also more deep-rooted effects of meditation that are linked

to the use of meditation as part of a spiritual life.

SC: The title of your book is The Blissful Brain. Why did you choose that

particular word, bliss? What is the relationship that you see between meditation

and the state of bliss?

SN: If I am honest, the title was recommended to me by my publisher, some bright

spark in the publicity department said if you combine these two concepts, youre really

speaking to the core message of the book. And I think for me why I liked it is that

this area of research is very much sitting on the boundary between science, objective,

rational analysis of our experiences and reality, and spirituality, which is a completely

different, more intuitive and esoteric kind of way of processing our experiences and

understanding our reality. The term blissful has historically been linked with esoteric

practices and the experience of enlightenment. It is therefore not an area that we would

expect rational and analytical science to shed any light on. But it does. Whether

enlightenment is, as some suggest, the manifestation of an optimal, high-performancebrain wave pattern remains to be proven. But we do know that meditation is a tool that

can change brain activity to bring it closer to this optimal, high-performance brain wave

pattern. Subjective experiences of meditators with this optimal brain wave pattern reveal

that they experience bliss in this state.

SC: Theres a statement in your book when youre talking about the brain that I

found fascinating. I would like to read it to you and see what are your thoughts

and why you chose to put this in your book? The precise wiring of the brains

network is continually changing, and the network can adopt any one of an

unlimited number of different configurations . . . It is estimated that there are

more possible configurations than there are elementary particles in the universe.

we do know that meditation is a tool that can change brain activity to bring it closer to

this optimal, high-performance brain wave pattern. Subjective experiences of meditators

with this optimal brain wave pattern reveal that they experience bliss in this state.

SN: With this statement we really touch on a topic that is very close to my heart. The

research I did for both my PhD and my first post-doctoral research job was very much

focused on the plasticity of the brain. Every experience we have, every behavior that we

learn, is imprinted in our brain. But that is by no means a permanent thing. In the same

way that connections between brain cells can be formed or strengthened, they can alsobe removed or weakened. This is a really important insight because when we look at

most of us in adulthood, we have managed to accumulate what we refer to as emotional

baggage during our lifetimes. This emotional baggage is essentially a collection of

conditioned responses that are the result of our experiences.

What the plasticity of the brain really does is it gives us the hope that all behavior can

essentially be changed, can be replaced by more positive and constructive behavior.

Even an old dog can learn new tricks, so to speak.

With that analogy, what I was really trying to do is just give people an idea of the scale

involved here. The sheer number of brain cells that we have, and how those brain cellsconnect with each other to form a biological network that can adopt an infinite number


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of possible configurations, is mind-boggling. Our brains are an amazing feat of

biological engineering. By unlocking the potential of our brains, we can realize more of

our potential as human beings.

The sheer number of brain cells that we have, and how those brain cells connect with

each other to form a biological network that can adopt an infinite number of possibleconfigurations, is mind-boggling. Our brains are an amazing feat of biological

engineering. By unlocking the potential of our brains, we can realize more of our

potential as human beings.

It was until very recent times that science began to look into the veracity of such claims

and attempted to understand both the physiological as well as the psychological effects

that such practices have on those who practice those techniques.

In an effort to compile the most important findings from

such research, and increase our acceptance and

understanding of the positive effects that meditation has onour body and minds, Dr Shanida Nataraja published a book

called, The Blissful Brain.

Dr Shanida Nataraja has a BSc (First Class Hons.) in

Human Science and Neuroscience and a PhD in

Neurophysiology, both from University College London.

She is currently Editorial and Scientific Director in a global

healthcare consultancy firm and is also a member of the

Scientific and Medical Network, an organization

promoting open exploration in science and human

experience, whose common objective is to deepen

understanding in science, medicine, and education through

both rational analysis and intuitive insights.

SuperConsciousness recently spoke with Dr Shanida Nataraja, about the most recent

scientific findings on the connection of meditation and the brain as well as the

implications that such understanding could have on healthcare, education and our

spiritual development.

SuperConsciousness: How did you become interested in doing research on therelationship between meditation and the brain?

Dr Shanida Nataraja: I grew up in a household in which meditation was very much

part of everyday life. Both my parents meditated and I was therefore exposed to a

number of different meditative traditions as I was growing up. At school, I became

entranced by science and this interest led to me doing a PhD in neuroscience to deepen

my understanding of how the brain gives rise to the human behavior that we can see. It

seemed almost a natural step for me to turn my attention to meditation, to explore

whether meditation has any effect on the brain, and, if so, what did that mean for us as

human beings.

SC: At what age did you start meditating?


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SN: I meditated on and off when I was a child. I was very musical at a young age, and

playing the piano and singing were my way of de-stressing and centering myself. I think

it was one of those things whereby, when you are a child, you dont necessarily want to

do what your parents do. So it was really only in my twenties that I would say I started

practicing mediation regularly.

SC: There is a large variety of meditation techniques and names given to these

techniques, and for someone who is not familiar and just beginning to explore

meditation this can be a bit confusing. How can we know that what we are learning

and practicing falls within what can be called meditative practice?

SN: Meditation, irrespective of the form it takes, has a number of defining

characteristics. If we look at all the different types of meditation, we can see that they

usually involve a technique or practice that is very clearly defined and is taught to the

practitioner. And in many cases, it is a mental technique that involves a reduction in

logical processing in the brain, as well as relaxation of the body as a whole. For me

meditation is anything that is a mental technique that promotes stilling the mind andstilling the body. Importantly, it is a self-induced relaxation, in contrast to hypnosis, and


SC: What are the most relevant findings that science has discovered in regards to

the effects of meditation on the brain?

SN: There are a number of key findings, and the first is that we have two sides of our

brain and each of those sides contains a different way of thinking and perceiving. In our

modern world, a lot of us tend to be very left brain focused. So were very rational,

analytical and strategic, and our society in many ways encourages those characteristics.

Meditation gives us a tool by which we can switch our brain activity from the left to the

right brain, because sustained attention is a right-brained function, and in doing so, we

gain access to a different way of thinking and perceiving. This is not to say that right-

brained activity is better than the left-brained activity, but it complements it. If you start

to look at where true insight stems from, it is from activity on both sides of the brain.


12/18

The other thing the research shows is that there are a number of changes in the brain

during meditation that can perhaps shed light on the subjective experiences that people

have when they meditate. For example, lots of people during meditation describe a

sense of leaving the concept of self, and a forming a connection with some kind of

reality that transcends their normal personal reality. We can see that during meditation

the parietal cortex, which is involved in maintaining that self/non-self-boundary,actually become less active. This provides a concrete basis for an experience that

meditators have been reporting over the years. Other subjective experiences have also

been shown to have their basis in changes in the activity of specific areas of the brain.

meditation is anything that is a mental technique that promotes stilling the mind and

stilling the body. Importantly, it is a self-induced relaxation, in contrast to hypnosis, and


SC: Has there been any neuro-correlation detected in the ability of precognition?

Is there any research that has identified an area of the brain thats activated when

people have precognitive images or thoughts of future events come to them?

SN: I dont know of any specific research that has looked into the areas of the brain

involved in precognition. Cornell Professor Daryl Bem recently did a study that

revealed that the human brain does seem to have some kind of innate precognitive

powers, but pinpointing where in the brain these powers arise is near to impossible. It is

worthwhile noting, however, that what we do know is that people, when they have that

kind of aha moment perhaps they have a problem that theyve been thinking about and

during mediation spontaneously they get an insight into that problem that insight

really seems to be the result of synchronous activity on the left and the right side of the

brain.

During mediation, you first have to still the mind and switch off all the thoughts, and in

that silence, having access to the right brain way of thinking and perceiving, as well as

the left brain way of thinking and perceiving, insights can spontaneously occur. I

imagine that what youre describing, in terms of precognition and having a sense that

something might occur or making a choice that in hindsight ends up being a good one,

does come back to having access to a different way of thinking and perceiving that is

offered by our right-hand side of the brain.

SC: Different instruments are being used to study the brain when people are

meditating, and you have mentioned that some of these instruments could be usedas tools for a person to get feedback as to how they are meditating. Can you talk

about these instruments and how they can be used as feedback tools?

SN: The technology that I describe in The Blissful Brain is really focused on two areas.

The first area is very simple; biofeedback. You have the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR)

meter, which basically measures the resistance of your skin, which seems to be an

indirect measure of your level of alertness. When you are alert and prepared to take

action, our whole body kicks into gear and parts of our nervous system kick in to make

us ready for response. What the GSR is able to do is measure that response and give us

a sense of how alert we are.


13/18

Especially now in our modern day

society, many of us are in a state of

constant alert. I think what the GSR can

do is give us more awareness of our

internal state. This technology can have a

lot of applications in terms of meditationbecause a lot of people try different types

of meditation and cant quite find the

right type for them, or perhaps they are

unsure about whether using a mantra or the breath as an effective way of reaching this

state of relaxed alertness. And so what the GSR does is it gives the meditator insight

into whats happening in their body and mind and the impact that different techniques

can actually have on their internal state. Especially for beginners in meditation, using

the GSR can give the practitioner some insight into what techniques seems to be work

better than others.

The second type of technology that I describe is neuro-feedback. Thats feedback interms of being able to modulate the activity of the brain. Theres been a lot of work out

there that suggests that different patterns of brainwave activity can be correlated with

different states of awareness or states of consciousness. For example, we know that

alpha brain waves are very relaxing. If you are meditating, or perhaps relaxing in a hot

bath or something, your brain will be generating more of these alpha waves. If you are

being more creative and youre painting a picture or composing a piece of music, youre

going to have more theta waves. We now have this understanding of the kind of brain

wave pattern that represents the different optimal state of brain functioning, the optimal

mix of brain waves types.

Knowing what the brain wave pattern is thats best for creativity or for relaxation has

allowed people to come up with technologies that basically entrain the brain to specific

brain wave patterns, thereby promoting creativity or encouraging relaxation. And youll

see that there are countless different systems and CDs out there that are focused on

either specifically increasing one of the different types of brain waves, or in fact,

reproducing a certain type of optimal brain wave pattern in people that has been

associated with high performance.

SC: Has there been any data or research done with instruments that measure the

effects mediation has on the environment around the people meditating?

SN: Well I think thats an example of where, despite our technological advances, we

dont yet really have the instruments that can detect that kind of effect. I know there

have been a lot of psychology experiments in terms of the effects that positive thinking

or prayer can have, even at a distance, or the effect of the laying of hands on patients.

So I think from that aspect were seeing some research, but certainly in terms of

meditation, I think the effects we are now picking up are the large-scale effects: the

effect that it has on the mental and physical health of the practitioner, both on the short

term or the long term; or psychological and emotional related changes, such as the

ability to deal better with interpersonal relationships or regulate ones emotional state

better. I think that is the focus at the moment. I just dont think we have the instruments

that can detect the subtle energy changes brought by meditation.


14/18

SC: When it comes to the effects of meditation in our body and particularly in

health, what are some of the most relevant findings that have come out from this

research?

SN: Perhaps the most compelling evidence, certainly here in the UK, but I imagine it is

very similar in the U.S., is the potential role for meditation as a treatment for patients

with depression who continue to have depressive episodes, despite receiving a number

of different kinds of anti-depressants. And to me, that is really a key step forward for us,

in that, here you have an illness that is an area of huge unmet need, and meditation has

been shown to really help those people and give rise to a lot of benefit in terms of their

emotional state. Here in the UK, mindfulness based cognitive therapy (MBCT) it is now

accepted by some of the regulatory bodies that dictate the types of treatment available to

patients. So thats a real step forward.

There has been an enormous body of research thats looked into the health benefits of

meditation. Jon Kabat-Zinn has done research in a wide range of different patients,

including those with chronic pain, cancer, multiple sclerosis and anxiety. In all of these

patients, he has really shown that meditation can have a huge impact, in terms of notonly alleviating symptoms and enhancing quality of life, but also just improving the

individuals ability to cope with the disease or its treatment.

SC: You are an advocate for the use of meditation in different areas of our

modern-day life. What are some of the areas that you would like to see where

meditation is used?

SN: I think that meditation has a number of potential applications, if you want to

discuss it in that way. And I think that the most important one is in the context of

healthcare. Our modern healthcare systems are struggling under the burden of the

number of patients that are presenting with diseases, particularly chronic diseases. Soreally there has to be some way of offering patients more holistic and supportive


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therapies, without that being associated with a dramatic increase in healthcare cost. In

that respect, I see meditation as being a very cheap way of essentially giving patients a

tool that they can use that really empowers them to take responsibility for their own

health. Meditation can be part of a new healthcare system where the patient takes as

much of the responsibility as the doctor, not only tackling disease but also maintaining

health.

I also think that meditation plays a huge role in terms of optimizing our performance

and that is especially relevant in the case of the work place. We are now seeing a large

number of companies, such as Google, that are now providing meditation to their

employees. They believe that doing so is increasing productivity, reducing stress in the

work place, reducing absentees from work, and boosting peoples creativity. There is an

increasing body of evidence that shows that meditation is something that we can

consider offering to people in the workplace, in order to achieve higher performance,

but also to achieve that performance not at the cost of the individuals and the amount of

stress that they have to tolerate in their work environment.

meditation can have a huge impact, in terms of not only alleviating symptoms and

enhancing quality of life, but also just improving the individuals ability to cope with

the disease or its treatment.

I guess the final one is defining a role for meditation in our schools. If we are saying

that this is a tool by which we can optimize the performance of our brains, that we can

access the left-hand side of the brain or the right-hand side of the brain and the two

different ways of thinking and perceiving that those two sides of the brain offer us, then

why arent we teaching this technique to our kids in school? Increasingly we are seeing,

especially in the U.S. and in the UK, programs that are showing that delivering

meditation classes in the school help children interact with each other, process

information, and deal with the stresses and the anxieties of performance in the school

setting.

SC: With all the research thats been done, and the evidence produced on the

effects of meditation on our body, boosting our immune system, etc., what are

challenges that you have noticed from the medical establishment to implement

more broadly this practice as therapy?

SN: I think the key problem in many cases is being able to provide a compelling

argument to the funding bodies within the health system that dictate how the money isspent and what treatments, including supportive treatments, can be made available for

patients.

The key is to be able to demonstrate to those bodies that even though the effect on

disease may not be as dramatic as giving an anti-hypertensive medication, for example,

that actually in the long run what youre doing is empowering patients, giving them a

tool that they can use to manage their health and support the other treatment that they

receive. Meditation addressing the psychological impact of disease on patients and their

need for psychological and emotional support. A level of patient care that unfortunately

due to time and resourcing pressure often gets overlooked.


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If we are saying that this is a tool by which we can optimize the performance of our

brains, that we can access the left-hand side of the brain or the right-hand side of the

brain and the two different ways of thinking and perceiving that those two sides of the

brain offer us, then why arent we teaching this technique to our kids in school?

SC: From your personal experience as someone who has been practicingmeditation for some time, what are the benefits that you experience?

SN: I think the greatest benefit would be an ability to not respond to everything that

happens in ones life in a knee-jerk kind of way. The benefits of meditation extend far

and beyond the time you may actually sit in a room meditating. It is how that meditation

practice infiltrates your everyday life and thats where Ive seen the greatest benefits. In

the work place, I can see its benefits in that I dont become as stressed about deadlines

or client problems in the way that I used to. Being able to put things into perspective,

and being able to let go of that continuous striving and achieving, I would say is theway I have benefitted the greatest.

In terms of my own health, Ive seen that meditation has taken me from being someone

who was borderline hypertensive, to someone who has perfect blood pressure. Thats a

very physical manifestation of the benefits of meditation.

SC: Are there benefits in practicing meditation as part of a broader spiritual

perspective or does it really matter?

SN: So far what we have talked about in terms of the benefits of meditation and the

effects on the brain and the body of the practitioner is one level of understanding theeffects of meditation. The effects of meditation on the spiritual well-being of the


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practitioner, as well as the effects on their life and their way of interacting with the

world, is another layer.

Spirituality provides a richer context for the experiences that we begin to have as a

result of the practice of meditation. As meditation offers you access to a different way

of thinking and perceiving, a spiritual framework to the practice of meditation gives thepractitioner some way of reconciling the experiences that they have during their

meditation into their everyday lives. I am a strong believer that you can practice

meditation, especially the kind of non-denominational MBSR (Mindfulness-Based

Stress Reduction) that Jon Kabat-Zinn put forward, and you can derive benefits from

doing so. However, there are also more deep-rooted effects of meditation that are linked

to the use of meditation as part of a spiritual life.

SC: The title of your book is The Blissful Brain. Why did you choose that

particular word, bliss? What is the relationship that you see between meditation

and the state of bliss?

SN: If I am honest, the title was recommended to me by my publisher, some bright

spark in the publicity department said if you combine these two concepts, youre really

speaking to the core message of the book. And I think for me why I liked it is that

this area of research is very much sitting on the boundary between science, objective,

rational analysis of our experiences and reality, and spirituality, which is a completely

different, more intuitive and esoteric kind of way of processing our experiences and

understanding our reality. The term blissful has historically been linked with esoteric

practices and the experience of enlightenment. It is therefore not an area that we would

expect rational and analytical science to shed any light on. But it does. Whether

enlightenment is, as some suggest, the manifestation of an optimal, high-performance

brain wave pattern remains to be proven. But we do know that meditation is a tool that

can change brain activity to bring it closer to this optimal, high-performance brain wave

pattern. Subjective experiences of meditators with this optimal brain wave pattern reveal

that they experience bliss in this state.

SC: Theres a statement in your book when youre talking about the brain that I

found fascinating. I would like to read it to you and see what are your thoughts

and why you chose to put this in your book? The precise wiring of the brains

network is continually changing, and the network can adopt any one of an

unlimited number of different configurations . . . It is estimated that there are

more possible configurations than there are elementary particles in the universe.

we do know that meditation is a tool that can change brain activity to bring it closer to

this optimal, high-performance brain wave pattern. Subjective experiences of meditators

with this optimal brain wave pattern reveal that they experience bliss in this state.

SN: With this statement we really touch on a topic that is very close to my heart. The

research I did for both my PhD and my first post-doctoral research job was very much

focused on the plasticity of the brain. Every experience we have, every behavior that we

learn, is imprinted in our brain. But that is by no means a permanent thing. In the same

way that connections between brain cells can be formed or strengthened, they can also

be removed or weakened. This is a really important insight because when we look atmost of us in adulthood, we have managed to accumulate what we refer to as emotional


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baggage during our lifetimes. This emotional baggage is essentially a collection of

conditioned responses that are the result of our experiences.

What the plasticity of the brain really does is it gives us the hope that all behavior can

essentially be changed, can be replaced by more positive and constructive behavior.

Even an old dog can learn new tricks, so to speak.

With that analogy, what I was really trying to do is just give people an idea of the scale

involved here. The sheer number of brain cells that we have, and how those brain cells

connect with each other to form a biological network that can adopt an infinite number

of possible configurations, is mind-boggling. Our brains are an amazing feat of

biological engineering. By unlocking the potential of our brains, we can realize more of

our potential as human beings.

The sheer number of brain cells that we have, and how those brain cells connect with

each other to form a biological network that can adopt an infinite number of possible

configurations, is mind-boggling. Our brains are an amazing feat of biologicalengineering. By unlocking the potential of our brains, we can realize more of our

potential as human beings.

meditation a key for unlocking the human brain

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