Meditation: Magic for Your Mental Health
As health and fitness has become a major focal point in the western cultural zeitgeist the last decade, meditation has enjoyed an increase in attention and popularity. But what exactly is meditation? Does it actually do anything for you?
The increased focus on physical and mental health in recent years has been incredible to see, but it has also allowed some serious quackery into the limelight, including detoxes, acupuncture, and many more. Is meditation another artefact of eastern medicine that is a serious scam, or does it have tangible benefits?
What is meditation?
The first written records of meditation date back 3500 years, to the sacred Hindu texts in the Vedas. These texts discuss and describe meditation tradition in ancient India. Meditation is believed to have developed in Taoist China and Buddhist India 1000 years later, around 500 BCE, and the practice of meditation would later spread to other oriental countries via the Silk Road. Clearly, meditation has a strong historical link with Asian religions, particularly to Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, but meditation exists in most of the world's major religions, including Christianity and Islam.
Meditation doesn't necessarily have to be a religious ritual though. It can exist on its own, outside of a religious context. Mindfulness meditation, which this article will largely focus on, is essentially a modern western version of Buddhist techniques, and it does not involve religion in any way.
So what exactly is mindfulness meditation, and how do you do it?
The connotation most have to the word "meditation" will probably be akin to the image at the start of this article: a Buddhist monk sitting cross-legged, arms folded in his lap, with his eyes closed. That may be the traditional way of meditating, but in modern mindfulness you can sit whichever way you want. On a chair, couch or bed, or on the floor with your legs stretched out.
Sit down in a quiet room and find a position that you can comfortably sit in for 10 minutes. Keep your back straight, and place your hands where you want, perhaps in your lap. Close your eyes. Bring your attention to your breath. Feel it rise and fall. Don't try to change your breathing, simply be present in the moment and experience the sensations of your body. Feel the weight of your body against the surface you sit on, feel how warm or cold you are, notice the air touching your skin, and pay attention to the sounds around you.
The goal in mindfulness meditation is not to "not think". It is impossible to not think, because you would just end up thinking about not thinking. Instead, focus on your breathing. Thoughts will come to you, and you will become involved with them sooner or later. But the moment you notice yourself thinking, gently shift your focus back to your breath. A great metaphor I once read is to picture yourself as Mount Everest. An endless stream of clouds will come to you one by one, but you let them drift by.
Mindfulness meditation is simply a tool to bring yourself out of your mind and into your body, into the present. We spend most of our time caught up in our brains, obsessing over memories from the past, thoughts in the present, and plans for the future. Mindfulness allows you to free your mind from these thoughts and feelings, and simple be. Here, now. With a peaceful, quiet mind.
What does meditation do?
"What on earth will I get out of sitting on the floor in silence for 10 minutes?", you may ask, and that is a fair question. I used to be very sceptical of meditation myself, but as it turns out, meditation has a number of powerful and scientifically proven benefits.
A systematic review of meditation's efficacy for treating depression written by Jain, Walsh, Eisendrath, Christensen & Rael Cahn in 2015 shows that meditation can be a very powerful tool in the fight against depression, especially considering the lack of side-effects when compared to anti-depressants. Jain et al looked at 18 studies in total, of which 10 were based on mindfulness techniques, and found that meditation "demonstrated moderate to large reductions in depression symptoms within the group, and relative to control groups."
Similar results were produced in a Thai study from 2017, which concluded in the following way:
At the 6th week of Buddhist mindfulness meditation, significant number of patients were improved from depression. Thus, Buddhist mindfulness meditation should be included in the treatment of depression.
A meta-analysis conducted by Khoury, Sharma, Rush and Fournier in 2015 looked at a total of 29 studies into mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and drew the conclusion that the efficacy of mindfulness meditation goes far beyond treating depression alone:
MBSR is moderately effective in reducing stress, depression, anxiety and distress and in ameliorating the quality of life of healthy individuals; however, more research is warranted to identify the most effective elements of MBSR.
It is worth noting that these are top level psychology researchers. Dr. Bassam Khoury from the meta-analysis above does post-doctoral psychology research for Harvard and McGill University, two heavy hitters in the academic world. Khoury et al seem to indicate that mindfulness techniques can have a positive impact on any person, even in individuals who do not suffer from depression.
Indeed, mindfulness-based stress reduction gives people a profound improvement in life quality. Stress, as Sharma & Rush (2014) puts it, "is a global public health problem with several negative health consequences, including anxiety, depression, cardiovascular disease, and suicide". Their 2014 review analysed 17 studies, and found that 16 of the 17 studies "demonstrated positive changes in psychological or physiological outcomes related to anxiety and/or stress". Furthermore, a Norwegian study published in Frontiers In Psychology this year shows that these positive changes are maintained six months after the introduction of mindfulness-based techniques.
Wouldn't we all love to feel a little less stressed? There is now a strong base of evidence for saying that mindfulness meditation has a big effect on lowering stress and stress-related distress.
Mindfulness meditation can help with more than just stress. In a landmark study by Mohammed, Pappous & Sharma (2018), the researchers looked at 20 injured athletes, male and female. These athletes had been competing in sports at university level, and had suffered severe injuries that would keep them on the sidelines for more than three months. After just eight weeks of mindfulness meditation, the athletes recorded an increase in pain tolerance, an increase in positive mood, and a decrease in stress and anxiety.
Recent research has also shown that meditation decreases reaction times, and research into elderly persons who meditate seems to indicate that "long-term meditation practice might help preserve brain structure and function from progressive age-related decline".
Mindfulness can have a profound and prolonged impact on depression, anxiety, distress, pain tolerance, reaction times, and brain function in the elderly. Surely it can't help with something as notoriously complex as addiction? You bet it can.
Researchers Chiesa & Serretti (2014) from the University of Bologna conducted a systematic review of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) in substance abuse disorders to see if they were effective:
Current evidence suggests that MBIs can reduce the consumption of several substances including alcohol, cocaine, amphetamines, marijuana, cigarettes, and opiates to a significantly greater extent than waitlist controls, non-specific educational support groups, and some specific control groups. Some preliminary evidence also suggests that MBIs are associated with a reduction in craving as well as increased mindfulness.
This conclusion was also echoed in research by Garland, Froeliger & Howard (2014), who concluded that mindfulness-based interventions work by targeting the neurocognitive mechanisms of addiction. They say that MBIs work on several key fronts:
- Clarifying cognitive appraisal
- Modulating negative emotions to reduce perseverative cognition
- Reduce emotional arousal
- Enhancing metacognitive awareness to regulate drug-use action schema
- Decrease addiction attentional bias
- Promoting extinction learning to uncouple drug-use triggers from conditioned appetitive responses
- Reducing cue-reactivity and increasing cognitive control over craving
- Attenuating physiological stress reactivity through parasympathetic activation
- Increasing savouring to restore natural reward processing
There's a lot of technical language there, but the important takeaway is that mindfulness meditation can allow an addict greater control over their mind and greater awareness over their cravings, and how they react to these cravings.
Practical application of meditation
Meditation is not some archaic religious ritual or piece of ancient mysticism that is a complete waste of your time. It is not hippie feel-good nonsense. Meditation has real, tangible effects. It can help you feel less stressed, anxious and depressed, and it could help you take control of an addiction.
It is easy to make meditation a part of your everyday routine. It can take as little as 10 minutes per day. I know it can feel like we couldn't possibly spare 10 minutes during a busy day, but you can make time for it. You could do it in the morning, before going to work. You could make an effort to fit it in at lunch, or during your commute to work. Sit on the edge of your bed and meditate for a few minutes before going to sleep.
I know that venturing into the great unknown of meditation can be very scary on your own, but you don't have to be alone. There are a number of fantastic Android and iOS apps you can choose from, for example Headspace and The Mindfulness App. These apps are great for beginners because they provide a voice that guides your through your meditations. Headspace has an amazing selection of meditations for different topics, but it is not free. It does provide a really good 10 day free trial though, and I highly recommend you try it.
Watch a little less Netflix today, and devote 10 minutes to taking care of your own mental health. It is important. It will help you feel better now, and there is evidence to suggest that it may help you preserve your brain function far into the future.
