What Actually IS Meditation?
By: Dr. Denise Renye
Meditation has gained immense popularity in recent times, with endorsements coming from various professionals, including medical doctors and educators, myself included. However, it's essential to understand what meditation truly entails, and what occurs during a meditation session. If you are new to meditation or are just looking to deepen your practice, you might have some questions like: what actually is it? What happens when someone meditates? First, there are many, many different kinds of meditation. There are guided meditations, such as those in my shoppe that include an anti-racism meditation for white people, breaking free from codependency, an inner child meditation, a happy marriage meditation, and more.
There are also mindfulness meditations such as eating a tangerine or walking with awareness. Every religion has a form of meditation because it’s often used to expand a person’s mind and help them connect with a power greater than themselves. However, meditation can certainly be secular and something as simple as counting your breath (see box breath meditation below). With all these kinds of meditations, it’s easy to become confused about what meditation even is.
In the simplest terms, meditation means focusing the mind. Especially with our modern-day overload of information and the constant pinging of devices, it’s very easy for the mind to become scattered. You start thinking about work but then a notification pops up that a bill is due, so you start thinking about money, and then ruminating about money has you pondering if there will be enough so then you become aware of scarcity.
This is what the mind does – it wanders from one thing to the next. Are we doomed to be scatterbrained and unable to focus on anything for longer than two seconds? No. And while this may be a common fear, it actually may not be a fruitful question to ask. Why? Because there isn’t a lot of compassion in it. It’s more than ok that the mind wanders. Again, it’s what the mind does, especially the fearful mind, the anxious mind, the overthinker’s mind, the judgmental mind, the untrained mind. . . Meditation is a way of training the mind by reining it in and training the brain to focus. Why would you want to do that? You likely already know but just in case, meditation can not only instill a sense of internal peace (usually), it can also help with stress management, increased self-awareness, improved emotional well-being, improved memory, and greater empathy for yourself and others.
There has been a well-known rise in research around meditation’s positive physiological effects including a lowered state of physical arousal, reduced respiration rate, decreased heart rate, changes in brain wave patterns, and lowered stress, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Meditation literally changes your brain.
Because of advances in medical imaging, using functional MRIs, radiologists are able to see what areas of the brain are active at any given time. They can scan a patient before meditating, while meditating, and after. They can look at long-time meditators and people who are brand-new.
A 2014 meta-analysis of 300 subjects examined changes in the brain related to mindfulness meditation. Kieran Fox and colleagues found several brain regions showed a consistent difference between meditators and non-meditators, specifically in areas related to meta-awareness (prefrontal cortex), exteroceptive and interoceptive body awareness (sensory cortices and insula), memory (hippocampus), and emotional regulation (anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortex).
What that means is more neurons were firing in these parts of the brain. These areas were active and produced more neuropathways. Not only that, meditation changes brain wave frequency. EEG testing shows that in participants practicing meditation there’s an increase in the production of theta and alpha waves, which are the brain wave frequencies associated with enhanced learning abilities and overall mental well-being. And the effects last long after the act of meditation is complete!
If you haven’t tried meditation, what are you waiting for? You can meditate in a way that works for you because there are many, many options to choose from. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
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Box Breath Meditation
Find a comfortable and quiet place to sit or lie down.
Close your eyes gently and take a moment to relax your body.
Start by taking a deep breath in through your nose for a count of four seconds, allowing your lungs to fill completely.
Hold that breath for a count of four seconds.
Exhale slowly through your mouth for a count of four seconds, letting go of all the air in your lungs.
Pause for another count of four seconds before inhaling again.
Repeat this process for several minutes, focusing on the even and steady rhythm of your breath. As you continue, you can gradually increase the count from four to six or eight seconds for a more extended meditation session. This simple box breath meditation can help calm your mind, reduce stress, and increase mindfulness.
References
Fox, Kieran CR; Nijeboer, Savannah; Dixon, Matthew L; et al. “Is meditation associated with altered brain structure? A systematic review and meta-analysis of morphometric neuroimaging in meditation practitioners.” Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews, April 2014. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24705269/
Howard, Ari. “How Does Meditation Affect Your Brain Waves?” PsychCentral. April 19, 2022. https://psychcentral.com/health/meditation-brain-waves
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. “Meditation and Mindfulness: What You Need To Know.” June 2022.
https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/meditation-and-mindfulness-what-you-need-to-know