256 7 Wi 31>ao cee eea RECUR MOSM ALR PUSS UAT VACUO CURR or cea tcca ny TN CARE CU UL‘moment right before you fall asleep, only Tm completely awake. Itiskind ofnice. And then, immediately, I have this epiphany: I Could be watching television. After 20 minutes we stop for a break, ‘which surprises me, since I would not have guessed that siting ona cushion is an activity that requires a break. Before we begin agin, ‘our instructor, Sharon Salzberg, a cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, ‘Mass, and the author of Faith: Trusting Your (Ouon Deepest Experience, asks for questions of comments. Four are about breathing “Breathing is too complicated for me to concentrate on” one woman complains. “I ‘mean, bresthinig must be the most complex thing we do” I briefly consider waiting out- side and mugging the lot of them, But as pitiably muggable as these peo- pple may appear, the latest science says they've got something on my judgmental self, For one thing, they wil probably out- live me by quite a few years. Not only do studies show that meditation is boosting their immune system, but brain scans sug- est that it may be rewiring their brains to zeduce stress. Meanwhile, we nonbelievers are becoming the minority: Ten million American adults now say they practice some form of meditation regularly, twice as ‘many as a decade ago. Meditation classes today are being filled by mainstream Amer- ‘cant who don't own crystals, don't sub- setibe to New Age magazines and don't ‘even reside in Los Angeles. For upwardly mobile professionals convinced that theit lives are more stressful than those of the cow-milking, soaprmaking, butter-churning generations that preceded them, medite- tion is the smart person's bubble bath, Andtheynolonger havetogoofftosone |= bearded gunn the woods todo infact | becoming increasingly hard to avid media tion. If offered in schools, hospitals, law firms, goverament buildings, corporate of fices and prisons. There ae specially marked meditation rooms in airports alongside the payer chapels and Interaet kiosks: Medi tion was the subject ofa courseat West Point, the spring 2002 issue of the Harsard Law Review andi a few too many locker-room speeches by Lakers coach Phil Jackson, at |5 the Maharishi University schools in Fir, Iowa, which include college, hih school and elementary clasts, the entie elementary school student body mediates together twice daily. The Shambhala Mountain Genterin the Colorado Rockies, a sprawling, sided campus that looks like casino mag- nate Steve Wynn’ take on Tibet, has gone from 1342 vistors in 1998 to @ projected 15,000 tis year The Catskills hotels in New ey ee rebel Pee bats‘The Insight Prison Project teaches a class at San Quentin called, eee ar econ ued Lr sent to York are turning into meditation retreats so quickly that the Borscht Beltisbeing renamed the Buddhist Belt, And, as with any great American trend that findsits ‘way onto the cover of Tt, many ofthese meditatorsare famous. To name just @ few: Goldie Hawn, Shania Twain, Heather Graham, Richard Gere and Al Gore, if he still counts as famous. But the current interest is as much medical as it is cultural Meditation is being recommend- ed by more and more physicians as a way to prevent, slow or at least control the pain of chronic diseases like heart conditions, ADs, cancer and infertility. Its also being used to restore bal- ance in the face of such psychiat- rie disturbances as depression, hyperactivity and attention- deficit disorder (app). In a.con- fluence of Eastern mysticism and Western science, doctorsare embracing meditation not be- ceause they think it’s hip or cool Dut because scientific studies are beginning to show that it works, particularly for stress-related conditions. “For 30 years medi- tation research has told us that it works beautifully as an antidote to stress” says Daniel Goleman, author of Destructive Emations, a conversation among the Dalai [Lama and a group of neurascien- tists. “But what’ exciting about the new research is how meditation can train the mind and reshape the brain.” ‘Tests using the most sophisticated imaging techniques suggest that it can actually reset the brain, changing the point at which a traf- fic jam, for instance, sets the blood boiling Phis, compared with surgery, siting on ‘cushion is really cheap. ‘As meditation is demystified and main streamed, the methods have become more streamlined, There’ less incense burning today, but there remains a nugget of Bud- hist philosophy: the belief that by sitting insilence for 10 minutes to 40 minutesa day and actively concentrating on a breath or a ‘word or an image, you can train yourself to focuson the present over the past and the fi ture, transcending reality by fully accepting | itIn its most modern, Americanized forms, ithas dropped the ereepy mantra bit that has ‘you memorize secret phrase or syllable; in stead you focus on a sound or on your breathing. If’ practice of repetition found 51somewhere in the history of most religions ‘There are dozens of flavors, froma the Rela ation Response to gtum-mo, a technique practiced by Tibetan monks in eight-hour sessions that allows them todrive their core body temperature high enough to over come earthly defilements oreven cooler— to dry wet sheets on their backs in the freezing temperatures of the Himalayas, The brain, like the body, also under- goes subtle changes during deep medita- tion. The first scientific studies, inthe ‘60s and '70s, basically proved that meditators are really, really focused. In India a re- searcher named B.K. Anand found that yogis could meditate themselves into frances so deep that they didn't react when hot test tubes were pressed against their arms. In Japan a scientist named T. Hirai showed that Zen meditators were so fo- cused on the moment that they never ha bituated themselves to the sound of a ticking clack (most people eventually block. out the noise, but the meditators kept hear- ing it for hours). Another study showed that master meditators, unlike marksmen, dont flinch atthe sound of a gunshot. None of this, oddly, has been dupliegted for a Vegas show. In 1967 Dr. Herbert Benson, a profes- sor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, afraid of looking too flaky, waited until late at night to sneak 36 transcendental medi- tators into his lab to measure their heart rate, blood pressure, skin temperature and rectal temperature, He found that when they meditated, they used 17% less oxygen, OR Cate FIND A cise oucr ‘YOUR Eves PLACE The idea IWithelps, tum out js to shutout the the lights. The outside wartd $0 fewer distractions _yourbrain can stop you have, the actively processing easier it will bo Information coming to.concentrate ‘rom the senses lowered their heart rat minute and increased their theta brain waves—the ones that appear right before sleep—without slipping into the brain- ‘wave pattern of actual sleep. In his 1970s best seller, The Relaxation Response, Ben- son, who founded the Mind/Body Medical Institute, argued that mectitators counter acted the stress-induced fight-or-flight response and achieved a calmer, happier 52 } for Newberg ta freeze-frame the state. “All 've done,” says Benson, “is put a biological explanation on techniques that people have been utilizing for thousands of years” Several years later, Dr. Gregg Jacobs, professor of psyehiatry at Harvard Medic School who worked with Benson, recorded xo of one group of subjects taught t0 meditate and another given books on tape ‘with which to chill out, Over the next few sonths, the meditators produced fr more theta waves than the book listeners, essen tilly deactivating the frontal areas of the brain that receive and prooess sensory in formation, They also managed to lower a tivity inthe parietal lobe, a section of the brain located near the top ofthe head that orients you in space and time. By shutting down the parietal lobe, you can lose your sense of boundaries and feel more “at one with the universe, which probably feels @ lot less boring than it sounds when you try to tell your friends about it Studies of the meditating brain got much more sophisticated aftr bain in ing was diseovered. Or maybe not. in 195 University of Pennsylvania neurologist Andrew Newberg hooked up a group o} Buddhist meditators to TVs containing a radioactive dye that he hoped would tack blood flow in the brain, lighting up the parts tbat were the most ative. But the only way ment when they reached their meditative peak was to sit in the next room, tie string around bis finger and snake the other end under the door andleave it next tothe med Se ee Se ee PICK A WwoRD, ‘ANY WORD Find a word or phrase that means Something to you, whose sound or ‘thm is scothing ‘when repeated Ty saying your Word or phrase ‘0 yourself with every outbreath. The monotony will help you focus | es by three beats a | itators. When they reached meditative Nir. vana, they pulled the string, and Newberg, released the dye into the subjects’ arms. His results showed that the brain doesn't shut off when it meditates but rather blocks in- formation from coming into the parietal lobe. Meanwhile, Benson took a group of highly focused Sikhs who could meditate while an fugi machine clanked away, and hhe measured the blood flow in their brains. TIME, AUGUST, 2005 Tea Racy ee rey Peer cured Peak tect Rr eens Pere eee) Cee coe Pi iets v el re AFTER meditation od ii ool rs Overall bload flow was down, but in cer tain areas, including the limbic system (which generates emotions and memories and regulates heart rate, respiratory rate and metabolism), it was up. Ab the University of Wisconsin at Mad json, Richard Davidson has used brain im- aging to show that meditation shifts activity in the prefrontal cortex (right be- hhind our foreheads) from the right hemi- sphere to the left. Davidsor’s research suggests that by meditating regularly, the brain is reoriented froma stressful fight-or-Dre ee etre) Frontal lobe ‘This is the most highly evolved part of the brain, responsible for reasoning, planning. emotions and self-conscious ‘awareness. During meditation, the Frontal cortex tends to go offine. ‘Jee datekeeper for the senses, this ‘organ focuses yaur attention by’ funneling some sensory data deeper {oto the brain and stopping other signals in their tracks. Meditation reduoes the flow of incoming Information to a tiokle. mode to one of acceptance, a shift increases contentment, People wtio negative disposition tend to be right al oriented; left-prefrontals have usiasms, more interests, relax tend to be happier, though per- less real estat. s meditation moved into the March 2000, when the Dalai ‘Western-trained psycholo- neuroscientists in Dharamsala, aed the Mind and Life Insti- mize studies of highly accom- Meditation is an ancient discipline, but tools sophisticated enough to see what goes on in your brain when you do it Parietal lobe ‘This part of the brain processes sensory Information about the surrounding world, Crienting you in time and space, During, Imedtato, act In the parietal tbe Reticular formation As the brain's sentry, this structure receives Incoming stimuli and puts the brain on alert, ready to respond. Meditating dials back ‘he arousal signal. | plished meditation masters using the most advanced imaging technology, theresultsof | which will be discussed in September at a, conference at M.LT. (which will also plan’ | | the next stages of reseasch). Not only did these studies allow for amore detail derstanding of how the brain works during meditation, but they also provided a lot of cool shots of monks wearing electrodes. | Whatscfentistsare discovering through | these studies is that with enough practice, | the neurons in the brain will adapt them= selves to ditect activity in that frontal, ‘TIME, AUGUST 4, 2003 ENN geen gC) Reon eg as Pee ety eee ee Su Poteet Peery Crecente eos Ce caeeede err een pete .- conscious thought decreases Perret Breniceon Crd rou concentration-oriented area of the brain It’s what samurais and kamikaze pilots rained to do and what Phil Jackson ‘preaches: to learn tobe totally aware of the ‘moment. "Meditation is like gasoline” says Robert Thurman, director of the Tibet House (and father of actress Uma Thur man). “In Asia meditation was a sort of a natura] tool anyone could use, We should detach it from just being Buddhist” Increasingly itis being detached from Buddhism. Along with the more obscure Zen techniques (such as sitting for hours in 33positions that look painful to me and asking {f tobe hit with sticks if you fel you are about todoze off), Americansare trying Vipassana (which begins by focusing on your breath), ‘walking meditation (at first walking really, really siowly and then being hyperaware of ‘each step), Transcendental Meditation (or TM, repeating a Sanskrit sable over and over), Dzogchen (cultivating a clear but even-kecled awareness) and even trance dance (spinning with a blindfold on for an hour to dance music). And early next yeara new book, Bight Minutes That Will Change Your Life, by Vietor Davich, will advocate the most American form of meditation yet 2 daily practice that he claims takes just eight minutes. That, it turns out, is exact'y how long we're conditioned by modern so- ciety to concentrate since isthe amount of time between TV commercials. Josh Baran, author of the upcoming hook 365 Nirwana Here and Now, says when his brain wanders in a distinctly unfocused, nonmeditative way—that deal when you've flipped five pag and read nothing it actually causes him discomfort. Roger Walsh, a professor of psychiatry, philosophy and anthropology at the University of California at irvine, has ‘been studying the extent to which medita- tors can control their psychological states “Only in recent years has Western psychia- try recognized attention-deficit disorder but the meditative-contemplative tradi- tions have maintained for thousands of years that we all suffer from some kind of Appand just don't recognize it” Its the kind of basic human attention deficit that makes it hard to keep reading @ paragraph if it doesn't end with a joke. Psychologists are trying to discover whether meditation can repregram minds with an antisocial bent. A study at the Kings County North Rehabilitation Facil- ity. a jail near Seattle, asked prisoners setving time for nonviolent drug- or aleohol-related crimes to sit through Vipas- sana meditation for 10 days, I hours day, ey ae testy could well ave Te otateNy been practiced by hunter gatherers many Me Cee eats eee on ney Pose con! eee MNase eoroas ing its own Breer PREHISTORY ‘Shamanistic Tradition No one knows precisely ‘when meditation began, but experts think it thousands of years ago. Uke other mystical Dractices, it might have been reserved for tribal ‘shamans, whe were believed to be in direct, touch withthe visible ‘world of spirits. dT ; alternatingsitting and walking meditations. ‘They were chosen for their extreme reha- Diltation needs and because, realy, who alse are you going to get to bear with I~ hour meditation sessions? Approximately 56% of the newly enlightened prisoners re- tured to jail within two years, compared with a 75% recidivism rate among nonmed ilators. The meditating cons aso used few fr drugs, drank Jess and experienced less depression. At Cambridge University, John Teasdale found that mindfulness hi chronically depressed patients, reducing their relapse rateby half. Wendy Weisel, the daughter of two Holocaust survivors and author of Daughters of Absence, took anxi ‘ety medication for most of her life until she started meditating two years ago, “There's fan astounding difference.” she reports “You don't need medication for depression | or for tension. I'm on nothing for the frst ) time in my life” Contentment and inner peace fre nice, but think how many Amer: 2000-3000 B.c. Vedic Tradition Meditation s described in ancient Hindu texts; it has been a part of Hindulsm and its many offshoots ever since. J. At the Keck Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, a Tibetan Buddhist undergoes an MRI ieans would start medi- tating if you could eon- vinee them they would live longer without hav- ingto jog oreat broccoli abe. More than af decade ago, Dr: Dean (mish argued that meditation, along with 3 yoga and dieting, reversed the buildup of # plaque in coronary arteries. Last April, ata meeting of the American Urological Association, he announced his most recent | findings that meditation may slow prostate cancer. While his results were interesting, § 15 important to note that those patients were also dieting and doing yor. Jon 9 Kabat-Zinn, who studied Buddhism in the § 60s and founded the Stress Reduction £ Clinic at the UMass Medical Center in 1879, hasbeen trying to nd a more seien- tific demonstration ofthe healing power of meditation. Over the years, he has helped more than # 14,000 people * J. Buddha G7 seer meditating under a banyan tree, Prince Siddhartha Guatama achieved enlightenment; Buddhism in all ts many forms would be the ultimate result. Important part of Christian practice. | woue ‘would be Bn increasingly | wththeir pain without medication by | aching them to focus on what their pain jeels like and accept it rather than fight it. hese people have cancer, AIDS, chronic pain” he says. “If we think we can do something for them, we're in deep trouble, But if you switch frames of reference and iertain the notion that they may be able dio something for themselves if we put ¥ powerful tools at their disposal, igs shift extraordinarily.” [ately Kabat-Zinn has been studying a 19 of patients with psoriasis, an incur- ie din disease that soften treated by ask- patients to go to.@ hospital, put goggles nn and stand naked in a hot, loud ultraviolet ox, Apparently, many people find this stressful, So Kabat-Zinn randomly picked half the patients and taught them to medi- tate in onder to reduce their stress levels in the light box. In two experiments, the med- itators' skin cleared up at four times the rate of the nonmeditators. In anather study, con- ducted with Wisconsin's Richard Davidson, Kabat-Zinn gave a group of newly taught ‘meditators end nonmeditators fu shots and ‘measured the antibody levels in their blood Researchers also measured their Drain activity to see how much the m ‘mental activity shifted from the night brain to the left. Not only did the meditators have more ant. bodies at both four ators CIRCA 1000 A.D. CCabalistic Uewish) Meditation bs practitioners boiove ‘et the Jewish mystical ‘waation of Cabalism is 1000 ‘Muslim Meditation ‘At about the same time ‘that some Jews were ‘embracing mysticism, certain Muslims were doing the same. ‘The Muslim Sect known as Sus (atter the plain | woo! garments, | called su, that they wore) ‘incorporated ‘meditation into their rituals of worship. EARLY £5008 Martin Luther He aldn't approve of mysticism and referred a plain reading (of Scripture to any kind of incantation, In reapanse to the Reformation ne inslred, the Roman Catholic church suppresses the Influence of monks who taught meditation. A. Cabalists would ty to with God. ‘weeks and eight weeks after the hots, but the people whose a tivity shifted the most had even ‘more antibodies. The bettes your meditation technique, Kabat E Zinn suggests, the healthier your Meanwhile, the evidence from meditation researchers con- tinues to mount, One study, for example, shows that women who ‘meditate and use guided imagery have higher levels ofthe immune cells known to combat tumors in the breast. This comesafter many studies have established that meditation can significantly re- duce blood pressure. Given that 60% of doctor visits ate the result of stress-related conditions, this isnt surprising. Nor is it surpris- ing that meditation can some- times be used to replace Viagra But_ meditation does more than reduce stress, bring harmo- nny and increase focus. As the Beatles demonstrated in 1968 when they visited the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in his Himalayan ashram (they had met him in London in 1967), it can also give | you much needed gravitas. Actress Heather Graham started meditating the suggestion of director David Lynch, another Maharishi student, 12 years ago on the set of his stu- diously bizarre Tooin Peaks TV series. “Its ‘easy to spend a lot of time worrying and ob- | sessing, but meditation puts me ina blissful place,” says Graham, who typically meditates for 20 minutes when she wakes up and then again in the afternoon. “At the end ofthe day, all that star stuff doesn't mean anything. Transcendental Meditation reminds you thats how you feel inside that’s important. If you have that, you have everything” Lynch, who also directed Eraserhead and Blue Veloet, has been siting for 1550 St. Theresa Even as Luther Influence wes spreading, this Spanish Carmelite nun ‘championed meditation ‘and other Promoting his own brand of meditation, this guru won the Beatles as Converts end began a resurgence of meditation in the Wester word that stil ‘ourishes today. AbP He E PR eRe CR tt et) HEALTH Tere tee RN nT ae cURL R eae 90 minutes twice @ day since 1973. “I-catch RCA en RG ieee an tens S cm Ly more ideas at deeper and deeper levels of consloumes, a they have moe early CM ee CCM tyncs might cove un with he imitated forfour ours day na , Gali Hoe ho sy sh as VOR’ ecicing for St yours, has Gaia fea feetation rom in er house fled wih hee frets erst dowers incase aed sictures of the De too ona Mosher Jere, she mediates twice a day for at Tbs 80 inte “Now dou far e- es eee ee une se aT CONCENTRATIVE | Meditative technique that diets the mind toa single focus, such as on the breath or@ mantra ness your destructive emotions?” she asks. “You can only do this by being able to sit MINDFULNESS 2 quietly and quiet your mind.” Teaches an evenhanded, e More recent devotees are decisively accepting awareness of nonorystal. Eileen Harrington, who rons Fe the hard-boiled consumer-raud group of A the Federal Trade Commission in Wash- f ington, inviteda meditation speaker to give MOVEMENT Shambhala Sun raul dwovemeNt | CENTERS Poets aE | 4 presentation eter 1. Roughly hal hor co — staffs stil tit Bill Ford, the head of Ford } f\ Teseraions | BNwops Unberty ates: Motors meine, as does «former \ Grmoverent, | Boulcer, Col. eine chief of Englands top-secret ML YSSSEAME “sich asin” | mitoharis University | here Youd by Jon Hillary Clinton has talked about medi- ge wehiog or | Fetes tora een tating. and the Gore re converts. “We SBD GH | mshamnats Mounsin | tom rondness by bath bel vou salar Diojet etre Red Feather Lakes, Colo. | Sharon Salers ten pray together. But meditation—as VISUALIZATION | mstss Reduction Ginie | ripetan Budanism distinguished from prayer—I highly Generates a mental imag, | University of Massachusetts | from the Ground dp recommend it” says the man who near- E omsimpe crosses ora.” | Amherst, Moss. ny, alan Walace Ty became our President. Gore's TM Loreen athena ee ‘Autobiography of smantm isnot, as rumored, Florida, 5 the elaborate mandaas of | wom mock Conor eps peaanones 1 Though I dortt meditate as elisionshy § Mhetan Sudchiom Roentoe am 1 can see Gore's point. Taking time out of : Ths Catto for are aca 4) our video- and Wi-Fi-drenched lives tore 3 LOVINGKINDNESS | Coromplatve Mind secu ties discover the present is a worthwhile actv- £ cultivates a postive mood iy. And Ifelta tangible difference when, in smindandlite.ors, or beneficent outiook tmorg through the contemplation ‘of such footings a8 ‘omnpassion forall people my postmeditative buzz, I would walk ee down the street hypersware of my sur- ao roundings, like some not particularly use- frrak in. Aa ful superhero power. I could even get MAGAZINES aise myself to nat need to go to the bathroom if Guanes “Tiyte magazine Teoncentrated on my bladder and aceept- Scauaniosesne ed its fullness, though I'm not really sure problems by turing js thisis a heath benefit. But if weren't one negative emotions into of the few people I know who need to be positive energies ‘more active and less chill-1 could uso an i anger-training class-I would meditate . ». “more. And if Lever find myself faced with ae trauma or disease, [think I pursue PR. meditation. Thats what Buddhists ES meant it for, after el, since they be- A lieve that life inevitably entails suf- Bee ering, My ony covnterargment yh. is that they came up with that suf- fering idea before television was TRANSFORMATIVE i. : ree “aowd reece “ Se ae eet 3 AS or Dimer rt Cy Kaen fon ete 1 BI casctene cad tere icdowat es ai me rere trey Fe Prat at 7 5 & SS fe