Meditation: science or tradition?

Should we understand meditation as part of a millenary tradition, or does it go beyond this?

Meditation has always been a field of research in the spiritual realm, and until the 1990s there was no exhaustive scientific research on this topic.Until the 1990s, there was no exhaustive scientific research on this subject.

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 1990s, when neurologist Marcus Raichle incorporated techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging into the investigation of the default neural network.

Since then there has been a progressive rapprochement between science and tradition. The scientific community has become increasingly aware of the detailed analysis of the mind that the meditative traditions have been doing for centuries and has made meditation a focus of its 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 is the process of meditation?

The process of meditation 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 introduce the ball into the hole with a single stroke. Easy to understand, isn't it? But not so easy to do and even less easy to do at will with each stroke.

The first thing you learn when you start are 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 the attention is gone and you realize it, you come back again.

But if one progresses adequately, one realizes that meditation is more than just bringing the mind back to the object every time you get distracted.. The practice of meditation allows you to be in this world with a greater sense of happiness, flow, presence and clarity.

In my experience as a meditation teacher I can say that the progression in learning is not linearThere are weeks when a student makes a lot of progress and other weeks when it seems that he or she is going backwards. This 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 benefits of meditation can be divided into four main areasThe benefits of meditation can be divided into four main areas, positive aspects obtained through brain neuroplasticity. They are the following.

1. The attentional process

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

2. Body awareness

By decreasing the tendency to judge internal experience, helps us to understand external experience and gives us a greater capacity to make decisions..

3. Emotional regulation

Experiencing what is present in the field of consciousness, observing these experiences without altering them or reacting to them, allows us to to attend to unpleasant emotions or sensations from an attitude that generates habituation, acceptance and greater capacity to sustain difficult emotions. and greater capacity 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 the contents by the consciousness; this fact happens when experiencing the changing and improper nature of reality.This happens by experiencing the changing and improper nature of reality. Experiencing oneself as something not separate from the rest changes the process of self-reperception and facilitates change.

How does neurotechnology help in learning meditation?

One option that I discovered some time ago and that allows students to progress more quickly is the application of neurotechnology, which consists of the use of electronic equipment to analyze our meditation practice..

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

In my case, I use an electroencephalograph (EEG), which the student uses during the meditations; in this way, of the four points above, 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 field.

With the EEG we detect the different types of brain waves and we work mainly 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 waves, related to states of alertness and active concentration.

It is interesting the debate that is generated between student and teacher. when observing the evolution of the different brain waves with your attentional state, in which moments you have been more concentrated or more distracted, how many times you get distracted, etc. And it is also relevant to know the body movement during practice, or how the Heart rate changes during practice.

Meditation is in vogue, but .... Is it here to stay?

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

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

The time is coming when it is clear that we have to take care of our mind, and meditation is becoming a part of it.Meditation is unstoppably joining other indispensable activities to enjoy a good physical and mental health.

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

Author: Òscar Carrera, member of Mental Area.

Bibliographical references:

• Cebolla i Martí, A.; Albear Morón, D. Positive contemplative psychology.
• Goleman, D.; Davidson, R.J. Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body.
• Lazar, S.W.; Bush, G.; Gollub, R.L.; Fricchione, G.L.; Khalsa, G.; Benson, H.: Functional brain mapping of the relaxation response and meditation [Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins].
• Lazar, S.; Olendzki, A.; Meissner, T. Meditation Research. Mind the hype: A critical evaluation and prescriptive agenda for research on mindfulness and meditation.