26 Scientifically Proven Superhuman Benefits of Meditation
I’ve written posts on the myths of motivation in the past going
into the science of what makes people tick, but what I didn’t mention is what
I believe the ultimate motivator is: reasons to act.
Bombarding
your brain with reasons to act makes motivation easy.
The
Mind of a Meditator
In Social Psychologist Daniel
Goleman’s book Destructive Emotions, he
recounts his experience of performing the first scientific studies on
the mind of a mediator. Among the scientists present were Richie
Davidson, a neuroscientist, and Paul Ekman – one of the world’s
leading researchers on emotions.
The Dalai Lama himself, who
helped this meeting of the minds between East and West, said of it, “I want to
put everything under scrutiny, what doesn’t work, even if it was there for
thousands of years we’ll take out.” He gave the scientists his right hand man Lama
Oser to study — a European monk with over 30 years of meditative
experience.
They tested him on various
parameters.
This is where our story of the
superhuman benefits of meditation begins.
Breathe in.
1.
Insane Equanimity and Wellbeing
The first thing they looked at was
Lama Oser’s left-to-right prefrontal cortex activity ratio. People who are
happier tend to have a higher left-to-right ratio in terms of brain activity,
more neural pathways on the left side of the prefrontal cortex than on the
right side.
The happier you are the larger that
ratio is. Also, left-to-right ratios predicts how quickly you will recover from
stresses both psychologically and physically.
Lama Oser’s ratio was measured with
an MRI scanner and compared to a sample of 175 people. He was quite
literally off the chart.
Lama Oser’s prefrontal cortex ratio
0.41
This off the chart prefrontal cortex
activity ratio asymmetry suggests insane levels of equanimity, well-being and
resilience to setbacks.
But this is not the only thing
they looked at in Lama Oser…
2.
Body Language Expertise
Paul Ekman has revolutionised
the way we understand emotions and facial expressions. The lead character
in the TV show ‘Lie To Me‘ was based on him and his research. Ekman was
the first person to discover what he coined micro expressions — fleeting
millisecond expressions that reveal our true emotions.
Paul Ekman’s facial action coding
system (FACS)
Ekman has tested hundreds of people
on their ability to detect these subtle expressions from FBI agents to clinical
psychologists and college students. When they tested Lama Oser nobody could
have predicted the results.
Lama Oser was the best at detecting
these subtle expressions Ekman had ever recorded. Ever.
Along with body language expertise
this tells us two further superhuman traits Lama Oser had.
3.
Empathic Intelligence
The ability to recognise
emotions in other people is associated with levels of empathy. If
Lama Oser was the best at detecting these micro expressions they’ve ever
tested, by default, he also had more empathy than any other person they’ve ever
tested.
4.
Super Fast Cognitive Functioning
Empathy alone wouldn’t have helped
him notice these super fast micro expressions. They last sometimes hundredths
of a second. Lama Oser’s mind must have been sharp, focused and fast to catch
them and process them. Faster that anyone else’s they tested.
5.
No Startle Response
Paul Ekman has been studying the
startle response in people for decades. The startle response is what
happens if something loud or surprising happens to us suddenly. I’m sure you’ve
experienced it. We blink for a millisecond; it’s an innate reaction.
They find it in every single person.
Even in policemen and women. They practice their shooting all the time,
constantly, yet every time the gun goes off they blink slightly – they
startle. Everyone has a startle response.
Or so they thought…
Lama Oser was the first person in
recorded history to suppress his startle response. When he is
meditating, he is so relaxed, so focused on whatever he’s meditating on that
nothing startles him. Because there is a correlation between levels of
anxiety and how easily somebody startles, the implications for this are huge.
6.
Negotiation Expertise
Practicing meditation didn’t just
affect Lama Oser, it also influenced everyone he interacted with.
They did this experiment where they had him sit down with Western scientists
and talk about controversial issues such as why scientists should give up
science and become monks and reincarnation.
He interacted with two people.
The first was a chilled out scientist. They both had a good chat and remained
calm. Then they brought in the second scientist and they picked this scientist
because he was extremely contentious, harsh and intolerant. I guess they were
just curious what would happen.
Here is what that argumentative
scientist had to say after the discussion:
“I couldn’t be confrontational. I
was always met with reason and smiles. It’s overwhelming. I felt something like
a shadow or aura and I couldn’t be aggressive.”
The scientist was calm and friendly,
something totally unexpected. Lama Oser’s levels of equanimity rubbed off on
him. Emotions are contagious.
But what does this prove? It’s
fantastic and shocking but do we also have to meditate for 30 years to reap
similar benefits?
Let’s find out.
7.
Less Anxiety
There are a few problems with the
Lama Oser studies. The sample size was very small. The study showed correlation
not causation (perhaps it was genetics), and well, the guy was a monk. We don’t
all have 30 years to spare.
This is where Jon Kabat-Zinn comes in.
Jon Kabat-Zinn came up with an
experimental design that had a control group and an experimental group.
The control group signed up to a mindfulness meditation program but
remained on the waiting list. The experimental group, who were compared to
the control group, did a meditation program.
The program was 8 weeks long. They
meditated on average for 45 minutes a day, they did a little bit of yoga,
mindful breathing, body scans and had workshops talking to them about
meditation.
In this experiment Jon
Kabat-Zinn showed that the benefits of meditation don’t just apply to
monks. In just 8 weeks, those who meditated achieved significant changes, both
mentally and physically.
The first was a
significant decrease in anxiety levels during the program and after
compared to the control group.
8. Better
Mood
The scanned the participant’s brains
in the Jon Kabat-Zinn study. Like Lama Oser their left-to-right prefrontal
cortex activity ratio changed compared to the control group.
Their positive emotions increased
and their negative emotions decreased.
9. Stronger
Immune System
Jon Kabatt-Zinn also injected
participants with a cold virus to see how their immune system would respond.
Those who were in the program had a stronger immune response and recovered
faster.
The benefits of meditation are not
just psychological, but physical.
The Lama Oser experiments and the
Jon Kabat-Zinn experiment made the world, and the science community, start to
take notice. From here on out I’m going to list some really unexpected
superhuman benefits of meditation.
10.
Improved Decision-Making
Imagine you are betting money on a
slot machine. You allow yourself to spend $50. Even though after an
hour of betting you haven’t won a dime, you’ve repeatedly come close to winning
the $10,000 jackpot. Problem is, you’ve just spent your fiftieth dollar.
Seen as you’ve already spend so much
time and money, rather than let it all go to ‘waste’, perhaps you should spend
another $10 to at least recoup your losses. Somebody has to win, right?
This type of thinking is irrational
(easy to say that when it’s not you) and known to the critical thinking crowd
as the sunk-cost fallacy. It’s a subtle form of
cognitive distortion that negatively affects our decision-making.
Whether it’s putting more money into a failing business or simply deciding to
endure a film you’re not enjoying because you’ve paid for it.
But we can get around it.
With just one 15-minute
focused-breathing meditation we can de-bias our brains and make smarter
decisions. By bringing our attention into the present moment we can think
clearly about our decisions and avoid ruminating on past events, which can
distort our thinking.1)
11.
Slowdown Neurodegenerative Diseases
A pilot study led by researchers at
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center suggests that the brain changes associated
with meditation and stress reduction may play an important role in slowing the
progression of age-related cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s disease and
other dementias.
After an 8 week mindfulness based
stress reduction program the Alzheimer’s patients who took part showed less
cognitive decline than the control group.2)
They also reported higher levels of
wellbeing, which in turn also improves recovery.
12.
Enhanced Creativity
The two main ingredients of
creativity are divergent thinking — coming up with lots of ideas — and
convergent thinking, solidifying those ideas into a single ‘aha moment‘.
Cognitive psychologist Lorenza Colzato
and her fellow researchers at Leiden University performed a study looking at
the effects of two different types of meditation practices on divergent and
convergent thinking.
Meditation improved convergent and
divergent thinking. Interestingly, the type of meditation had an impact on
which type of creative thinking was most improved. Free association meditation
improved divergent thinking more that focused attention meditation.3)
13. Accelerated
Learning
George Mason University professor
Robert Youmans and University of Illinois doctoral student Jared Ramsburg asked
a selection of students to meditate before a lecture and compared their test
results with a control group who didn’t meditate.
They found that not only did the
short meditation help students focus and retain the lecture information better,
it also served as a good predictor of who would pass and who would fail.4)
Meditation helps you learn faster.
14.
Lower High Blood Pressure
Roughly 1 in 3 Americans
have high blood pressure. Having high blood pressure increases one’s
chances of developing heart disease, stroke, congestive heart failure and
kidney disease.
A meta-analysis of nine randomised
trials conducted at the University of Kentucky showed that Transcendental Meditation (repeating a mantra)
was the equivalent of adding a second anti-hypertension agent to one’s
routine but without the side effects.
They compared Transcendental
Meditation to other relaxation techniques but found that Transcendental
Meditation was the only intervention that significantly lowered high blood
pressure. I suspect that other forms of meditation will yield similar results
but we need more research to really find out.
15.
Increase Attention Span
Anyone who has ever meditated knows
that focusing on one thing for any amount of time is harder than it seems. From
the outside, sitting in a quiet room and placing one’s attention on the breath
seems easy. There is a reason why buddhists refer to meditation as
‘training the mind.’
In one of the most comprehensive
meditation studies to date, a group of researchers took 60 participants
and split them in half — one became the control group, the other went on a
three-month meditation retreat. The ones who went on the retreat showed
continuous improvements on a difficult 30 minute attention test compared to the
non-meditators and the results lasted for five months after the retreat.5)
Meditation improves your ability to
concentrate and hold your attention on boring stimulus. This ties into
accelerated learning and productivity.
16.
Less Loneliness
Feelings of loneliness and social isolation
are damaging to our physical and mental health, especially in older adults.
In a study at Carnegie Mellon
University’s J. David Creswell, looking at 40 older adults, they found that
just 30 minutes of meditation a day for eight weeks not only decreased feelings
of loneliness but also reduced the risk of inflammatory diseases.6)
Creswell added “It’s important to
train your mind like you train your biceps in the gym.”
17.
Combat Cravings and Addictions
My philosophy when it comes to
changing habits is to approach them side-on. For example, if one wants to
become more productive, instead of trying to force yourself to work longer
and harder hours, strategic breaks might help them more.
If someone wants to lose weight,
before giving them a diet and workout plan I ask them to simply start weighing
themselves every morning and recording the results. Every wave starts as a
ripple.
Researchers at the University of
Oregon put this ripple philosophy to the test. They sought volunteers
interested in reducing stress and improving their performance. In actuality,
the experiment was designed to explore how meditation would impact smoking
behaviour. Unbeknownst to the participants, it did — they curtailed their
smoking by 60%.7)
The meditation didn’t force
participants to give up smoking; it simply improved their levels of
self-control and emotional regulation. It changed their habits side-on.
18.
Higher Pain Threshold
A study conducted at
the University of Montreal compared 13 Zen meditators, all of who had at
least 1,000 hours of practice, with a control group of non-meditators to see
whether regular meditation practice would effect the perception of pain.
They tested the subject’s pain
response using a calibrated heated rod on their calfs. The zen meditators
experienced overall 18% less pain.8)
An extreme example of the insane
equanimity meditation can provide in the face of extreme pain can be found
in this shocking image of a Vietnamese monk who, historically, didn’t move or
scream out once during his self-immolation.
This Vietnamese monk remained
completely motionless throughout.
But you don’t have to
meditate for thousands of hours to reduce the sensation of pain. A brief intervention of 20 minutes
of meditation for three days has been shown to have lasting pain-reducing
effects.
19.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Our brain’s plasticity is a gift
that allows us to continuously improve and expand our horizons. The flip side
is that under certain conditions our brains can change in an instant, and for
the worse. This is essentially what post traumatic stress
disorder — a stress so significant, our psyche literally and
instantly rewires our neural pathways into a disempowering configuration.
Meditation can help reverse this.
A new collaborative study from the
University of Michigan Health System and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System
shows that veterans with PTSD who completed an 8-week mindfulness-based group
had significant PTSD improvements compared to the control group. 73 percent of
patients in the mindfulness group displayed meaningful improvement compared to
33 percent in the treatment-as- usual groups.9)
Another soldier focused study
looking exclusively at the preparation and recovery of war situations
corroborated the benefits of meditation on PTSD, anxiety and depression.
20. Deeper
Sleep
In a study done on 11
insomnia patients aged 25-45, relaxation techniques performed in the day were
shown to improve the quality of their sleep at night.
Sleep latency, total sleep time,
total wake time, wake after sleep onset, sleep efficiency, sleep quality and
depression improved in patients who used meditation.
21.
Improved Hearing
In a study conducted at the University of
Oregon music students were given a 15 minute guided meditation
before listening to a 10 minute excerpt of Giacomo Puccini’s opera
‘La Boheme’. Their peak experiences and ‘flow’ were measured and compared to a
control group who didn’t receive the meditation.
Overall, 97 percent of the
participants who meditated had either one or several moments of flow or aesthetic
response. Of the 69 subjects who engaged in mindfulness, 64 percent thought the
technique had enhanced their listening experience.
Attention is manipulable. By
training our mind to be present we can listen to what is actually there instead
of listening to what we expect to be there.
22. Visuospatial Memory
When we glance at an object our mind
can only retain the image for a few seconds. That’s why artists constantly look back and forth every few
seconds when they draw. There are, however, stories of monks who are said to be
able to hold complex images in their minds for minutes at a time.
In 2009 a study looking at
whether visuospatial memory can be improved was carried out. Those practicing
Deity Yoga, where they hold an image in their mind, where shown to have
‘significant’ improvements in their visuospatial memory following their
meditation practice.10) More research needs to carried out to see
how other forms of meditation effect visuospatial processing.
If the enhanced creativity, decision
making and attention span wasn’t enough to get artists and engineers
meditating, hopefully this will.
23.
Compassionate Mind
No superhuman would be complete
without improved compassion.
When the Dalai Lama first visited
the Western world he was shocked to find that our understanding of the word
‘compassion’ tends to refer to acts of kindness only towards others. The
buddhist word for compassion, karuṇā, means compassion both for yourself
and to others. The Dalai Lama thought it was ridiculous that someone could hope
to be truly compassionate towards others if they didn’t first feel
compassionate towards themselves.
Books like The Compassionate Mind by
Prof. Paul Gilbert go into detail on how compassion is an essential component
of happiness, self-esteem and
a fulfilling life.
The good news is that we can all
become more compassionate. In a study performed
at Northeastern University College of Science showed that even a brief
meditation intervention made their participants 50% more compassionate.
24. Turn
Down Distractions
Researchers from Massachusetts
General Hospital (MGH), Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology report that meditation helps increase alpha waves in the brain —
a wave that turns down the volume on distracting information.11)
If you find yourself easily
distracted by trivial things, meditation practice will help you focus your
attention and zone out competing stimuli.
25.
Autonomic Nervous System Control
Your autonomic nervous system is out
of your conscious control — it’s involuntary. You can’t tell your immune
system how much it should respond to a particular threat any more than you
can consciously digest your food. But then again not all of us have spent years
of our lives meditating like Wim Hof, aka The Iceman.
Wim Hof meditating
Wim Hof can withstand cold
temperatures that would kill an ordinary person. To find out how, Dr. Peter
Pickkers and his team at the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre measured Hof’s immune response
after being injected with bacteria during his meditation. He was able to
suppress his immune response by 50% compared to the other 240 participants
studied. He also had hardly any flu-like symptoms and had decreased
inflammation.
Wim Hof really is a
superhuman. He claims its due to his meditation practice.
26.
Clearer Skin
New research is coming to
out that shows stress might have more of a hand in skin conditions such as acne
and psoriasis than previously thought. We know that meditation is one of the
best ways of reducing stress, therefore it can indirectly help reduce
inflammation in the skin.
I’ve written an article on the science of becoming more attractive. It probably
won’t surprise you, meditation is in there.
Superhuman
Benefits of Meditation Conclusion
I’ve listed 26 superhuman benefits
of meditation but the truth is I could have listed a 100. There are new
studies constantly coming out showing how meditation can improve our lives and
the people we come into contact with.
Meditation has been around for 2,500
years but was never taken seriously until a small group of positive
psychologists had the courage to break the mould and put the ancient ideas to
the test.
Even though I write about a variety
of topics here at Comfort Pit, I class this site primarily as a positive
psychology site because at the heart of positive psychology is the idea that we
can look at the most incredible individuals in the world in hopes to
incorporate a little bit of that incredibleness into our own lives.
With meditation you can do this.
Start today.
Breathe out.
