The benefits of meditation (lessons from The Mirror of the Brain)

I recently finished a book I’d recommend: El espejo del cerebro (The Mirror of the Brain), by Nazareth Castellanos. In it she talks about the benefits of meditation, not only psychologically but also in terms of the changes it produces in the brain over the medium term. I first came across her a couple of years ago, after reading Le maître dans le cœur (The Master in the Heart) by Annie Marquier, which I also recommend for its subject and for the way it’s written. I started looking into the scientific evidence behind what Marquier described in her book… and came across a video by Dr Castellanos that I really liked, and I’ve followed her work closely ever since. She explains things just as well in her book as in her videos, and she has something I always look for when following a professional’s work: you can tell she believes in what she does.

So I thought it would be good to share some of the most interesting findings she mentions in her book, and if you’d like to know more about the subject, you’ll have some idea of where to start:

The first thing to highlight is something most of us already know: we spend much of our time on autopilot, that is, without really “being” in what we’re doing. A Harvard University study (Killingsworth and Gilbert, 2010, Science), which asked thousands of people at random moments of the day what they were doing, what they were thinking about and how they felt, found that our minds are elsewhere almost half the time and that, when our minds wander, we tend to feel less happy. In other words, learning to pay attention to what we’re doing matters for our wellbeing. Whenever we do something, whatever it is (washing the dishes, studying or talking to someone, it doesn’t matter), we should try to focus on it as much as possible and avoid “drifting off to other worlds” while we do it.

It has been shown that by changing and correcting our breathing, we bring about changes in memory, attention and emotional expression.

It has also been observed that people who meditate regularly have thicker, more active areas of the prefrontal cortex. This doesn’t necessarily mean they have more neurons (the extra thickness may also come from more connections between them, more support cells or a richer blood supply), but it does suggest that the areas involved in attention and concentration are more developed than in people who don’t meditate.

Another interesting finding: meditation practice has been shown to increase the activity and thickness of the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain responsible for making the unconscious conscious. This means that people who meditate find it easier to notice when they’re getting distracted and to redirect their attention where it needs to go. In my view, this could be especially helpful for people who are particularly prone to rumination, and for people with depressive and/or anxiety disorders in which rumination is especially present. And in obsessive-compulsive disorder, of course.

Another important finding, this time not only about the brain but about the rest of the body: regular meditation makes the heart’s activity more complex and better regulated.

What’s most surprising is that studies have also shown that meditation leads to structural and functional changes in the insula, which is responsible for such important functions as our idea of ourselves, metacognition, smiling, decision-making, error detection, the perception of music and maternal instinct. As the author points out, this would imply that meditation also helps change how we perceive ourselves. In other words, people who meditate would have a better self-concept than those who don’t, which could have beneficial effects on self-esteem and everything that comes with it.

One finding that particularly caught my attention had to do with the famous inner dialogue we all carry around. The areas of the brain that light up when there’s more inner dialogue are the ones related to listening, not speaking. As the author puts it: we are listening to ourselves all the time (and I’d add that we need to be very careful about what we tell ourselves, and not believe all of it. Or identify with all of it). It seems that practising meditation helps reduce that excess of everyday inner dialogue.

These are just some of the interesting findings mentioned in the book, but there’s much more in it, and she explains it all very well and very accessibly. It’s not only about meditation and its benefits but about how our mind works, which never ceases to amaze. Highly recommended if you’re interested in these topics!