Within the past few decades, there's been a surge of interest in the investigation of mindfulness as a psychological construct, and as a form of clinical intervention. While early findings have resulted in a great deal of excitement about its potential, there's still a lot we don't know about mindfulness and meditation, and there's been a recent cautioning by the scientific community about the dangers of overstating the mental and physical benefits associated with the practice. Still, there does seem to be accumulating evidence that mindfulness does some really key things to support our well-being. First, as an attentional control practice, it's become pretty clear that a regular mindfulness practice will help sharpen your focus. What's interesting about this is that the research seems to suggest that not only are we able to become more selective in what we pay attention to, and how long we pay attention to it, but that it also helps to counterbalance our brain's natural inclination to stop paying attention to new information in our environment. You might remember that in one of our discussions from the previous module, we talked about the formation of schemas, which are the mental frameworks that our minds used to help us organize, and interpret data. In that session, I told you that these frameworks are a double-edged sword because while they help us process sensory data quickly, they also support our tendency to take in only a few data points before we decide that we know what something is, and our full attention isn't required. But in and through our mindfulness practice, we can learn to retrain the brain so that we're able to bring fresh eyes to habits, routines, and overlearned activity. This perspective actually allows us to notice and appreciate, and continue to notice and appreciate the beauty, and mystery, and complexity of life that actually surrounds us all the time. Another promising area of mindfulness related research deals with emotional regulation, and ways in which regular mindfulness practice can result in both structural and functional changes in the areas of the brain that are typically activated when we're faced with anything in our environment that our brain believes maybe threatening to us in some way. What you see on the screen right now is a picture of an amygdala, which is an almond-shaped bundle of neurons that together with the hippocampus and the hypothalamus form what's known as the limbic system. To keep things simple, you can think of the limbic system as the area of the brain most responsible for self-preservation and procreation. The amygdala is critical to our ability to process certain emotions and perceive emotions in other people. This includes fear and the many changes that fear causes in the body. If you wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of a window in your house being broken, and you find that your heart's pounding, chances are that your amygdala are very active. Our amygdala help modulate all of our reactions to events that seem important to our survival. On the face of things, it just seems super helpful. It's great that we have this built-in alarm system that alerts us to potential dangers, and prepares us to fight or flee when faced with life-threatening situations. To some extent, it absolutely is. But there's a flip side to this constant vigilance. In today's world with all of its modern conveniences, we simply aren't faced with as many literal life-threatening situations as our ancestors. So often, what our brain perceives as a threat is more of a paper tiger than a real one. Work deadlines, traffic hassles, public speaking events, all of these things activate our amygdala in the same way as when the window breaks in the middle of the night, and were just as easily hijacked by their alarm sounds as we are when we're truly in a fight for our life. But what we're learning is that mindfulness meditation can actually begin to reduce activation in the amygdala. According to some research, after just eight weeks of regular meditation, the alarm bells don't feel so intense. In that same period, the neural pathways that exists between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, which is the area of the brain that helps us process information, problem-solve, and make effective decisions begins to increase. These new networks help us be more discerning about what threats are real and need our attention and energy as opposed to those that don't. They allow us to develop more adaptive, creative strategies for dealing with whatever life event or challenge has this all worked up. Think of it like this. After just a couple months of meditation, that's likely that less things will set off your alarm bells. The alarm bells that do ring will be less intense, and you'll have easier access to internal resources that will help you deal with the stress in your life more wisely. Sounds pretty good. Every year, it seems as though there are new methods for rigorously analyzing the qualitative aspects of meditative experience, including the use of cutting-edge scientific tools, looking at the effects of mindfulness practice on brain structure and function. Every year we're finding that in addition to its impact on the brain, the practice of mindfulness impacts other facets of our well-being as well, including improved immune function, blood pressure, and cortisol levels. It reduces anxiety, depression, and neuroticism. It also leads to greater behavior regulation, and it shown promise in the treatment of a wide variety of addiction disorders. In fact, we could likely dedicate the rest of this module to exploring the science of mindfulness and all the ways that it's positively correlated to enhance well-being. But there are so many other equally as important things for us to cover. So instead of using video lectures as our featured tool for discussing the research, we've created a resource section called Your Brain and Body on Meditation. Here, you'll find several articles featuring well-designed studies focused on how mindfulness changes the brain, supports our capacity to connect with others, and helps us relate to and bounce back from stress more effectively. I encourage you to read these articles and hold them up for consideration as you begin to try the practice of mindfulness for yourself. But I also hope you'll ask yourself pertinent questions along the way. Questions like, where's this contemplative practice really feel like as I do it? What do I feel in my body when I practice? How do I feel later in the day? What does it feel like when I practice two days in a row? By asking yourself these types of questions and then listening deeply to the responses that follow, you may be able to develop your own gut sense of the benefits of mindful awareness. I'll look forward to hearing those insights from you soon.
