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Move over cryptic crosswords and Sudoku, and make way for the ultimate mental workout. It’s called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR for short. Recent neuroscience research shows that novices using the method – developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in the 1970s – can get results in just eight weeks.

Brain-changing results, that is.

A 2010 study found that non-meditators who had eight weeks of MBSR training were more likely than a control group to access the brain region that provides a bodily sense of the “here and now” as opposed to the region associated with worry.

In other research published in January, brain scans of MBSR participants with no previous meditation experience showed increased grey-matter density in regions involved in learning and memory, emotion regulation, self-awareness and perspective taking.

Scientists don’t know whether changes in grey-matter density influence a person’s thought patterns or actions, notes Britta Hölzel, lead author of the second study and a research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital. But she adds that decreased grey-matter concentration in the amygdala – the brain region that controls anxiety – was correlated to lower stress levels reported by participants. “This is actually a link [between] changes in the brain and behaviour.”

Previous studies suggest MBSR is a boon for overall health. Research by Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the University of Massachusetts’ Stress Reduction Clinic, established the MBSR program as an effective medical intervention for chronic pain and stress-related illnesses such as high blood pressure. Scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that graduates of an MBSR course produced more antibodies after flu shots than did non-mediators, which indicated a stronger immune response. And in a 2010 study, researchers at the University of Toronto concluded that mindful meditation was as effective as antidepressants in preventing relapse from clinical depression.

Mindfulness meditation helps to reduce stress by providing insight, says Lucinda Sykes, a Toronto physician who has led MBSR courses since 1997. “Sometimes we’re having a stress response to situations that is actually more the result of our habits of perception and attitude rather than the circumstances themselves,” she explains.

But it may be premature to draw conclusions about the health benefits of MBSR, according to a meta-analysis of meditation research commissioned by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States. The report found that the majority of meditation studies published up to the year 2005 had methodological shortcomings.

Compared to some forms of meditation, however, MBSR is a highly systematic practice. The program consists of eight weekly group sessions and a full-day retreat. Participants commit to about 45 minutes a day of exercises that include gentle yoga, sitting meditation and a “body scan,” which involves directing attention to bodily sensations. Exercises at home are led by experts via CDs and participants are encouraged to contact program leaders in between sessions for extra coaching.

Unlike transcendental meditation and various chanting practices, MBSR is not based solely on focusing the mind, says Zindel Segal, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto who developed Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy to treat depression. Instead, mindfulness emphasizes awareness of thoughts, feelings, sounds and sensations from an internal observer’s perspective, without an attempt to judge or alter the experience. “You’re watching the moment by moment ebb and flow of emotions,” Dr. Segal says. “You’re not running away from them but you’re also not getting overwhelmed by them.”

Because it’s a specific method that takes practice, experts discourage beginners from trying MBSR without any guidance. “Most people are going to find it’s easier to do this with a group,” says Dr. Sykes, adding that MBSR alumni often begin a solo practice once they get the hang of it.

Dr. Segal cautions against attempting to “cannibalize” the MBSR program by experimenting with only one of the activities. Although the body scan, yoga and sitting meditation exercises are all designed to cultivate mindfulness, doing just one robs people of the chance to discover which practice is best suited to them, he says.

Dr. Hölzel says it’s unclear which exercises contributed to structural changes found in brain scans of MBSR participants, since the program was tested as a whole. “We cannot tease apart the specific effects of each of the components,” she says.

After the eight-week course is over, the recommended daily dose of MBSR depends on participants’ reasons for entering the program, Dr. Sykes says. Maintaining a new level of insight may be possible in just 10 or 15 minutes a day. But if the goal is to influence a biological variable, such as blood pressure, she says, “it’s likely that you’re going to get the best results if you practice 20 minutes, twice a day.”

Dr. Segal suggests it’s better to do mindfulness exercises for a few minutes each day than to be a weekend meditation warrior. A daily practice becomes woven into the fabric of life, he explains, whereas sporadic mindfulness “is not that fully integrated.”

Mindfulness exercises are compatible with spiritual traditions including Christianity and Judaism, notes Dr. Sykes. Although it’s based on a form of Buddhist meditation called Vipassana, MBSR is a secular program designed for health-care settings, she says.

“People don’t need to become Buddhist to nonetheless benefit from this practice.”

Get with the program

Eight-week workshops modelled after the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School are held in cities across Canada:

Toronto: Meditation for Health, www.meditationforhealth.com

Vancouver: MBSR B.C., www.mbsrbc.ca

Ottawa: Ottawa Mindfulness, www.ottawamindfulness.ca

Montreal: Living Arts, www.living-arts.ca

For people who shy away from groups, the MBSR method is outlined in books that include CDs, such as Bob Stahl’s A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook and Zindel Segal’s The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness.

- Adriana Barton

Why do more people drink alcohol than people who meditate? Why do more people eat fast food than get exercise? Smoking is a leading cause of death in the U.S., as are poor diet and alcohol use, so why do we love everything that is bad for us and keep away from things that do us good?

Presumably it’s because we really don’t like ourselves too much. Once the cycle of self-dislike gets started, then it takes a huge amount of determination and effort to make changes. And the mind is a perfect servant, as it will do whatever it’s told, but it’s a terrible master as it fails to help us help ourselves.

Which can be even harder when our mind is like a deranged monkey, leaping from one thought or drama to the next, never allowing us time to be quiet, peaceful and still.

But meditation can save our life! This may sound farfetched but meditation is a direct way to cut through the chaotic monkey mind constantly making excuses and supporting our neurosis. It’s that fundamental. Yet so many people pay it so little attention. Drinking alcohol can kill and meditation can save, yet there are far more people who drink.

Seven Ways Meditation Can Save Your Life

1. Chill Out
It is known that stress is responsible for 70-90 percent of illnesses, and that quiet time is the most effective remedy for a busy and overworked mind. In a stressed state, it is easy to lose touch with inner peace, compassion and kindness; in a relaxed state, the mind clears and we connect with a deeper sense of purpose and altruism. Your breath is your best friend. Anytime you feel stress rising, heart closing, mind going into overwhelm, just focus on your breathing and quietly repeat: Breathing in, I calm the body and mind; breathing out, I smile.

2. Release Anger and Fear
Anger can lead to hatred and violence. If we do not accept our negative feelings we are likely to repress or disown them, and when denied they can cause shame, depression and rage. Meditation enables us to see how selfishness, aversion and ignorance create endless dramas and fears. It may not be a cure-all, it’s not going to make all our difficulties go away or suddenly transform our weaknesses into strengths, but it does enable us to release self-centered and angry attitudes and generate a deep inner happiness. This can be very liberating.

3. Generate Appreciation
A lack of appreciation easily leads to abuse and exploitation. So, start by taking a moment just to appreciate the chair you are sitting on. Consider how the chair was made: the wood, cotton, wool, or other fibers, the trees and plants that were used, the earth that grew the trees, the sun and rain, the animals that maybe gave their lives, the people who prepared the materials, the factory where the chair was built, the designer and carpenter and seamstress, the shop that sold it — all this just so you could be sitting here, now. Then extend that appreciation to every part of yourself, then to everyone and everything in your life. For this I am grateful.

4. Develop Kindness and Compassion
Every time you see or feel suffering, whether in yourself or in another, every time you make a mistake or say something stupid and are just about to put yourself down, every time you think of someone you are having a hard time with, every time you see someone struggling, upset or irritated, just stop and bring loving kindness and compassion. Breathing gently, silently repeat: May you be well, may you be happy, may you be filled with loving kindness.

There is a reservoir of basic goodness in all beings but we often lose touch with this natural expression of caring and friendship. In meditation, we go from seeing our essentially selfish and ego-bound nature to recognizing that we are an integral part of a far greater whole, and as the heart opens we can bring compassion to our fallibility and humanness. Meditation is, therefore, the most compassionate gift we can give to ourselves.

5. Practice Harmlessness
Simply through the intent to cause less pain we can bring greater dignity to our world, so that harm is replaced with harmlessness and disrespect with respect. Ignoring someone’s feelings, affirming our hopelessness, disliking our appearance, or seeing ourselves as incompetent or unworthy are all causes of personal harm. How much resentment, guilt, or shame are we holding on to, thus perpetuating such harmfulness? Meditation enables us to transform this through recognizing our essential goodness as well as the preciousness of all life.

6. Share and Care
Without sharing and caring we live in an isolated, disconnected and lonely world. We take meditation “off the cushion” and put it into action as we become more deeply aware of our connectedness with all beings. From being self-centered, we become other-centered, concerned about the welfare of all. Then, reaching out beyond ourselves becomes a spontaneous expression of genuine generosity seen in our capacity to let go of conflicts or forgive mistakes, or in our desire to help those in need. We are not alone here, we all walk the same earth and breathe the same air; the more we participate, the more we are connected and fulfilled.

7. Be With What Is
The very nature of life includes change and unfulfilled desire and a longing for things to be different from how they are, all of which brings discontent and dissatisfaction. Almost everything we do is to achieve something: if we do this, then we will get that; if we do that, then this will happen. But in meditation we do it just to do it. There is no ulterior purpose other than to be here, in the present moment, without trying to get anywhere or achieve anything. No judgment, no right or wrong, simply being aware.

Meditation enables us to see clearly, to witness our thoughts and behavior and reduce our self-involvement. Without such a practice of self-reflection there is no way of putting a brake on the ego’s demands. Stepping out of the conceptual mind, however, does not mean stepping into nowhere or nothing; it does not mean that there is no connection to a worldly reality. Rather, it is stepping into sanity and, more importantly, into even greater connectedness. Then we have no more need to do ourselves harm!
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See our award-winning book, “Be the Change: How Meditation Can Transform You and the World,” with forewords by the Dalai Lama and Robert Thurman and contributions from Jack Kornfield, Marianne Williamson, astronaut Edgar Mitchell, Jane Fonda, Ram Dass, Byron Katie, Gangaji and others.

Our three meditation CDs — “Metta: Loving-Kindness and Forgiveness,” “Samadhi: Breath Awareness and Insight” and “Yoga Nidra: Inner Conscious Relaxation” — are available at www.EdandDebShapiro.com.

Follow Ed and Deb Shapiro on Twitter: www.twitter.com/edanddebshapiro

The biggest lie we tell ourselves is that meditating is not a high priority.

First of all, if you don’t realize how much science there is behind meditation, you must be living under a rock. And the book I’m currently kvelling over, The Happiness Advantage, says that meditation, just five minutes a day, is one of the most reliable ways to increase our natural tendency toward happiness.

But I don’t want to sound too girly when I tell you to meditate. So I’m telling you instead that the Marine Corp is using meditation to help troops cope with the stress of warfare. Imagine fifty guys sitting cross-legged, eyes shut, with a rifle in every lap. The marines were totally skeptical at first, of course, but in Men’s Journal (one of my favorite magazines) there’s a great article by Vanessa Gregory about how the soldiers became believers. (This article is not online. Annoying. So here’s a link to Science Daily article about Marines meditating.)

Also, I don’t want to sound like an overly spiritualized hippie cliché, so I’m also telling you that I learned to meditate when I was playing professional beach volleyball. Many professional athletes meditate because at that level, everyone has the skills to be the best, but only a few have the mental strength to use those skills in the toughest moments.

And, in case you think this doesn’t apply to you, a marriage therapist once told me (and my boyfriend, when we were deciding to skip out on counseling so we could save money for new computers) that you judge a person, and a couple, and an athlete, not by how good they are when there is no pressure, but on how well they handle themselves when everything is going wrong. So people should learn to mediate when things don’t feel terrible. It’s like networking when you have a job: make a big change from a strong position.

Another thing, though. I don’t want to sound like a hypocrite when I tell you to meditate. Because, I know all this stuff and I’m not doing it.

Well, that’s not true. I have done it before. As I said, I did it for volleyball. I sat, quietly, for twenty minutes a night, visualizing serve receive. I was playing against the Olympic team nearly every tournament (yes, because I was ranked so low on the tour) and I had to really, really focus in order to make good passes from their serves.

When I was meditating, and playing on the beach five hours a day and lifting weights an hour a day, my favorite part of the day was meditating. But when I gave up volleyball, I gave up meditating.

Then I did yoga (which is about breathing, so it counts as meditation). I was doing such hard-core yoga that I was waking up at 5am, doing ninety minutes of yoga, going home to sleep from complete exhaustion, and going into work late. Five days a week. And I loved it. But when I got fired from the job (for being late, among other things) and I had all the time in the world as an unemployed person, I stopped doing yoga.

It’s insane not to meditate because it helps all aspects of your life—intellectual, emotional, physical. And it only takes five minutes. You just need to sit for five minutes, and even if you are terrible at meditating and your mind races and you struggle to sit still, those five minutes are still beneficial.

Beneficial because first of all, you get better and better at calming yourself with each five-minute stint you do. But also, some of the most influential (on me) research I‘ve ever featured on this blog is from Roy Baumeister who shows (repeatedly) that self-discipline snowballs; if you add one, small thing that requires self-discipline, and do it day after day, exerting self-discipline in other areas because easier.

In the example I first read from Baumeister was when he had students walk with a book on their head each day. They had to have good posture and think about what they were doing to do it—which is basic mindfulness about the book on the head. They did it only for a very short time each day, but without anyone in the study mentioning anything about eating, studying or sleep, the majority of the people walking with books on their head each day inadvertently improved in all three of those areas. Self-discipline begets self-discipline.

Also, I am stuck on Shawn Achor’s report that we have a limited degree of willpower. But we can improve it by adding small, soon-to-be-routine acts of self-discipline. And what could be easier than sitting still for five minutes? I mean, you don’t have to do anything. Just sit there. How can we not be able to do this?

I rack my brain every day for the reason I do not do it. I was thinking, if someone paid me $10 each time I sat for five minutes, I’d do it. I’d tell myself I would have $3650 to spend at the end of the year, and then every day, for a year, I’d look through catalogues figuring out how to spend my money.

So I definitely can do this.

What is stopping me? I’ve been thinking for a week, and I think it’s a fear of change. I think I know that sitting for five minutes a day will change me. First, I’ll like it, and I’ll sit a bit longer. Then I’ll be curious about what tips people give newbie meditators. And then I’ll get a little better.

And then, I worry that maybe I’ll be a nutcase. I mostly think people who meditate are nutcases. They are the ones who are always talking about how in touch with themselves they are. And how being where you are now is so important. It annoys me.

But I’m always talking about that stuff, too. So I think meditation maybe will push me over the top. Like, how can I be cool and meditate?

When I tell the farmer I worry about this, he points out that I am not cool anyway. He used to think I was cool, but then I took him to NYC to hang out with my friends there, and then he saw that I’m the dork of my NYC friends.

So, the truth is that I guess I am all those things I don’t want to be: I’m a little too girly for a blog that has a majority-male readership. And I’m a little too spiritual for a blog that tells people, ostensibly, how to make more money, and I’m a little too hypocritical. Because your biggest problem is that you are not meditating and it’s so easy to do. My biggest problem is that I am telling you to do it instead of doing it myself.

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