Mindfulness in Daily Life & Lovingkindness Meditation PDF

Mindfulness in Daily Life & Lovingkindness Meditation I. Mindfulness in daily life A. Awe B. Relationship to concept of flow II. Lovingkindness meditation III. Neuropsychological effects A. Gamma waves and neural synchrony B. Neurocardiac coupling C. Optimism and prefrontal dominance D. Empathy a...

Mindfulness in Daily Life & Lovingkindness Meditation I. Mindfulness in daily life A. Awe B. Relationship to concept of flow II. Lovingkindness meditation III. Neuropsychological effects A. Gamma waves and neural synchrony B. Neurocardiac coupling C. Optimism and prefrontal dominance D. Empathy and ability to identify microexpressions IV. Research issues Applying Mindfulness to Daily Life Mindfulness practice is not just about sitting on a meditation cushion; it’s about a way of being that extends to how we engage in all of our daily activities • It’s knowing that you are exactly where you should be this moment and appreciating this moment, engaging in activities with full focus of attention Ø Ex: Walking meditation is about really enjoying the walking – walking not in order to arrive, but just to enjoy each step - We shake off all worries and anxieties, not thinking of the future, not thinking of the past, but just enjoying the present moment - We are aware of the contact between our feet and the Earth, “walking as if we are kissing the Earth with our feet” – Thich Nhat Hanh If we try to rush through washing the dishes in order to get to dessert, it will become an unpleasant task. And we will be equally incapable of enjoying our dessert… “With the fork in my hand, I will be thinking about what to do next, and the texture and the flavor of the dessert, together with the pleasure of eating it, will be lost. I will always be dragged into the future, never able to live in the present moment.” – Thich Nhat Hanh ☞ Focusing on the future becomes a habit – you cannot just selectively focus on pleasant tasks If you ask a Zen teacher how to find enlightenment, he might answer, “Have you eaten? Then wash your bowls.” ➜ If you cannot find the meaning of life in an act as simple as that of doing the dishes, you will not find it anywhere “Stop asking me if we’re almost there! We’re nomads, for crying out loud!” ☛ Mindful Eating Note: If you don’t like raisins, you can use another fruit or nuts – or chocolate! 1. Sit comfortably in a chair. Place a raisin in your hand. 2. Examine the raisin as if you had never seen it before. - Imagine it as its "plump self" growing on the vine surrounded by nature. - As you look at the raisin, become conscious of what you see: the shape, texture, color, size. Is it hard or soft? - Notice any thoughts that arise. 3. Bring the raisin to your nose and smell it. - Are you anticipating eating the raisin? Is it difficult not to just pop it in your mouth? - How does the raisin feel? How small it is in your hand? 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Place the raisin in your mouth. Become aware of what your tongue is doing. Bite ever so lightly into the raisin. Feel its squishiness. Chew three times and then stop. Describe the flavor of the raisin. What is the texture? As you complete chewing, swallow the raisin. Sit quietly, breathing, aware of what you are sensing. Then repeat with other raisins. ☛Walking Meditation Walking is one of the most effective practices for developing calm, connectedness, and awareness of our body. 1. Select a quiet place where you can walk comfortably back and forth, indoors or out, about 10 to 30 paces in length. 2. Stand with your feet firmly planted on the ground. 3. Take a few deep breaths and then open your senses to see and feel the whole surroundings. 4. After a minute, bring your attention back to focus on the body. Center yourself and feel how your body is standing on the earth. Feel the pressure on the bottoms of your feet and the other natural sensations of standing. 5. Begin to walk a bit more slowly than usual. Let yourself walk with a sense of ease and dignity. Relax and let your walking be gracious and natural. 6. Pay attention to your body. With each step, feel the sensations of lifting your foot and leg off the earth. Then mindfully place your foot back down. Feel each step fully as you walk. (Continued on next slide) 7. When you reach the end of your path, pause for a moment. Center yourself, carefully turn around, and pause again so that you can be aware of the first step as you walk back. You can experiment with the speed, walking at whatever pace keeps you most present. 8. Continue to walk back and forth with mindfulness for 10 or 20 minutes or longer. 9. As with the breath in sitting, your attention will wander away many times. As soon as you notice this, acknowledge softly where it went: wandering, thinking, hearing, planning. Then return to feel the next step. 10. Practice at home first. You can then extend your mindful walking in an informal way when you go shopping, when you walk down the street, or walk to or from your car. You can learn to enjoy walking for its own sake instead of being lost in planning and thinking. ☞ Mindfulness doesn’t just mean “noticing things” • It’s about being present with experience in a way that’s much more vivid, immediate, and real • Even “negative emotions” are perceived as juicy experiences that are “OK” Mindfulness and awe Ø Asked what Zen training leads to, a Western student in Japan answered, “No paranormal experiences that I can detect. But you wake up in the morning and the world seems so beautiful you can hardly stand it.” • Research has indicated that the emotion that confers the greatest health benefits may be awe (Stellar, John-Henderson, Anderson et al, 2015) - Participants who scored high on awe had the lowest levels of interleukin-6, which is tied to inflammation Related Concept in Psychological Research: Flow Mindfulness is similar in certain ways to Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow • Csikszentmihalyi, a leading researcher in subjective well-being (self-reported happiness), found that happiness depends on the ability to immerse oneself in the flow of focused activity (similar to Maslow’s notion of peak experiences) v Happiness is absorption. – Percy Bysshe Shelley Flow: a state devoid of emotional static, save for a highly motivating feeling of mild ecstasy. This feeling seems to be a by-product of the attentional focus that is a prerequisite of flow and is associated with a lessening of cortical arousal. v “It’s the Zen feeling, like meditation or concentration. One thing you’re after is the one-pointedness of mind ... things become automatic, it’s like an egoless thing, in a way. Somehow the right thing is done without you ever thinking about it or doing anything at all ... it just happens. And yet you’re more concentrated.” Csikszentmihalyi studied real-time happiness using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) • Pager goes off at random times within each two-hour segment of the day • Participants write down in a booklet what they are doing and what they are thinking about, then rate their state of consciousness on various numerical scales Keys to Finding Flow ² Have a clear set of goals Ø People found more occasions of flow on the job than in free time ➜ Unless one learns how to use this time effectively, having leisure at one's disposal does not improve the quality of life ² Structure tasks so that they are challenging but not too challenging – If challenges are too low, increase them, e.g., by setting time limits – If challenges are too great, subdivide what needs to be done, establish priorities and delegate tasks Yerkes-Dodson curve: ² Choose activities that are active, rather than passive – The more often people report reading books, the more flow experiences they claim to have – The more often people report watching television, the less flow experiences they claim to have Ø U.S. teenagers report being very happy about - 13% of the time that they spend watching television - 34% of the time they do hobbies - 44% of the time they are involved in sports and games • Yet these same teenagers spend at least four times more of their free hours watching TV than doing hobbies or sports • Similar ratios were found for adults ➜ We spend four times more of our free time doing something that has less than half the chance of making us feel good! ☞ Take control of your time: set goals and divide them into daily aims ²Engage in social interactions: the moods that people with chronic depression or eating disorders experience are indistinguishable from those of healthy people as long as they are in company and doing something that requires concentration ★ “The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times. The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile” (Csikzentmihalyi) Neuroimaging Research on Flow Neuroimaging studies on flow typically use a paradigm in which participants are asked to work on some task, such as mental arithmetic, while in an fMRI • The demands of the tasks are automatically and continuously adjusted to the individual’s skill level Research (Ulrich, Keller, & Gron, 2015; Ulrich, Keller, Hoenig et al., 2014 ) has found that: • Subjective ratings of flow experience are significantly associated with: − Increased activation in o Inferior frontal gyrus: deeper sense of cognitive control o Putamen: motor planning − Decreased activation of multiple regions of frontal cortex, in particular, the medial prefrontal cortex (self-referential processing) − Decreased activation of the amygdala (negative arousal) − Increased electrodermal activity: increased overall sympathetic arousal – despite decreased emotional arousal o This seems to indicate that, during flow experiences, the subjective feeling of effortlessness dissociates from objective measures of sympathetic arousal, as has been found in other studies ➜These findings are in agreement with other recent work that has indicated that, during flow • Fronto-insular cortex may initiate control signals that disengage activity of taskirrelevant DMN regions (Sridharan, Levitin, & Menon, 2008) • This shift in engagement is accompanied by a shift from internally to externally focused attention (Critchley, Wien, & Rotshtein, 2004) Ø In addition, video game study found that flow is associated with activation of rewardrelated mid-brain structures (striatum) (Klasen, Weber, Kircher et al.,, 2012) v Lastly, description of the flow experience as a merging of actions and awareness seem to parallel deep meditative states experienced by long-term meditation practitioners that are associated with high levels of gamma-wave activity Compassion Meditation Mindfulness practice, in which one is focused on working with one’s own mind, may seem like a rather selfish practice • In traditional contexts though, meditation practitioners generally did not just practice standard mindfulness, but also engaged in a number of other practices as well • One very common one is compassion (metta) or lovingkindness meditation (LKM) ☛Lovingkindness Meditation Preliminary practice • Start by giving loving-kindness to yourself because without loving yourself, it is almost impossible to love others. If you are an empty cup, you have nothing to give. - May I be happy - May I abide in well-being - May I be secure - May I dwell in safety • Practice this regularly for some days to establish a strong sense of loving-kindness for yourself. Main practice: 1. Visualize a love that someone gave you that really moved you, perhaps in your childhood. Remember a particular instance when they really showed you love, and you felt their love vividly. 2. Now let that feeling arise again in your heart and infuse you with gratitude. As you do so, your love will go out naturally to that person who evoked it. You will remember then that even though you may not always feel that you have been loved enough, you were loved genuinely once. Knowing that now will make you feel again that you are, as that person made you feel then, worthy of love and really lovable. 3. Let your heart open now, and let love flow from it; then extend this love to all beings. Begin with those who are closest to you, then extend your love to friends and to acquaintances, then to neighbors, to strangers, then even to those whom you don’t like or have difficulties with, even those whom you might consider as your “enemies,” and finally to the whole universe. Let this love become more and more boundless. (From The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying) Variation: 1. Begin by generating a powerful feeling of warmth, loving-kindness, and compassion for all beings. 2. Then imagine those who are enduring suffering similar to or worse than your own. 3. As you breathe out, visualize that you are sending them all your happiness, vitality, good fortune, health, and so on, on your breath in the form of cool, white, luminous nectar. 4. Picture them fully absorbing the nectar, which soothes their pain and fulfills their aspirations. • If their life is in danger of being cut short, imagine that it has been prolonged • If they are sick, imagine that they are healed • If they are poor and helpless, imagine that they have obtained what they need • If they are unhappy, that they have become full of joy (Cont’d on next slide) 5. When you inhale, visualize your heart as a bright, luminous sphere. 6. Imagine that you are taking upon yourself, in the form of a gray cloud, the disease, confusion, and mental toxins of these people, which disappears into the white light of your heart without leaving any trace. 7. This will transform both your own suffering and that of others. There is no sense that you are being burdened by them. When you are taking upon yourself and dissolving their sufferings, feel a great happiness, without attachment or clinging. v You can also imagine that your body is duplicating itself in countless forms that travel through the universe, transforming itself into clothing for those who are cold, food for the famished, or shelter for the homeless. (From Ricard’s Happiness) Lovingkindness Meditation Q&A Q: How can one feel compassion and do lovingkindness practice for mass murderers? Is that even advisable? A: Generally, when we wish someone well, it means that we wish them to be lucky and successful in their endeavors − Obviously though, you would not want to do that for a mass murderer! − Well wishing for a terrorist, for instance, would simply mean wishing that their suffering and unawareness, their ignorance, be diminished Research on Compassion Practice Ø Study on compassion meditation in long-term Tibetan meditation practitioners who had had logged in 10,000-50,000 hours of practice (Lutz, Greischar, & Rawlings, 2004) • Meditators were asked to engage in compassion meditation during EEG study • Compassion meditation does not focus on particular objects, memories, or images; rather the emphasis is on generating feelings of benevolence and compassion, causing them to “pervade the mind as a way of being” • Controls were undergraduates who had been given a crash course in compassion meditation and had practiced for an hour Results: • Long-term practitioners showed high levels of activity in gamma-band frequencies (25-42+ Hz) and increased neural synchrony • This involves large regions of the brain pulsing in synchrony 30-80 times a second • As they went deeper into meditation (jhana states), there appeared to be both a spreading and a strengthening of gamma wave activity • When novice meditators (controls) engaged in compassion meditation, they also showed an increase in gamma activity, but the increase was slight The color scale indicates the percentage of subjects in each group that had an increase of gamma activity during the mental training: (Left) Controls; (Right) Practitioners Correlation between the length of the long-term practitioners' meditation training and the ratio of relative gamma activity averaged across electrodes in the initial baseline condition Gamma waves • Type of very high-frequency brain wave • Research has linked neural synchrony of high-frequency brain waves to enhanced attention, working memory, learning and conscious perception • Size of the gamma wave is related to the number of neurons firing in sync − Greater synchrony between various sections of the brain indicates greater integration of cognitive and affective functions and less dissociation − Compartmentalization of brain functions is associated with aging and cognitive decline What the meditation practitioners themselves reported experiencing during this state: • A change in the quality of moment-to-moment awareness, bringing with it a vast panorama of perceptual clarity v “It is as if a mental fog lifts, one that you did not realize had been impeding your perception” (Davidson) Monks who had spent the most years meditating generated the highest levels of gamma waves • Increased gamma activity and neural synchrony were evident in the long-term practitioners even when they were not meditating Gamma Wave & Cognitive Functioning MIT neuroscientists found that exposing mice to strobe lights and clicking sounds at frequencies that stimulate gamma waves reduced levels of beta-amyloid associated with Alzheimer’s and improved cognitive function (Martorell, Paulson, Suk et al., 2019) Ø Study 1: • Mice were engineered to exhibit Alzheimer’s-like qualities • Exposed to clicking sounds at 40 Hz for an hour a day for a week Results: • Induced synchronized gamma-wave oscillations in the brain − Gamma waves are involved in concentration, sleep, perception, and movement, and are disrupted in patients with Alzheimer’s • Reduced levels of amyloid-beta and tau-proteins in the auditory cortex and nearby hippocampus − Increased activation of microglia, which is important in clearing harmful debris, as well as improved functioning of blood vessels • Mice performed better on memory tasks, including recognizing objects and navigating a water maze to find a hidden platform Ø Study 2: • Mice were exposed to a combination of light and sound stimulation (Martorell, Paulson, Suk et al., 2019) Results: • Expanded effects to prefrontal cortex • Resulted in clustering of microglia around amyloid deposits and reduced amyloid pathology • Effects were short-lived, however, diminishing a week after stimulation Longer-term follow-up study on mice with more advanced Alzheimer’s disease (Adaikkon, Middleton, Marco et al., 2019) • Mice given 6 weeks of gamma entrainment using strobe lights Results: • Increased gamma brain waves in the visual cortex, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex • Reduced neuronal and synaptic loss in these brain regions • Reduced inflammation • Improved performance on memory tasks ➜ Findings point to an overall neuroprotective effect, even in the later stages of neurodegeneration v New clinical trials starting using human participants Meditation and The Mind-Heart Connection In addition, fMRI research indicates that compassion practice is associated with • Heart rate elevation • Neuro-cardiac coupling: coupling of activity in the insula with heart rate (Lutz, Greischar, Perlman et al., 2009) Moreover, these effects were significantly more pronounced in expert meditators than in novices Ø When Western neuroscientists went to Tibet, monks thought it very strange that the scientists thought the seat of compassion was in the head v “The longest journey a man must take is the eighteen inches from his head to his heart.” ☞ Virtually all meditation traditions have practices that focus on helping practitioners to drop into the heart center Meditation, Prefrontal Dominance & Optimism EEG studies by Richard Davidson found that meditation practice is associated with increased left prefrontal activity (Davidson, 2012) • As mentioned earlier, left prefrontal cortex brain activity is known to be associated with positive outlook and feelings of happiness and well-being • Early on, Davidson had noticed that an elderly Tibetan monk in one of his studies showed much greater predominance of activity in the left prefrontal than any of the other people previously tested • Research on other long-term meditators provided further confirmatory evidence • For instance, one meditation adept, Matthieu Ricard, showed increased left pre-frontal cortical activity that was 4.5 standard deviations outside the standard bell curve Ø An early study found that less extensive meditation practice (40 minutes a day for 8-10 weeks) was also associated with a significant shift in hemispheric dominance - In addition, degree of shift in activity from right to left prefrontal was found to correlate with enhancement in immune system (resistance to flu virus) (Davidson, Kabat-Zinn, Schumacher et al., 2003) Rise in antibody levels in experimental vs. control groups Correlation between right-minus-left prefrontal activity and antibody levels Ø Left Right Brain Dancer Other Cognitive & Affective Benefits Paul Ekman found enhanced ability to identify microexpressions in meditators • A series of faces displaying various expressions was shown in very quick succession • The target expression remained onscreen for one thirtieth of a second • Participants were asked to identify that expression ➜ The two experienced Western meditators whom Ekman tested achieved results that were far better than those of 5000 participants previously tested - The ability to recognize such fleeting facial expressions has been associated with a capacity for empathy and insight, as well as openness to new experiences, intellectual curiosity, and general reliability and efficiency - “They do better than police men, lawyers, psychiatrists, customs officials, judges - even secret service agents” – the group that had hitherto proven to be the most accurate, according to Ekman Ekman and Robert Levenson found enhanced ability to control startle response in meditators • Wired up participants to equipment monitoring facial expressions and other physiological responses • Then told them that within 5 minutes, they would hear a loud explosion – equivalent to a gunshot going off beside the ear – and that they should try to suppress the startle response ➜ Long-term meditation practitioners showed virtually complete control over startle response, particularly in facial muscles - Never before seen in the hundreds of subjects whom researchers had tested - Meditator’s explanation: “In the distracted state, the explosion suddenly brings you back to the present moment and causes you to jump out of surprise. But while in open presence (mindfulness), you are resting in the present moment and the bang simply occurs and causes only a little disturbance, like a bird crossing the sky. Research Issues The research indicates quite clearly that the neural activity and cognitive functioning of long-term meditation practitioners are different from that of other people • One of the main problems with meditation research, as will be seen in the following lecture, is the lack of appropriate controls − However, long-term meditators apparently show brain activity “of a sort never before reported in the scientific literature” (Davidson), for instance with regard to levels of high-frequency gamma waves − This in a way obviates the need for control participants, even though these studies did include well-matched controls (novice meditators) • Another main problem with meditation research is the placebo effect − However, research on long-term meditators primarily takes the form of brain imaging studies or reaction time studies where one’s beliefs would not be expected to have a significant impact on results One problem though with some of these studies, such as the ones showing increased left prefrontal activity in meditators and enhanced ability to detect micro-expressions is that it’s not clear precisely which meditation practice(s) may be contributing to those effects • Some recent studies try to address this problem by asking participants to engage in specific types of meditation practice while in the scanner The problem of multiple practices is compounded by the fact that many of the long-term meditators practice within traditions that require extensive preliminary training involving • Working with the mind, e.g., developing greater awareness of the feeling tone of thoughts, as described in the CBT Techniques lecture • Ethical precepts: just focusing on doing what you know at a deep level to be right is another doorway to great meditation experience v “Right is right were wisdom in the scorn of consequence” – Tennyson v “Happiness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself” – Spinoza Video References Videos excerpted from: • Peaceful Warrior" - There Is Never "Nothing Going On" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtKT_lNNQgE • Well being is a Skill Richard Davidson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPGJU7W0N0I • Light-based therapy for Alzheimer's disease https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_p4QWkE2Ls • Lie To Me superb body language analysis by Tim Roth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf8Iy_XfAIA