In a small study of brain scans involving twenty people who had extensive training in Buddhist Insight meditation, researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that people who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don’t. The brain imaging of just ordinary people who meditate regularly – rather than monks who might do so for prolonged periods as part of their living schedule — revealed increased thickness in the cortical regions of the brain related to auditory, visual, sensory and internal perception capabilities (such as awareness of one’s heart rate or breathing). The researchers found an increased thickness of the brain’s gray matter from around 4 to 8 thousandths of an inch with the amount of thickening being proportional to the amount of time a person had spent practicing meditation. If you practiced vipassana “attention” meditation more, the brain became thicker in that cortical region related to internal perceptions.

This is the first scientific evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. The brain scans revealed conclusively that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input even if the individuals were not long term meditators. So this can happen for ordinary people who simply start to meditate a few times a week. That means you and I …

As stated by many cultivation schools, meditation will also change the chi channels and chakras of your body, but researchers have only progressed to measure these gross physical changes, as well as hormonal and blood changes. And indeed many positive results exist. Meditation IS doing something. It is making a beneficial impact on the physical body.

In the past, other studies have shown that musicians produced an increased thickness of music areas in the brain while jugglers increased the size of the visual and motor brain areas due to their juggling. The conclusion from the study is that the structure of an adult brain can change in response to repeated practice and in this case, meditation increases the brain areas responsible for attention, just as Eastern traditions claim. If you want to be able to focus more and develop one-pointed concentration, learn to meditate. In fact, many scientists have made scientific breakthroughs because they learned to focus their minds enough with one-pointed concentration to be able to create working visualization images in their heads. That’s one of the reasons I heavily emphasize the white skeleton meditation, found here.

http://www.meditationexpert.com/Skeleton.htm?meditation/10/Skeleton

Various Eastern meditation traditions have long cited meditation’s usefulness in increasing one’s concentration, focus and attention, but this is the first stuffy of its kind to show a boost in gray matter because of this practice. The Eastern traditions also claim that meditation can affect one’s health and longevity, and various studies have started to prove the truthfulness of these claims as well.

Eastern meditation schools also claim that meditation can help slow and even reverse aging. The fact that the surface of the brain typically starts thinning as an individual ages, whereas this study showed cortical thickening from a modest degree of meditation, lends some credence to the belief that learning how to meditate may help slow some aspects of cognitive aging. For even better results at anti-aging, we know that many spiritual schools advise us to add breathing practices to our daily practice schedule.

Because of these results, larger studies are planned at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Harvard-affiliated facility where these studies were performed. The scientists hope to examine the brains of meditators both before and after they learn how to meditate so that they can see the direct results of meditation practice.

The question also remains as to whether different types of meditation produce different results. In Buddhist Insight Meditation, a practitioner focuses on simply remaining aware or attentive to what is there in the present moment like breathing, body sensations or noise. The results of other types of meditative or spiritual practice, such as reciting prayers or mantras, yoga pranayama breathing exercises or visualizations, have not yet been studied.

What about brainwaves and meditative states of consciousness? These have been studied in the past as well, and individuals such as Dr. Jeffrey Thompson (www.neuroacoustic.com) have turned those findings into popular musical products that contain aspects of the brainwave frequency patterns for higher attention, increased relaxation, improved creativity, and preliminary meditation states. Master Nan has always desired a group of scientists to bring the equipment to measure him as he demonstrates the various samadhi states so they can be proved and authenticated for modern science, and I’m always hoping that scientists might contact me so that they can be arranged in one big group. Now is the time if you are out there.

Next year is the year to get it done with portable EEG’s, oximeters, EKG heart monitors, kirlian photography and so forth. Whatever is need so that we can prove the results of meditation on a recognized advanced practitioner. Usually scientists only study low level practitioners or minor yogis who don’t really have samadhi attainments at all, and he’s probably the only person alive who can demonstrate the first, second, third and fourth dhyana as well as the four formless samadhi absorptions and several other special phenomena I won’t go into. Too bad he doesn’t live near a university which has access to the bulky PET position emission equipment for brain imaging, MRIs, SPECT imaging to measure brain function, MEG magnetic field recording techniques and so forth.

I’m hoping next year that a group of scientists can bring their equipment to record his brainwaves, blood flow, blood chemistry, respiration, hormones and other phenomena during those states, and to even turn them into products like Dr. Thompson’s so that everyone might thereby benefit. Perhaps we’ll find new brainwaves such as the epsilon, gamma, hyper-gamma, and lambda series mentioned by various researchers into altered states.

The science shows that meditation does produce physical effects. Now we want to prove more. As I don’t have the connections with these scientists, but you might, I leave it to you to have them contact me to arrange this. Time is running short as Master Nan is now in his 90’s and has always wanted desperately to do this, but it doesn’t make sense to do it for just one individual who might not be qualified or recognized in the scientific community, and who might not have access to all the equipment necessary. It has to all be done in “one go,” so to speak, when someone is 92 years old. The timing is perfect, so see who you can alert if you know someone who doesn’t want to miss a golden once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and send them our way via email to the Meditation Expert site. Scientists have already done a lot with these other studies, too numerous to mention, and perhaps this is our only chance to see the results from a traditionally recognized teacher and have them turned into CDs like NeuroAcoustic for all to thereby benefit.