REWIRING YOUR BRAIN
Usually we start a new personal development program (whether that be practicing mindfulness, getting physically fit, eating more healthfully) with a great burst of enthusiasm. Yet after the initial “excitement” wears off, and despite our best intentions, we sometimes find we don’t follow through on our commitment. We don’t persist. Perhaps we don’t see immediate results so we become disheartened. Our efforts dwindle or we stop altogether.
And the not so helpful habits…they’re right there. So instead of feeling bad about this, perhaps even a little guilty, what to do? How do we re-engage in this moment our commitment to be more present?
We can remember that we are re-wiring our brain and that this takes time. Mindfulness practices are among the most powerful agents of brain change known to modern science. Practitioners have know this for centuries from their own lived experience: feeling less stress, having a better memory, enjoying greater happiness. And now in a growing number of research studies, we are seeing actual changes in brain structure that confirm these experiences in the lab, in a relatively short period of time. The first study to document meditation-produced changes over time in the brain’s grey matter was led by a team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Participants in an 8 week program who practiced mindfulness an average of 27 minutes a day at least 6 days a week were shown in MRI imaging to have measurable changes in brain structure, the regions associated with learning, memory, self-awareness and compassion were growing (grey matter increasing), and those regions involved with stress and anxiety were shrinking (grey matter) decreasing.
“Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,” says Sara Lazar, PhD, of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, the study’s senior author. “This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”
By actually being able to see the brain’s plasticity before and after practicing mindfulness, we can be encouraged that we are indeed playing an active role in changing the brain and increasing our well-being and quality of life.
See if you can practice mindfulness this week for 20 to 30 minutes with an awareness of breath practice, a body
scan, some mindful movement (yoga) or a a little mindful walking (perhaps choosing different practices throughout the week), without looking to see how you are doing, checking for results, judging yourself or your experience. And when thoughts of impatience arise or you are feeling discouraged, remember that it is persistence, a willingness to act, right now, in the moment that nurtures and changes the patterns of the mind. To use the metaphor of the garden, we don’t have to dig up the seedlings to see it they are growing, we trust the process, we allow it to happen. It will.
