CULTURE
Into the moment...
The Science of Meditation: How to change your brain, mind and body by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson, Penguin Mindlessness: The corruption of mindfulness in a culture of narcissism by Thomas Joiner, Oxford University Press
breath, stray thoughts) might have such a dramatic impact on our well-being and state of mind. It is much needed. Of the hundreds of behavioural and neuroimaging studies carried out on meditators over two decades, many are inconclusive. Even so, Goleman and Davidson find plenty to be optimistic about. For example, there is good evidence that regular sessions of mindful attention have a calming effect on the amygdala, the brain’s emotion processor, and reduce impulsive reactions to stressful or negative thoughts and experiences. Mindfulness can help mute our emotional response to physical pain, and lessen anxiety and mind-wandering (not the kind that feeds creativity but its unfocused opposite). The benefits are apparent, even for beginners, and they increase with practice. Compassion meditation, which aims to boost empathy, has an even more immediate effect: just 7 hours over the course of two weeks has been shown to boost altruistic behaviour. It is probably no coincidence that this makes us happier, too.
IN THE West, meditation is hailed as a panacea for many ills. It is taught as a cure for emotional distress and as a recipe for happiness. It is even prescribed for pain relief and as a treatment for recurring depression when the drugs fail. In central and south Asia, where the practice originated, it represents something quite different: a spiritual exploration of the mind, a profound recasting of how we understand ourselves. The two are not incompatible, though. The Dalai Lama, who practises in the Eastern tradition, is one of several meditation masters to encourage a despiritualised version, a path accessible to all. For many years, science writer Daniel Goleman and neuroscientist Richard Davidson have collaborated with the Dalai Lama in this mission, answering “The fundamental aim his call for scientists to test the effects of meditation in the lab and of meditation is to deconstruct the self, apply the results wherever they not shore it up” might be useful. Goleman and Davidson have now written a book, The Science of Meditation, in which This is the kind of affirmation they try to cut through the tangle that Goleman and Davidson of claims and promises. Their aim most enjoy. They are interested is to make clear what works and less in meditation’s potential for what doesn’t, and to explain why improving health or sharpening focusing our attention minute by business performance and more minute on a single facet of in its capacity to cultivate consciousness (a mantra, our enduring qualities such as 46 | NewScientist | 16 September 2017
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selflessness, equanimity, compassion and the ability to free the mind of negative emotions – what they call “highly positive altered traits”. Much of the evidence for these traits comes from Davidson’s lab at the University of WisconsinMadison, where he has scanned the brains of dozens of highly experienced Tibetan monks. These yogis, who have meditated for thousands – in some cases, tens of thousands – of hours, describe themselves as living in a heightened state of presentmoment awareness, “as if their senses were wide open to the full, rich panorama of experience”. Davidson claims he has
found a neural correlate to this mind-warp: a massive increase in the intensity of gamma waves in the brain, a signal associated with conscious perception. Are these monks living on a different plane of consciousness from the rest of us? While Goleman and Davidson are long-time meditation enthusiasts, they are not evangelists. They are sceptical of many claims about the benefits of mindfulness, and Davidson makes a point of publishing “non-findings” from his lab. For this, he would no doubt be applauded by Thomas Joiner, a psychologist and specialist in suicidal behaviour, who argues in his own book Mindlessness that interest in this form of meditation has gone too far. “Authentic