A recent and important research study out of neuroimaging researcher Sara Lazar’s lab (my old lab) at Massachusetts General Hospital was published in late January.  The study found changes in the structure of the brains in people who completed an eight-week class in mindfulness meditation.  This finding is another example of scientists finding evidence that that the brain can experience far more physical changes than previously thought.  This study suggests that we can change our brains in just eight weeks!  The authors of the study tell us that in their study, people who completed the eight-week mindfulness meditation program experienced changes in parts of their brains “responsible for learning and memory processes, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective taking.”

The eight-week meditation program used in that study is known as Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a meditation program developed at the University of Massachusetts that has been shown to be helpful in the reduction of anxiety and stress.  MBSR has also been shown to reduce the impact of chronic pain, and to have other positive health effects. In the past 25 years, MBSR has become more widely available.  In the New York area, the Mindfulness Meditation New York Collaborative is a good resource for learning more about MBSR and for finding local MBSR classes.

Thanks to research studies like the brain study described above, we are learning more about how helpful mindfulness meditation can be.

For several reasons, mindfulness and meditation have been the subject of more and more well executed scientific research over the past twenty years.  Much of this research has investigated the effect of meditation on mood and on the brain’s ability to regulate emotion.  Other research has investigated the capacity for meditation to help people suffering from anxiety disorders such as panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.  It may be that the study of meditation’s ability to make us happy has gotten more publicity than the study of meditation’s capacity to reduce anxiety.  However for people with diagnosable anxiety disorders, the potential to be gained from meditation is perhaps greater than it is for everyone else.  Meditation can “quiet the mind,” and pave the way for certain types of anxiety (e.g., worry, panic attacks) to improve.