LONDON, 20 March 2008 — When Dr. Shanida Nataraja was growing up in London during the 70s and 80s, meditation was not an esoteric, mystical practice done by hippies in baggy orange clothes. It was what her parents did.
“We hate to believe that our parents know something we don’t, so, when I became a research scientist, I wanted some concrete proof that what they were doing worked. I really didn’t expect to find that meditation plays such a role in optimizing brain function and health, from cognitive abilities to cardiovascular wellbeing.”
The fruits of her Ph.D. in neurophysiology, and post-doctoral research at the neuroscience department of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, are presented in her new book, “The Blissful Brain: Neuroscience and Proof of the Power of Meditation.”
The key to meditation’s success, it seems, is the concept of whole brain integration. According to Nataraja, Westerners use the left halves of their brains too much. “Generally speaking, the left hemisphere is associated with analytical, rational and logical processing, whereas the right hemisphere is associated with abstract thought, non-verbal awareness, visual-spatial perception and the expression and modulation of emotions. Most individuals navigate through their everyday life in a fashion dominated by left-brained thinking.” Missing out on right-brain activity results in too much thinking going on, and not enough feeling.
Nataraja’s research, using galvanic skin response meters (which detect emotional changes through the skin) and electroencephalograms or EEGs, demonstrates that entering a meditative state can bring about the calmness, the stilling of the chatter, the shift into right-brain mode that we need.
Increased alpha brain wave activity is detected, a sign that we’re activating the parasympathetic nervous system, as opposed to the adrenaline-releasing sympathetic system. More parasympathetic activity means less stress and therefore better heart health.
Meditative State
In these overly stimulating times, reaching a meditative state is not necessarily easy.
The key, says Nataraja, is to be kind to yourself, and not to take a punitive approach. “Acknowledging the thoughts and letting them go activates certain pathways in the brain, and those thoughts therefore have less significance than if you tried to forcibly replace or suppress them.”
While she encourages people to try to put aside 15 minutes at the beginning and end of every day to quietly sit and focus on being “in the moment”, she is keen to stress the importance of being mindful throughout everyday life.
“It took me a long time to find a type of meditation that suited me,” she said, adding, “I see there being many roads that lead to Rome.”
Only last year, the film director David Lynch was traveling the world promoting transcendental meditation’s use in schools, and a growing number of corporations have clocked the studies that suggest that decision-making, attention and memory can all be enhanced by meditation, and now offer classes to their workers.
