Good Morning!

Welcome to Tuesday's Open Thread! Today's topic comes from two concepts we don't usually pair together. The discipline of Science and the tradition of Buddhism. How they complement each other in this scientific breakthrough might surprise you.

The Game of Life

The first time I heard someone use the phrase "hitting the sweet spot" they were talking about a tennis racquet. For those of you who play sports, you may have experienced hitting the sweet spot. In this case though, I'm going borrow that term and apply it to something we all play. As in Life. In that context, I like to think of the sweet spot as a place where your mind gravitates towards possibilities, positive outcomes, curiosity, and a sense of wonder. A place where you feel in complete sync with the rhythms of your environment and where you are deeply connected with that authentic part of yourself. Interestingly enough, training is also required in achieving that kind of well being, or maximum response for the effort we put into our lives.

Mind over Mood

About a week ago, I visited one of the botanical gardens here in Southern California with a friend of mine. Entering the park, she immediately suggested we take a ride on "The Enchanted Railroad". Essentially a children’s attraction, the miniature train in question weaves its way through the park with all the flashing lights, sounds, and train crossings that a real train would if there was a real train running through Descanso Gardens. Feeling a bit ridiculous at first as I maneuvered my way onto a children’s ride, as soon as I sat down and heard everyone yell "All Aboard!", I thought, what the heck, who cares if we look silly, this is kinda fun. As the “Enchanted Railroad” chugged past the fragrant magnolia trees and the bursts of color coming from blossoming cherry trees, my friend led the kids in songs, high-fived on-lookers waiting at the train crossings, and made an ordinary day into a very special experience for everyone on the train. At the end of the ride she suggested that the next time we ride the rails we should wear a pair of striped overalls and a conductors cap because, why not?

Outings with my friend are like that. She has a certain joie de vivre that makes you feel like you’re taking part in of one of those “this is your best life” wine commercials. Meeting her, you might be surprised to learn she also battles with depression. When I asked her once what she does to get through it, she responded by telling me that her training in “mindfulness” helped her stay in the present moment and shift the focus away from the thoughts that pull her down the rabbit hole.

As someone who was diagnosed with bi-polar II syndrome several years ago and quite familiar with going down that rabbit hole, this interested me. I had done my own research on cognitive-behavior techniques, and combined with the Buddhist practice of chanting, I have used both disciplines to great effect. Just as my friend changed the focus of her thinking by remaining in the present moment, I changed the focus by re-framing the inner dialogue going on inside my head. After a sustained period of time where I practiced cognitive re-training along with my daily practice of "mindfulness" through my chanting, not only was I able to keep my mood swings in check, the severity of the symptoms actually decreased and I was finally able to get off the medication my doctor had prescribed for me.

The implications of what I was able to achieve by combining cognitive therapy techniques with Buddhist practices cannot be overstated. Ground breaking research in neuroplasicity has shown that cognitive-behavior therapy has the power to systematically change faulty brain chemistry. As with my own experience, the findings from those pioneering experiments in neuroplasicity demonstrate that the brain can indeed adapt, heal, and rewire itself to overcome and break the cycles of anxiety and depression.

So, what does this mean for all of us? Potentially, quite a bit.

""The actions we take can literally expand or contract different regions of the brain, pour more juice into quiet circuits and damp down activity in buzzing ones. The brain devotes more cortical real estate to functions that its owner uses more frequently and shrinks the space devoted to activities rarely performed. That's why the brains of violinists devote more space to the region that controls the digits of the fingering hand".

The Orchestra and The Conductor

Imagine your brain as an orchestra. The cellos in your orchestra have been dominating the rest of the instruments. While the cellos grow in strength, the rest of the orchestra's musical instruments fall silent. In this example, the cellos represent a culmination of your negative thoughts, your anxiety, your fears, your depression.

Now imagine the conductor of the orchestra. The conductor can tell the cellos to be quiet so we can hear another section of the orchestra play. Let's imagine we want to hear the brass section play. The more we hear the brass section play, the larger the section becomes. In this example, the brass instruments represent a culmination of your optimistic thoughts, your joy, your curiosity, your sense of wonder.

Here's the thing, YOU are the conductor.

The Buddhist and The Scientist

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche has been meditating most of his life. At the tender age of thirteen he entered a highly selective Tibetan meditation program at the Sherab Ling monastery in India under the guidance of the Buddhist masters. There he practiced an advanced meditation program where his progress over the years was so impressive, he was asked to return as a teacher.

Rinpoche's devotion to his studies also helped him deal with a mental disorder that had plagued him since childhood. What would've been diagnosed by western medicine as panic disorder, for Rinpoche the fear he lived with had no name. Through sheer perseverance and the efficacy of meditation, he was finally able to overcome and master his affliction. That he was able to do this without the aid of conventional pharmaceuticals or therapeutic assistance is a testiment to his strength of character.

For Richard Davidson, P.h.D., Rinpoche's story was compelling enough for Davidson to get on a plane and meet with him in France during one of Rinpoche's teaching tours. A world-renowned neuroscientist and the Director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior at the University of Wisconsin, Davidson was very interested in the effects of meditation on neural activity. After their initial meeting, the scientist invited the monk to Wisconsin to give a lecture at the University. The two men formed a working partnership together shortly afterwards and in 2002 Rinpoche agreed to participate in Davidson's research.

"This research has yielded stunning results, which if replicated will alter forever certain basic scientific assumptions -- for example, that systematic training in meditation, when sustained steadily over years, can enhance the human capacity for positive changes in brain activity to an extent undreamed of in modern cognitive neuroscience.

Perhaps the most staggering result to date came in a study of a handful of meditation adepts that included Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. During a meditation on compassion, neural activity in a key center of the brain's systems for happiness jumped by 700 to 800 percent. For ordinary subjects in the study, volunteers who had just begun to meditate, that same area increased its activity by a mere 10 to 15 percent. These meditation experts had put in levels of practice typical of Olympic athletes - between ten thousand and fifty-five thousand hours over the course of a lifetime honing their meditative skills during years of retreat."

Rinpoche's story is a powerful illustration of how the Buddhist and Scientific communities came together to explore the human mind and our capacity to stretch the boundaries of our perceived limitations . While most of us will never achieve the Olympic athlete status in meditation, this research clearly indicates that with a steady practice of meditation, at any level, you can increase the quality of your life.

The Sweet Spot

The Dalai Lama once remarked that one of the mind's most marvelous qualities is that it can be transformed. As a practicing Buddhist, I have always believed in the transformative nature of human beings. The challenge for me when I first began practicing was letting go of the regrets I'd spent a life time collecting. The battle with myself came to a head during a spiritual retreat I took with a friend of mine in upstate New York. It was a few years after my Mother passed away and I had been weighed down with regrets that I had not been kinder towards my Mother during the years of her self inflicted deterioration.

The exercise for the day was to write down our regrets, go out on a hike, find a quiet spot and meditate about letting them go. It was a bright spring day and the hiking trails were bursting with color. Wild flowers covered the mountains and the sun radiated through the trees leaving patterns on the trails. I found a spot in the middle of a large meadow that no one had discovered and sat down in the tall grass. Small yellow daisies danced around me in the cool breezes as I took the piece of paper with my handwritten regrets out of my pocket and read it. Tears welled up in my eyes. I laid down and took a deep breath. I might as well have weighed a thousand pounds my regrets felt so heavy. So I imagined myself as something lighter. A flower for example. Beginning with my toes as they began to grow into roots and find their way into the soft cool earth. Petals began sprouting around my face and my body grew tall and green. I looked up at the sun and imagined the sun looking down at me. A small figure lying in the grass. I imagined that from the perspective of an infinite universe, I really was no different than the wildflowers that surrounded me. Yet, if I wasn't any different from a wildflower then how could I be anything but a part of everything else? And with that realization, I opened up my hand and let the wind carry my regrets away...

Further Study and Reading:

• Train your Mind, Train your Brain, Sharon Begley
• Mind over Mood: Change How You Feel by Changing the Way You Think, Greenberger & Padesky
• The Joy of Living, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
• Mindfulness in Plain English, Bhante Henepola Gunaratana
• Fully Present: The Science, Art and Practice of Mindfulnes, Smalley & Winston
• How to Meditate for Beginners
• Guided Meditation and Imagery with Bellruth Naperstak

Well, that about wraps things up for this week's edition.