Calgary, Canada -- Richard Davidson, one of the world's top brain scientists, believes mental exercise, specifically meditation, can literally change our minds. "Our data shows mental practice can induce long-lasting changes in the brain," said Davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His startling scientific research on the impact of meditation on brain function has implications that go beyond the physical. Buddhist monks believe mental attributes and positive emotions such as compassion, love, kindness and empathy are skills that can be cultivated. And science is beginning to back that up. Davidson started meditating in 1974, when he was a PhD student at Harvard. Back then, meditation was seen as a somewhat faddish eastern import. "The culture at the time was not so receptive," Davidson said, "nor were the scientific methods so well-developed." It was when he met the Dalai Lama in 1992 that he "decided to come out of the closet with my interest in meditation." He became excited about the possibility of applying rigorous scientific study to the practice of meditation. "I made a commitment to do my best to take the tools we have so well honed in studying fear and anxiety and apply them to kindness and compassion." Davidson began an ongoing study of the brains of Buddhist monks, the so-called "Olympians" of meditation, each of whom had accomplished at least 10,000 hours of meditation. "The work was framed within the research on neuro-plasticity, the understanding that the brain is built to change in response to experience," Davidson said. Just as an injured brain can adapt by mapping out new neuron pathways to accomplish tasks, "brain circuits (for) regulation of emotion and attention are malleable by the environment and are potential targets of training," he said. Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery (fMRI), Davidson showed compassion meditation, even in short-term practitioners, induced significant changes in patterns of functional activity in the brain. "The most important thing is hard-nosed evidence," Davidson said. "We were able to measure the results through experiments we did." Davidson, who has published his findings on meditation in the world's most prestigious science journals, believes that even the so-called "happiness set-point" of a person's brain can be altered for the better. The potential applications include non-pharmacological interventions or supplemental treatment for depression, as well as behavioural and stress-related issues. Davidson hopes to convince educators to include meditation training as part of core curriculum in kindergarten to Grade 12. "It's very clear that disruptive behaviour--bullying, ADD --dramatically affect learning and have led to progressive declines in North American institutes," he said. Dr. Adrianne Ross is a Vancouver mindfulness and meditation leader who first turned to the practice when she experienced a serious illness. She has practised meditation in different forms for more than 30 years, studied with mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn and taught the practice for more than a decade. "The mindfulness program is for people who aren't sure they're interested in Buddhism, but want to learn to meditate," Ross said. "It helps you to be able to live more fully and more effectively, so you're causing less harm to yourself and the people around you and you're happier." Mindfulness can be practised while driving, or standing in line at the bank, Ross said, but it is not a panacea. "Some people have depression that comes back. Some of us have the chemistry or life experience that make (difficult) thoughts come, but it can help us work with the thoughts," Ross said. "Some people have severe illness. It won't make the illness go away, but helps them live a full life." Ross has seen patients become happier and more accepting, in spite of difficult circumstances. It begins with "learning to be with the breath," Ross said. Bringing focus to the breath and body. You don't try to eliminate your thoughts, but focus with "loving kindness" and watch your habitual thoughts--the ones that might hijack you emotionally. "You learn to recognize my mind is really spinning right now, you're aware of what it's doing, you're not lost in what's happening. Then if your mind is not going in a useful direction you have a choice." Davidson, who still meditates regularly, said he doesn't measure his own brain systematically. He doesn't have to. "My practice has given me a kind of equanimity and balance," he said. "It may be a period of time, but by 2050 I believe mental exercise will be understood as being as important as physical exercise."

Interesting read.
Studies have also shown that sections of the brain decrease during meditation.... well maybe decrease isn't a good choice of words. Sections of the brain become less dominant through meditation. The area of the brain that governs selfish behaviour.. areas that operate a sense of intense self.. that govern sensations of isolation from others.... become less active. Life long meditators have less function in this area... they actually change the brain so that it thinks and behaves in more bodisattva ways and patterns. It quite physically changes who we are..... since so much of how we see ourselves and how we behave is governed by the way we think.... governed by how our brains work and translate the exterior world.

The brain is to the mind what the body is to the inner energies - the house that is lived in and used.

I have actually been working on this topic myself lately. I noticed that after a long time of successfully improved and controlled behavior (in relation to reduction of anger), a short burst of anger 're-energized' the middle-top left part of my head and I could visualize it as having reopened an old pathway that needed closing down again. I assume that the part of my brain that dealt with anger in my past and was closed off when i worked on defeating it was reopened. (it felt like that)

We really are what we think. I don't see how we can be anything else but. Our minds filter everything that we see..... trying to make sense of the exterior reality. I worked for years on a behaviour ward in Geriatrics and watched my residents as they struggled with altered intrepretations of the world around them. They saw reality much differantly than Nursing staff did and it was every bit as real to them as what it was to the staff. What I think the ideas that the Buddha taught about mind and body are simply that we don't have to be locked into what we think we are. If we have created this image of self... this idea of who and what we are... then by the same process of creation we can deconstruct that self. We can alter who and what we are.
Sande illustrated that idea in the change from anger and other behaviours from a negative path to a more positive one. Of course there are limitations to what we can do... all based on body, health and enviroment... if our "house" is in poor shape then there will be limitations to the self that lives in it. But we are not locked into any one type of self. Like old Marley from Charles Dickens's story of Scrooge, we make our own chains in life and if we can make them, we can break them.