Meditation Is Practical

   This particular blog is meant to be more in the nature of a real blog.  I have been getting some feed back from family, who naturally hold the privilege of saying what they really think.  One just told me that they quit reading after the third paragraph of the last blog.  Another, quite delicately, put it that my blogs are not really blogs.  They are right: what I have been doing is very long for a blog, and a bit involved.  I started this blog because it was a requirement to write ten 3-page blogs (with citations) for a graduate level class in community social work, connecting the topic to class readings as well.  Three pages is long for a typical blog, and connecting a topic back to the textbook increases the length even while it adds perspective. Because of the feedback, and because I am quite simply running out of time to continue with the mini-term paper approach, this blog is supposed to be more like a typical blog, on meditation and its practical side effects. 
     I started meditating last summer, when I took a short class in contemplative meditation, essentially a form of transcendental meditation.  I would never have considered or continued any form of meditation normally, but this was very simple to do, and seemed to have practical benefits almost immediately.  After a few weeks I noticed that meditating helped me to think more clearly afterward, especially when I was writing papers or studying.  Although emotions do surface during meditation, if I was feeling anxious about something or a little down, meditating for 20 minutes made these feelings more tolerable.  Strangely, the hardest thing about meditation was making the time to do it on a reliable basis.  Yet the benefits I received after a fairly short period of practice were enough to encourage me to persist.
     I didn't understand what was happening till I read a book recommended for my community social work class.  It had an intriguing title "How God Changes Your Brain," written by Newberg and Waldman in 2009.  It was recommended because it dealt with neuroplasticity.  Neuroplasticity is a long word that describes the ability of the brain to undergo structural changes throughout life in response to the environment and to how the brain is used.  Permanent changes in the brain occur far more rapidly than previously believed, especially if strongly stimulated.  The title aroused my curiosity, as the title almost sells the book, though I would also say that the title was both accurate and misleading.
     One of the things emphasized in the meditation class was that it was the continuing practice itself that should be viewed as the goal, not whether any particular state of mind was always achieved.  Newberg and Waldman write similarly, finding that it was the actual process of meditation that produced permanent neural changes, regardless of whether or not there was a religious orientation.  Meditation is focused attention.  It affects specific neural circuits that are also linked to social awareness and compassion, increasing blood flow to the cognitive prefrontal cortex and decreasing blood flow to the emotional centers.  Meditation has been found to improve cognition at any age, as well as to decrease feelings of anxiety and depression. However, there is a flip side to this effect.  Meditation only does this if the focus of meditation is positive.  Meditation with a focus on something unpleasant, such as an angry God, actually damages the brain.
      Work and associated activities seem to often require multitasking in our society.  To relax and recover,  leisure activities seem to be single focus activities, such as playing sports, musical activities, videos, games, reading, painting, pottery, and other creative outlets.  Due to neuroplasticity, whatever we chose to do changes the neural connections in the brain.  If meditation can have both positive and negative effects depending on where the emphasis is placed, then what happens in the brain with other repetitive activities that require focused attention?
      With meditation, because of the neurological pathways activated, there are positive side effects of increased cognition, social awareness, compassion, and a decrease of negative emotions.  We live in ever widening communities, and changes we create in ourselves contribute one way or another to the society that we create as a group.  If simple meditation became a more common practice, if more of us stopped and focused our awareness on just one positive thought for a brief period each day, then I think it is possible that it could affect others around us, and the communities in which we live.