Blissful Brain

The Blissful Brain is published by Gaia Thinking. For more information on how to order your copy, please click here.

Guardian G2: Mind over matter by Andy Darling

"Neuroscientist Shanida Nataraja has proven meditation does more than clear your head, it can put both halves of your brain to work, improving your concentration, memory, and decision-making...". To read more, please click here.

Upcoming talk: Yoga Ananda, Reigate, Surrey on Friday the 4th of June

Shanida Nataraja will be speaking at a seminar on The Blissful Brain on Friday, 04th June 2010 at 19:30 at Yoga Ananda Ltd. 46 Albert Road North, Reigate, Surrey, RH2 9EL. For more information, please click here.

An Operational Definition of Meditation

The generic term of "meditation" fails to capture the diversity of the different types currently practice across the globe. As a result, studies that have explored the effects of "meditation" on the brain and on measurable health outcomes have investigated a broad range of different methods, from mantra meditation and mindfulness through to more movement-based methods, such as yoga and chi gung. It is perhaps not surprising therefore that the results of these studies have been so variable, even confliciting at times.

In order to overcome this issue, it is important to define what we mean by "meditation". In The Blissful Brain, the following five criteria are given as defining properties of a meditative practice:

1) It must involve a specific technique that is both clearly
defined and taught
2) It must involve, at some stage, progressive muscle relaxation
3) It must involve, at some stage, a reduction in logical
processing
4) It must be self-induced
5) it must involve a tool, referred to as an anchor, that allows
effective focus of the mind

This definition of meditation was inspired by the work of Roberto Cardoso and his colleagues in Brazil at the Universidade Federal de São Paulo. To read more, please see the 2004 paper by Cardoso et al. published in the journal Brain Research Protocols.

Roberto Cardoso, Eduardo de Souza, Luiz Camano, José Roberto Leite. Meditation in health: an operational definition. Brain Res Brain Res Protoc. 2004;14 (1): 58-60.

Antoine Lutz and colleagues have also, more recently, published a paper that provides a theoretical framework splitting different types of meditation into two broad categories: focused attention (FA) and open monitoring (OM). This can be equated to the terms active and passive meditation used in The Blissful Brain.

FA meditation is described as having the following characteristics:

1) Involves directing and sustaining attention on a specific object, such as the breath or an image
2) Involves the detection of wandering and distracting thoughts
3) Involves the shifting of attention from distractors back to the selected object
4) Involves a cognitive reappraisal of the distractor (i.e. "just a thought")

OM meditation is described, on the other hand, as having the following characteristics:

1) Doesn't involve focus on any one object, but involves monitoring of the present-to-present moment
2) Involves the cultivation of a non-reactive awareness of all thoughts and emotions triggered by sensory and perceptual stimuli