The title of this section poses a question. Should you take up meditation as the primary choice for improving your well-being? Its benefits are cumulative. The more you do it, the better the results. But how many people begin to meditate and then stop after a while? In our experience, this has become a bigger problem than convincing someone to start. The same frazzled pressures that motivate people to seek the quiet oasis of meditation also cause them to quit. The excuses are generally about not having enough time or simply forgetting to meditate. Many look upon meditating as a kind of Band-Aid for patching up an especially bad day. “I’m feeling good today. I don’t need to meditate” goes along with the notion of meditation as a quick boost, like a protein shake.
Our focus in this section will be on why meditation should be a lifelong practice. We know this is a major lifestyle change. It represents a unique kind of commitment, and the inconvenience can be considerable. Stopping to meditate breaks up the active routine of the day; it isolates you from contact with other people; its benefits are largely invisible. For all that, devotion to meditation also brings unique benefits.
It’s a modern twist to look upon meditation for physical results, but studies on blood pressure, heart rate, and stress-related symptoms were the opening wedge that brought meditation into public acceptance in the West. Having your doctor recommend meditation bypassed the issue of whether you should “believe in it.” This was a huge divergence from the East, where meditation has traditionally been for enlightenment, a concept the West looked upon suspiciously as an unfathomable mystery and probably unattainable except by swamis, yogis, gurus, and mystics.
The same fork in the road still exists. As a lifestyle choice, meditation appeals to people who want to see improvements in their health. As a spiritual choice, meditation appeals to people who want to reach a higher state of consciousness. It’s this second group, we strongly suspect, who keep meditating regularly for years and perhaps a lifetime. Their goal may be invisible, but it’s clear and creates long-term motivation. On the other hand, if you take up meditation to feel better, there’s not a strong reason to do it on the days when you already feel good.
Our way to get past this problem is simple: Make meditation the centerpiece of your total well-being. Adopt it, not because you are motivated to meditate, but because you will use it as a means to get something you want very badly. Only a need that is tied to desire will be fulfilled. Desire is the most powerful motivator, but in most people’s lives there’s no need to meditate the way there’s a need for food, shelter, companionship, money, and sex. One strong desire, however, is general enough and long-lasting enough to fit the bill: success. If meditation can be linked to success, we feel that many more people would stick with it.
Making this connection requires a major shift, however. Both sides of the meditation divide—those who want better health and those who want higher consciousness—focus on a goal that is very different from worldly success. If you listed the most prominent traits of millionaires, entrepreneurs, and CEOs of major corporations, their success wouldn’t be attributable to meditating. But the stereotype of the ambitious, competitive, and ruthless climber doesn’t square with reality.
The bottom line is that success is a more potent word—and a stronger motivator—than prevention, wellness, and well-being. The attributes of highly successful people can be linked with the benefits of meditation.
The ability to make good decisions
A strong sense of self
Being able to focus and concentrate
Not being easily distracted
Immune to the approval or disapproval of others
Sufficient energy for long workdays
Not easily discouraged
Emotional resilience, bouncing back after failure and setbacks
Intuition and insight, being able to read a situation ahead of others
A stream of new ideas and solutions
A cool head in a crisis
Strong coping skills in the face of high stress
If these aren’t yet considered the key traits associated with success, they should be. Each trait is strengthened through meditation. How many people realize that they can make better decisions if they meditate, or keep a cooler head in a crisis? The stereotype of the navel-gazing, self-absorbed meditator is just as false as the ruthless climber clawing his way to success. The main reason that meditation caught on for many people in the West was that doctors and psychologists found a way around the image of the world-renouncing yogi with a long beard isolated in his Himalayan cave. But only recently has research in altered gene activities proved that meditation creates thousands of changes with holistic implications for mind and body.
That’s a great advance, but attitudes need to shift even more. When success is defined by externals—money, possessions, status, and power—it’s granted to the few, who usually begin from a privileged background. But what if success is defined differently, as an inner state of fulfillment? If you turn within, you can be successful at this very moment, because success is a creative process. You are engaged in it already, because true success is something we live. It’s not an end state we arrive at. This is the message Deepak has been spreading for thirty years and exemplifying in his own life. It’s the message he takes to business schools every year, teaches to CEOs, and expands upon in books like this one—and Rudy found that even before they met, he and Deepak had been walking the same path.
Reading the menu: As in every section on lifestyle, the menu of choices is divided into three parts, according to level of difficulty and proven effectiveness.
Part 1: Easy choices
Part 2: Harder choices
Part 3: Experimental choices
Please consult this page in the diet section if you need a refresher on what the three levels of choice are about. You should make one change per week total, not one from each lifestyle section. Remember, too, that whatever choices you make are meant to be permanent.
• Take 10 minutes at lunchtime to sit alone with eyes closed.
• Learn a simple breath meditation for use 10 minutes morning and evening (see this page for instructions).
• Use a mindfulness technique several times a day (see this page for instructions).
• Take up simple mantra meditation for 10 minutes twice a day (see this page for instructions).
• Find a friend to meditate with.
• Take inward time whenever you find it helpful, at least once a day.
• Join an organized meditation course.
• Increase your meditation to 20 minutes twice a day.
• Make meditation a shared practice with your spouse or partner.
• Add some simple yoga poses to precede your meditation.
• Add 5 minutes of Pranayama (breath technique) before meditating (see this page for instructions).
• Teach your children to meditate.
• Investigate the spiritual traditions behind meditation.
• Go on a meditation retreat.
• Become a meditation teacher.
• Explore taking meditation to the elderly.
• Explore introducing meditation at a local school.
The easy choices on the menu are about finding minimal time during your day to go inward. The simplest means are a kind of pre-meditation, simply sitting with eyes closed or even defining “inner time” any way you want, just as long as you get to be alone with yourself, eliminating as much external noise and distraction as possible. Of course, we hope you are ready for meditation itself, yet if this is going to be a permanent change, don’t rush into a commitment you can’t keep. Fortunately, many people are surprised by how easily they take to meditating and enjoy the opportunity for inner time every day.
Breath meditation: This is a simple technique that takes advantage of the mind-body connection. Your breath is a fundamental bodily rhythm that is connected to heart rate, stress response, blood pressure, and many physiological rhythms. But it’s also connected to mood—notice what a relief it is to take deep breaths when you are upset, and how ragged the breath becomes when you feel anxious or stressed. A breath meditation, then, helps restore the whole system and brings deep relaxation without effort.
The technique is simple. Sit with your eyes closed in a quiet place. Once you feel settled, follow your breathing as it goes in and out. Don’t force your breathing into a rhythm or try to make it change. If your attention gets distracted by stray thoughts or sensations, easily bring it back to your breath. Some people find it helpful to put their attention on the tip of the nose, where the sensation of inhaling and exhaling is easy to focus on. Continue to follow your breath for the period you’ve set aside as meditation time, but sit and relax for a moment after you’re finished. Don’t jump up and become active immediately.
Mantra meditation: One of the most intricate and subtle branches of the Indian spiritual tradition has to do with sound (Shubda). The specific mantras that emerged from this tradition were valued for their vibrational effect, not their meaning. In the modern era there is no consensus about how thinking a specific word could affect the brain, and yet thousands of people have reported that meditating with a mantra brings a deeper, more profound experience.
Sometimes mantras are personalized according to criteria that a teacher has been trained in (such as a person’s age, date of birth, or various psychological predispositions), but there are also mantras for general use. If you want to try mantra meditation, follow the same technique as for the breath meditation just given. As you breathe in and out, silently use the mantra So Hum. The usual method is to use So as you inhale and Hum as you exhale.
Think each syllable slowly and quietly as you breathe. Don’t force the thought, and if you get distracted, easily return to the mantra. Some teaching makes the point that mantra meditation shouldn’t be tied to any rhythm, even the natural rhythm of breathing. An alternative technique is proposed where you sit quietly and think So Hum, then let go of the mantra and think it again only as it arises in the mind. You gently remind yourself to say it regularly, not simply ignoring the mantra. It’s a matter of easily giving it preference over other thoughts. Don’t set up a regular rhythm, however, and never try to drum the mantra into your head.
Once you’ve meditated for a set period, it’s important to sit still—or better yet lie down—and relax for a moment before returning to activity. Since mantra meditation takes many people so deep, it’s jarring to jump up immediately without a period of letting your mind rise back up to the surface of everyday thoughts.
Pranayama: Because breathing is so intimately connected to every activity in the body, you might consider some ancient techniques from the Yoga tradition that center on the breath. Although these can be quite intricate and time consuming when someone sets out to control or direct their breathing, there are also easy forms of Pranayama, as these techniques are called. The one we recommend is for refining our breathing and adding to the relaxation and calming effect of your meditation.
Sitting upright, you will be gently breathing out of your left nostril and right nostril alternately. The rhythm is to inhale on the right side, then exhale on the left before switching to inhale on the left and exhale on the right. A few minutes’ practice makes this quite easy, actually.
First hold your right hand up with your thumb against your right nostril and two middle fingers against the left nostril.
Gently close the left nostril and inhale through the right. Now exhale through the left nostril by moving your fingers away and gently closing the right nostril with your thumb.
Don’t move your hand yet, and inhale through the left nostril. Then close that nostril with your fingers and move away your thumb to open the right nostril—exhale.
It sounds tricky when written out this way, but you are essentially alternating the side you breathe on. You may find it easier to get the knack if you begin the first couple of tries by exhaling and inhaling on the right, then switch your hand position and exhale and inhale on the left.
In any case, be easy with your Pranayama, doing it for five minutes before starting to meditate. Most people have a dominant nostril that changes throughout the day. Sometimes you are breathing mostly on the right or the left, probably because one nostril is more open than the other. Pranayama is supposed to even out and refine the breath. This can feel odd at first, so if you find yourself growing short of breath or wanting to gasp, stop the practice, sit quietly, and resume normal breathing. Never force your breathing using the technique. Each exhale and inhale should be completely natural. Don’t try to instill a regular rhythm or to make your breaths deeper or shallower. It takes more discipline to adopt Pranayama than to adopt simple meditation, but those who master it report deeper experiences in their meditation.
The genome and epigenetics are beginning to reveal more about how meditation works. In 2014 we tested the effects of intensive meditation by assessing the activity of genes spanning the entire human genome. The study was conducted at a retreat at the Chopra Center located in Carlsbad, California, just outside San Diego.
Sixty-four healthy women from the community were invited to stay at the La Costa Resort for one week—the Chopra Center has its facilities there—and were then randomly assigned either to a meditation retreat or to a relaxation retreat only, excluding learning to meditate. Serving as controls for the study, the relaxation retreat group would basically spend the time just being on vacation. During the week, blood samples were collected from both groups and measured for aging-related biomarkers.
In addition, any changes in psychological and spiritual well-being were also assessed, not only over the week but continuing up to ten months afterward. By day five, both groups actually underwent significant improvements in their mental health and beneficial changes in their gene activities, including lower activity of genes involved in defensive stress and immune responses (you’ll recall that inflammation is a defensive response of the immune system). In the control group, these beneficial changes could be attributed to something termed the “vacation effect,” in which stress levels are minimized and the genes that usually deal with stress and injury can “take a rest.” The body acts as if all is well and can turn all those stress response genes down.
But other changes occurred in the meditation group that did not happen in the controls. For example, there was two- to threefold suppression of a gene activity associated with viral infection and wound healing. There were also beneficial changes in the genes associated with risk for Alzheimer’s disease. These changes suggest that it would be more difficult for the meditators to experience a viral infection while at the same time their systems were less concerned about the need to heal wounds or tend to injury.
Perhaps the most astonishing result specifically found in the meditators was a dramatic increase in the anti-aging activity of telomerase. The importance of this change is explained in the newest edition of Deepak’s book on the mind-body connection, Quantum Healing. In 2008, the heart disease pioneer Dr. Dean Ornish, working in collaboration with Nobel laureate Elizabeth Blackburn, made a breakthrough by showing that lifestyle changes improve gene expression. One of the most exciting changes had to do with the production of the enzyme telomerase (see this page for our initial discussion of telomerase). To recap briefly, each strand of DNA is capped at the end, like a period ending a sentence, by a structure known as a telomere. With age, it appears that telomeres weaken, causing the genetic sequence to fray at the ends.
It is thought, with considerable supporting research, that increased telomerase, the enzyme that builds telomeres, might significantly retard aging. The Ornish-Blackburn study discovered that telomerase did in fact increase in subjects following the positive lifestyle program Ornish recommends.
The Chopra Center study amplified these findings by looking specifically at the mental and spiritual component of a changed lifestyle. The Ornish program has several components, including exercise, diet, and stress management. Under the calm and introspective conditions experienced by newly instructed meditators, telomerase began increasing the longevity of chromosomes and the cells that enclose them.
As a baseline, reduced stress during a vacation induces beneficial patterns of health. For those participants who were able to carry out deep and meaningful meditation, however, there were more benefits beyond the vacation effect, including anti-aging, a reduced propensity for viral infections, and the suppression of genes mobilized for injury and wound repair. It’s just as important to note that the effects happened quickly, within a few days. This accords with other findings about how rapidly the epigenome can change.
The bottom line: you can’t be on a permanent vacation all year, but you can meditate to achieve the same and more results.
The next frontier. To follow up on such an intriguing study, we next created a research project exploring the possibility of inducing even deeper changes. The power of choice, we believe, has infinite potential. We call this project the Self-Directed Biological Transformation Initiative (SBTI). We’ve gathered together a consortium of top-tier scientists and clinicians from seven leading research institutions: Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, Scripps Clinic, University of California San Diego, University of California Berkeley, Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, and Duke University. A particular focus is on the health benefits of traditional Ayurvedic practices. Over at least two millennia, Ayurveda has stressed the primary importance of balancing body, mind, and environment to maximize the body’s rejuvenating powers. The SBTI employs state-of-the-art scientific methods to test for benefits in well-being from a multifaceted Ayurvedic approach that includes diet, yoga, meditation, and massage. Instead of studying one possible result, we are taking a “whole systems” approach.
Technology has now made this possible. Our controlled trial design uses wearables—mobile health sensors—and calls upon a host of specialized areas of expertise that are expanding explosively today: genomics, cellular and molecular biology, metabolomics, lipidomics, microbiomics, telomerase assays, inflammatory biomarkers, and Alzheimer’s biomarkers. We don’t need to go into detail about these technologies, each of which involves extensive specialized knowledge. (Also included are personal evaluations of psychological outcomes at the Chopra Center.)
Technicalities aside, it’s enough to say that to our knowledge, this is the first clinical study employing a whole-systems approach to lifestyle, and Ayurveda in particular. While traditional medical research is attempting to develop and validate new drugs targeted at specific diseases, we believe that in a parallel effort, it’s only prudent to pursue the lifestyle track, for all the reasons we’ve been developing in this book. To be fully real, radical well-being must step up and deliver valid data, as the SBTI is currently doing.
Brain changes: If you step back a little, what we’re discovering is quite amazing—literally the ability of the mind to transform the body, and to do it quickly, with minimal struggle. The mind can even lead to the generation of new brain cells. Beginning in the 1970s, studies had shown that something is happening in the brain during meditation. This parallels the subjective experience of feeling calmer and more relaxed. But in the last decade, the research has begun to show that meditation can also produce long-term structural changes in the brain, especially in regions associated with memory. There is an increase in a person’s sense of self and empathy toward others, along with a reduction in stress levels. Increased brain activity starts to appear in subjects who practice mindfulness meditation for only eight weeks. A team led by Harvard-affiliated researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital reported these results in the first study to document meditation-produced changes over time in the brain’s gray matter.
What makes this finding so important is that it links how people feel when they meditate with their physiology—the kind of proof that neuroscience demands. The old view was that meditators reported all kinds of mental and psychological benefits when in fact all they were doing in meditation was entering a state of deep relaxation. In the Harvard study, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans were taken of the brains of sixteen participants two weeks prior to the study and directly afterward. MRI images of the participants were also taken after the study was completed. It was already known that during meditation there is an increase in alpha waves in the brain. Alpha waves are associated with deep relaxation. These MRIs showed something more permanent: denser gray matter (i.e., more nerve cells and connections) in specific regions like the hippocampus, which is crucial for learning and memory, as well as in other areas associated with self-awareness, compassion, and reflection.
Another study compared long-term meditators with a control group and found that the meditators had larger gray matter volumes than nonmeditators in areas of the higher brain (cortex) that are associated with emotional regulation and response control. A famous study of Tibetan Buddhist monks showed activity in the area of the brain associated with compassion.
Loss of gray matter (brain cells) and their connections is a common part of aging. Now it appears that this loss isn’t inescapable. Some older people appear to be genetically protected from the deterioration of memory and brain cells, but in general only 10 percent of people who believe they have superior memories actually do, according to the standards set for a study of such “super agers.” Still, there is much to learn from these people. Finding out what makes them so unusual is a promising line of research, with the main focus being on their brains as compared with those of younger controls and “normal” older people.
The science is undeniable, but it takes more than science to motivate people, so we return to the core issue of compliance. We believe that success builds on success. You should look for positive changes in your outer life as well as inside. The science tells us that feelings are a reliable indicator that brain changes are actually occurring. The positive input from feeling more successful adds something new to the feedback loop between mind and body.
As yet the link to outer success, which is often reported by meditators, awaits scientific study. You will be striking out on your own. The point is to see if your outer life is beginning to show improvements that only meditation can explain. No one can really judge this besides you yourself. You may even harbor a not-so-secret belief that meditation makes someone weaker, less competitive, and less motivated. Quite the opposite is true.
Here’s a checklist of the changes we have in mind. Within a week or two of beginning to meditate, check off any of the following results you are beginning to notice.
__ I’m making better decisions.
__ I feel calmer, less anxious about making a decision.
__ My work is going more easily.
__ I’m in my comfort zone more.
__ I have a strong sense of self.
__ My focus and concentration are improving.
__ My mind has fewer distracting thoughts.
__ I’m not so dependent on outside approval.
__ I’m coming up with better ideas.
__ I have more energy at work.
__ I’m enthusiastic about what I do.
__ I’m more optimistic.
__ I bounce back better from negative events.
__ I’m getting better at reading a situation.
__ Working with others is getting smoother.
__ I’m having more insights.
__ Problems are less discouraging, more like opportunities.
__ I’m coping with stress better.
__ I’m handling difficult people better.
__ I feel more fit.
__ I feel better put together in general.
__ My mood has generally improved.
Studies like the ones conducted by Ornish-Blackburn and the Chopra Center confirm that there’s a biological basis for these benefits. They are based on making one of the harder choices: meditating for 20 minutes twice a day. But even if you decide to make an easier choice, such as taking 5 to 10 minutes out of your lunchtime to meditate, you will start to get the benefits of relaxing and rebalancing your system.
One can also rely on the testimony of thousands of meditators over the years. It’s a major shift from the Western model of hard work and struggle to succeed. We understand that, but in our view, you owe it to yourself to take advantage of such an important breakthrough.