Fingerprints of God_ The Search for the Science of Spirituality - Barbara Bradley Hagerty [87]
Kabat-Zinn, Davidson, and other researchers wired up all forty-one people to EEGs to determine their brain-wave activity. Before the mindfulness meditation, the employees’ “set point”—or natural attitude—was anxious and worried. That was reflected in their brain activity, which tipped to the right prefrontal cortex, the anxious, worried section of the brain. After eight weeks, however, employees steeped in meditation said their moods had improved; they were feeling less anxious and more engaged at work.When they were hooked up to the EEG again, their brain-wave activity had shifted leftward, to the “happy” part of the brain. In little more than two months, they had traveled from the bleak grays of February to the vibrant colors of May—a seasonal shift that took place not in the weather but in their minds. The control subjects remained in the anxious zone the entire time.
The employees of Promega had rewired their brains and moved their set points, for the affordable price of forty-five minutes a day. Over the past couple of decades, scientists have been persuaded that the brain is “plastic” and moldable, even into late life. But for something as “fixed” as a set point to be neurologically unstuck and moved to a happier zone in two months—well, who knew that changing one’s mind could alter one’s brain so quickly?12
Now we are talking about a reasonable time frame, I thought. And when I learned that one of Davidson’s research assistants named Helen Weng was trying to determine if the meditation could change the brain in as little as two weeks, I wanted in. In journalism, where a news story has a shelf life of a few minutes, two weeks is a frivolously long time to concentrate on any one subject. I could handle two weeks.
So I signed up. Or I tried to. It turns out that at forty-seven, I was too old to be included in the study. They had set an arbitrary age limit of forty-five. Still, I decided to practice the compassion meditation training every day for two weeks, and see what happened.
For thirty minutes every morning, with the house dark and still, I put on my headphones and absorbed the soothing voice of Helen Weng. May you be free from suffering, she intoned gently in a taped message, may you have joy and peace. In the first part of the exercise, I was instructed to wish happiness and freedom from suffering on a loved one, noticing any physical sensations around my heart as I did so. Next, I was to shower myself with compassion; then repeat the exercise for a stranger, someone I did not know but saw on occasion; and finally turn my compassionate thoughts toward a “difficult” person. At the end of each session, I wrote down my thoughts and feelings.
I was a poster child for meditative failure. I excelled at wishing well of my loved ones. I recalled wrenching episodes involving my mother or brother or close friend, even cried a few times as I lived their suffering. I enjoyed showering compassion on a stranger, making up elaborate stories about the young lost soul at Starbucks, the mailman, the colleague at work who was diagnosed with cancer. The problem arose during the rest of the session. When I recounted sad events in my life and tried to relieve my own suffering, sometimes I began to sniffle; then I grew ticked off at the person who caused the suffering. By the time I had meditated for thirty minutes, I was feeling sorry for myself, in a foul mood, pouring angry screeds into my journal about the injustice of my life. My husband kept a wide berth during those two weeks. He was visibly relieved when my compassion training ended.
“So, is there a capacity to change my brain if I continue doing this?” I asked