Meditation is becoming popular
These days, a wave of meditation and mindfulness is sweeping through our society, seemingly everywhere you look. You could even call it a hype, fueled by a plethora of consultants and coaches, and apps like Headspace and Calm that offer digital support for meditation. A multi-billion dollar global market has emerged, one that doesn't quite align with its origins, the image of the ascetic, meditating monk in a cave. Isn't it really about being completely at peace with oneself? If so, why do we need tools?
False expectations
It's certainly helpful to know what meditation is actually about and what its benefits are. "When you meditate, you're not supposed to think about anything!" This somewhat simplistic view can quickly lead to frustration. "I can't meditate. Thoughts keep racing through my head, and I just can't find peace." The compulsive attempt to switch everything off is already a recipe for failure. Because the primary goal is to become calm. To observe oneself and one's thoughts from a meta-level. To let go of thoughts and thus slowly arrive at complete stillness. Expectations of achieving wisdom through meditation, or even levitation in the final stage—that is, that the body defies gravity and begins to float—are completely unrealistic and lead in the wrong direction. High expectations regarding meditation are usually the reason for quitting after a short time because one gets tired of simply sitting around if it doesn't seem to achieve anything. But is that true? Does meditation really achieve nothing?
Step by step – without pressure to succeed
First, it's important to understand that meditation is a repetitive practice designed to calm and focus the mind. Concentrating on one's own breathing, for example, will certainly be frequently interrupted by thoughts that race through one's mind. But once you accept these interruptions and let go of each thought, observing it like a fish swimming by in an aquarium, the moments of concentration and stillness become more frequent and longer. It may be reassuring to know that even the great masters of Zen meditation only achieve this state of detachment, concentration, and tranquility for a few minutes at a time. Apparently, the journey is the destination, and here it's not about reaching a goal, but simply about "coming to rest."
Rest for a restless mind
Consistency, or rather the constant repetition, of this conscious process of slowing down is key, and even just 5-10 minutes of meditation a day can apparently lead to results. We activate our parasympathetic nervous system, the part of our nervous system responsible for rest and recovery. We slow down and give our minds the rest they otherwise only experience during sleep. This conscious slowing down contrasts sharply with the constant firing of synapses by scrolling on a smartphone. Scrolling, which is supposed to be relaxing these days, triggers our innate urge to explore, channels it into short-term stimuli, focuses our gaze on a small, backlit screen, and leaves us feeling restless and agitated. This is the opposite of relaxation and meditation, the conscious stillness for the mind.
Effects of meditation
The human brain is also described as having neuroplasticity. This means that our brain changes its structure through repetitive activities. Through the stillness and attentive observation of inner activities during meditation, without judgment or clinging to them, the brain learns to recognize a meta-level and ideally solidifies it. We observe ourselves, our thoughts, and our feelings, and enjoy the tranquility. With consistent practice of this process, meditation, we also learn to consciously recognize everyday situations and not simply follow thoughts and feelings impulsively. We increasingly regain control over how we react to feelings and thoughts. We switch off the "autopilot" more and more often and become more mindful with each practice. We broaden our perspective, move away from fixation, and open our perception and creative thought space. Without achieving a goal, simply "on the flight"! But meditation can do even more.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Even though the Greek Stoics, as early as 300 BC, were concerned with freeing themselves from external influences, and later the Roman philosopher Seneca used meditation to achieve inner peace, these were merely precursors of meditation in Western culture. The person who brought meditation from the Buddhist sphere into our modern Western world was neither a philosopher nor a spiritual leader. The originator of Western meditation was an American scientist from Massachusetts, a molecular biologist named Jon Kabat-Zinn. His eight-week MBSR training program, mindfulness-based stress reduction, which he launched in 1979, is a medically recognized practice that has been proven to help with depression, burnout, pain reduction, and as an adjunct therapy for serious illnesses. As a scientist, he brought this beneficial method into our intellectualized, evidence-driven world through his studies, thereby initiating a widespread meditation movement. It has now been shown that relaxation and calmness exercises have a clear influence on our health and well-being.
Meditation and Longevity
Since the 1990s, we have known that meditation, and thus the mind, influences the body, specifically gene expression. Thanks to epigenetics, we now know that chromosomes change in response to external influences. The ends of the chromosomes, the so-called telomeres, can be altered by mental states. Scientists have discovered that telomeres tend to lengthen during meditation and shorten during stress. Severely shortened telomeres prevent cell division and lead to a process called senescence. Telomeres shorten slightly with each cell division, which, with increasing age and the corresponding number of cell divisions, leads to the aging of tissues and organs. Therefore, it can be said that the continuous shortening of telomeres accelerates the cellular aging process and negatively impacts our body's regenerative capacity. For this reason, telomeres are also referred to as biomarkers of aging.
Certainly, there are many factors that influence healthy aging, such as mobility, diet, and of course, the genes we are born with. But it is a wonderful realization that it has been scientifically proven that meditation is an effective means of promoting longevity and, by lengthening telomeres, can help keep our bodies and minds healthy and physically fit for longer as we age.
