Dennis Bayazitov | Assistant News Editor
Featured image: Meditation can help with both physical and mental illnesses. | Courtesy of Pixabay
For many, “meditation” is a word that evokes feelings of resistance, skepticism, and distrust. Those unaccustomed to its benefits may dismiss the practice, perceiving it to be too esoteric, for necessitating accompanying spiritual or religious faith, or as being nothing more than preachy navel-gazing for hippies.
Meditation was markedly popularized in the height of the “psychedelic era,” after all—a divided age of war and Flower Power, the Civil Rights Movement, and an urgency to contribute to a post-Industrial Revolution society. Memorable instances, like the Beatles going on record advocating for its practice in 1967, with their immersive studies with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi—Lennon’s disatisfaction of which later inspired “Sexy Sadie”—only further fueled the black-and-white labels regarding those “chasing enlightenment.”
Since then, research investigating a particular type of meditation—mindfulness—has grown considerably prevalent within several medical fields.
Today, studies and practitioners suggest mindfulness plays an extensive role in helping assuage difficult mental disorders—most notably, depression.
Three York Professors in particular—Dr. Paul Ritvo, Mark Cummings, and Dr. Noah Wayne—stand by such findings, featuring mindfulness as a pivotal tool in their own respective fields of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and kinesiology.
“Mindfulness and meditation originated from spiritual disciplines—especially Buddhism,” Ritvo, a clinical psychologist and the co-principal investigator of the Healthy Student Initiative, a York mindfulness student club, acknowledges. “But basically, what cognitive-behavioural therapists are doing now is studying what insights can be learned from those methods, and reading secular versions of them that are science-based.”
Cognitive therapy, he says, when paired with mindfulness, is indeed effective for promoting positive mental health, cultivating greater emotional intelligence, and ebbing the suffering of painful feelings.
“One of the reasons we feel there is a connection is the relaxation effect that is inherent in meditation, which actually has a physiologically-based mood elevation effect.”
Nevertheless, “meditation is so much more than just a thing you can do to ‘relax,’” continues Wayne, well known for his mindfulness-centered kinesiology course, “Survey of Meditation Practices Ancient & Current,” in the York mindfulness community.
“We know that meditation leads to a number of great benefits, including: increased attention, better concentration, better working memory, improved immune functions, higher-quality sleep, greater emotional control, better overall happiness, decreased anxiety, and decreases in depression relapse rates.”
That last one is of particular interest for cognitive therapists such as Ritvo, who notes mindfulness meditation practices have now even been adopted by the British government as regular prepaid health services.
“The same is happening here in Ontario in a more gradual way.”
Cummings, a York Kinesiology professor, notably recognized for his own “Relaxation: Theory & Practice” course, also coordinates much of his work toward the relief and positive physiological changes incited through mindfulness, in addition to other attention control strategies.
“Neurochemistry of chronic stress is virtually indistinguishable from the neurochemistry of depression,” he says. “If you put a person under chronic stress long enough, if they don’t have solid coping strategies it can actually cause depression.”
Having worked with a number of students, patients with mental illness, athletes, and those in addiction recovery before, the complementary works of Cummings, Ritvo, and Wayne all collegially demonstrate and advance such strategies so others may feel more present in their own daily lives, to be less upset by stressors, and stay poised, level-headed, and effective when pursuing both their personal and professional goals.
That being said, Wayne stresses that if someone is diagnosed or considers themselves to be actively depressed, they should reach out to a qualified healthcare provider, rather than relying solely on any mindfulness techniques.
Cummings echoes this statement. “Those with depression have to connect with a professional, or at least someone they can trust,” he says. “Then, if they want to use meditation to complement other treatments, it’s possible to do that.”
“This can be helpful for people who struggle with depression, by providing the skills to approach problematic and depressogenic thoughts,” Wayne adds.
“Imagine emotional or physical pain, or a craving, represented by a drop of dark blue ink,” Cummings often relates the value of mindfulness to the unpracticed with a visual metaphor.
“If you drop that drop of dark blue ink into a test tube of water, it will muck up the water and make it murky—having a great impact.”
In his work, he expounds the psychological concept of a narrow attention field—a heightened emotional state, in which one perceives negativity to be vastly more overwhelming than it really is.
“If you take the same drop of blue ink, however” he continues, “representing emotional-physical pain, and drop it into a bath full of water—a broader attention state—it hardly affects it at all.”
Cummings likens mindfulness to working flexibility exercises on the mind. Regular practice is like regularly training physical flexibility. With time, the meditator’s attention will stretch further, and their sense of awareness will deepen.
But “it’s not just narrow,” Ritvo notes. “Narrow is a relative term.
“Depression is dominantly negative.”
With his own patients, Ritvo often clarifies the value of mindfulness, “which is a completely secular method,” differently, by breaking it down into three recognized benefits: thought substitution, reframing, and attention control.
“Cognitive therapy is basically a way to re-examine one’s thinking, and look for ways to correct and substitute better thoughts for less-effective and adaptive thoughts.
“This may be achieved via the practice of reframing,” he adds.
“We all have adverse events in life every day,” Ritvo notes. Reframes occur when meditators study adverse events through their learning potential. “‘They happened for a reason,’ in other words, and there is something to learn from them.”
Ritvo believes that when people learn from their hardships in this way, their ability to handle negativity in the future will be stronger. For a person with depression, “this may begin to cultivate a sense of mastery, as opposed to a sense of helplessness—leading to the third important aspect of CBT: learning the ability to move attention.”
“Instead of feeling helpless, which sometimes happens in being obsessionally preoccupied with something, you feel like you’re actually able to use your attention as you feel it works best.”
This ability, then, further proves integral in breaking free from what Cummings refers to as negative habitual loops—the same ability Wayne similarly believes serves merit for patients with depression who are starting to make progress, but who still occasionally relapse into depressive episodes.
According to Wayne, mindfulness helps others understand that thoughts are not inherently negative, nor positive. Rather, the judgment one places on them influences how strongly they will react.
“When we learn to refrain from judging ourselves and our thoughts and to accept things the way they are, approaching our thoughts objectively, we are better able to choose a more productive response or course of action,” Wayne says.
In his teachings, Cummings sometimes further elucidates this idea of simply being present with one’s thoughts, emotions, and the de facto details of the moment, with one of its oldest and most recognizable adages, from Chinese sage Lao Tzu: “If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.”
The three York scholars emphasize this one endgame alone—deepening the intuitive feeling of presence—is a profoundly simple way to start feeling relief from accrued, painful emotions.
“When you talk about being present, those things don’t really mean anything to most people,” Cummings admits. “People don’t actually know what you’re talking about; but if you get them to do some really simple exercises, they actually start ‘getting it.’”
Ritvo, Wayne, and Cummings agree mindfulness meditation—or “mindfulness of breath”—is the simplest, most direct way of feeling immediate stillness and peace within the body and mind.
“Really, just start sitting,” Wayne says. “Be okay with sitting alone in a room with your eyes closed, and pay attention to your breath.”
Cummings often elaborates by telling his students to focus on a more specific aspect of breathing. In gently inhaling through the nose, “notice the coolness of the oxygen as you go.”
He asks them to consciously deepen the pause after inhalation. Then, in slowly exhaling through the mouth, “there are actually more receptors up on the lips, so they feel more warmth of the air.”
To further heighten this feeling of stillness, he then has students engage the big receptor areas in the body, starting from the motor cortex. “We get them to rub their fingertips lightly together, feeling those sensations; to wiggle their toes, too—just slowly breathing in cool, and breathing out warm.”
In letting those soothing sensations naturally arise, “very quickly, it will move them into the present,” Cummings says. “The person will get pretty quick relief.”
Despite the pleasant feelings such calming exercises may produce, however, Ritvo admits the CBT community still does not have the data that allows therapists and kinesiologists to ascertain how much good—and what kind of consistency of success—is accomplished when people regularly meditate at different times and durations.
“What we do know, from researching people who have meditated over 10,000 hours, is that the practice accumulates.”
In beginning, to “get it”—to start feeling those initially-subtle, placid sensations—with continued practice—learning meditators begin to gradually experience them on a deeper level.
Their level of awareness begins to broaden; they no longer feel as caught in the middle with their problems. In particular, people who tend to be more emotionally volatile or unstable begin to feel less as though they are on the receiving end of the same pain they previously felt, which is what Ritvo refers to as learned helplessness.
A shift in attention begins to take place—an expansion of consciousness. Objective self-observers no longer feel as trapped within the small dark blue ink drop of disquieting emotion. Instead, their attention shifts into the now, growing more aware of the deeper, still water that lets them simply be.
“Attentional control is basically what meditation is; you feel like you can put your attention where you want it to be” Ritvo clarifies. “As you change your brain, it develops a capacity for further change.”
He points to the 2004 10,000 hours of meditation study, Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice, saying, “the practice one might do between one and 1,000 hours will be different from the practice one does between 1,000 and 2,000 hours; and 3,000 and 4,000 hours, and so on.”
Ritvo shares further clinical experience from his own office, verifying that mindfulness meditation can also directly address biophysical problems. “I can’t mention any names, but I have one patient who came in with tachycardia,” he says. “An out-of-control heart rate going up to 120 or even 140 beats per minute, which is really kind of a terrifying trance.”
Under the guidance of his team, this patient was able to establish a two hour-a-day mindfulness practice. After several weeks of regular practice, the patient’s heart rate is now under control.
“It is actually getting to a rate considered especially healthy—below 72 beats per minute.”
Ritvo goes on to say such transformations via mindfulness are not that uncommon.
In a recent Harvard study, Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density, he describes the average meditation time across subjects was about 25 minutes a day—conducted for 16 weeks. At the end, the focus group experienced actual changes in brain tissue. “Not just mood and anxiety; but actual changes in the tissue of the brain.
“In less than four months, they changed, and in a healthy direction.”
In treating mental disorders such as depression, Ritvo continues that therapists can guide people from a negative state, to neutral, and eventually positive states. “Neutral feels a lot better than negative, as far as the pain of depression goes.”
Largely striving towards the positive end, the three York scholars further concur meditation offers additional positive psychology benefits for the world as a whole.
“Mindfulness, by its nature, cultivates empathy and compassion in meditators towards themselves and towards others,” says Wayne. “If everyone in the world meditated and embraced the empathy and compassion mindfulness fosters, the world would be a more compassionate place.”
“If you can bring yourself into balance, you’re more likely going to act and respond to other people in more balanced ways,” adds Cummings. “If you recognize that everything is connected, then you’re probably going to act in more responsible ways—to the environment, et cetera.”
Ritvo mentions another 2015 study, Mindful attention reduces linguistic intergroup bias. He continues: “When people do meditate, they become more socially skilled; they actually become less prejudiced, more open-minded, and less likely to pick up on negative details and blow them out of proportion when interacting with other people.”
He suggests many international conflicts are the result of such prejudice: the stereotyping of one group by another.
“If that aspect of people relating to other people could be changed in a positive way, it’s very likely that we would see less conflict of the kind that’s obviously so upsetting now in the news.”
