Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body

by Daniel Goleman

Oddly, this burst seemed to last the entire period of the compassion meditation, and as far as anyone could see, Mingyur had not moved an iota. What’s more, the giant spikes diminished but did not disappear as he went into the mental rest period, again with no visible shift in his body.

While his brain was probed by the fMRI, Mingyur followed the cue to engage compassion. Once again the minds of Richie and the others watching in the control room felt as though they had stopped. The reason: Mingyur’s brain’s circuitry for empathy (which typically fires a bit during this mental exercise) rose to an activity level 700 to 800 percent greater than it had been during the rest period just before. Such an extreme increase befuddles science; the intensity with which those states were activated in Mingyur’s brain exceeds any we have seen in studies of “normal” people. The closest resemblance is in epileptic seizures, but those episodes last brief seconds, not a full minute.

All the yogis had elevated gamma oscillations, not just during the meditation practice periods for open presence and compassion but also during the very first measurement, before any meditation was performed. This electrifying pattern was in the EEG frequency known as “high-amplitude” gamma, the strongest, most intense form. These waves lasted the full minute of the baseline measurement before they started the meditation. This was the very EEG wave that Mingyur had displayed in that surprising surge during both open presence and compassion. And now Richie’s team saw that same unusual brain pattern in all the yogis as a standard feature of their everyday neural activity. In other words, Richie and Antoine had stumbled upon the holy grail: a neural signature showing an enduring transformation.

There are four main types of EEG waves, classed by their frequency (technically, measured in hertz). Delta, the slowest wave, oscillates between one and four cycles per second, and occurs mainly during deep sleep; theta, the next slowest, can signify drowsiness; alpha occurs when we are doing little thinking and indicates relaxation; and beta, the fastest, accompanies thinking, alertness, or concentration. Gamma, the very fastest brain wave, occurs during moments when differing brain regions fire in harmony, like moments of insight when different elements of a mental puzzle “click” together. To get a sense of this “click,” try this: What single word can turn each of these into a compound word: sauce, pine, crab?*

on average the yogis had twenty-five times greater amplitude gamma oscillations during baseline compared with the control group. We can only make conjectures about what state of consciousness this reflects: yogis like Mingyur seem to experience an ongoing state of open, rich awareness during their daily lives, not just when they meditate. The yogis themselves have described it as a spaciousness and vastness in their experience, as if all their senses were wide open to the full, rich panorama of experience.

But there’s another surprise here: the yogis’ remarkable talent at entering a specific meditative state on cue, within a second or two, itself signals an altered trait.

The moment the plate heated a bit—the cue for pain about to come—the control groups activated regions throughout the brain’s pain matrix as though they were already feeling the intense burn. The reaction to the “as if” pain—technically, “anticipatory anxiety”—was so strong that when the actual burning sensation began, their pain matrix activation became just a bit stronger. And in the ten-second recovery period, right after the heat subsided, that matrix stayed nearly as active—there was no immediate recovery. This sequence of anticipation-reactivity-recovery gives us a window on emotion regulation. For instance, intense worry about something like an upcoming painful medical procedure can in itself cause us anticipatory suffering, just imagining how bad we will feel. And after the real event we can continue to be upset by what we have gone through. In this sense our pain response can start well before and last long after the actual painful moment—exactly the pattern shown by those volunteers in the comparison group.

For these highly advanced meditators, the recovery from pain was almost as though nothing much had happened at all. This inverted V-shaped pattern, with little reaction during anticipation of a painful event, followed by a surge of intensity at the actual moment, then swift recovery from it, can be highly adaptive. This lets us be fully responsive to a challenge as it happens, without letting our emotional reactions interfere before or afterward, when they are no longer useful. This seems an optimal pattern of emotion regulation.

Among meditators with the greatest amount of lifetime practice hours—an average of 44,000 lifetime hours (the equivalent of twelve hours a day for ten years) the amygdala hardly responded to the emotional sounds. But for those with less practice, (though still a high number—19,000 hours) the amygdala also showed a robust response. There was a staggering 400 percent difference in the size of the amygdala response between these groups! This indicates an extraordinary selectivity of attention: a brain effortlessly able to block out the extraneous sounds and the emotional reactivity they normally elicit. What’s more, this means traits continue to alter even at the highest level of practice. The dose-response relationship does not seem to end even up to 50,000 hours of practice.

In the beginning nothing comes, in the middle nothing stays, in the end nothing goes.” That enigmatic riddle comes from Jetsun Milarepa, Tibet’s eminent twelfth-century poet, yogi, and sage.1 Matthieu Ricard unpacks Milarepa’s puzzle this way: at the start of contemplative practice, little or nothing seems to change in us. After continued practice, we notice some changes in our way of being, but they come and go. Finally, as practice stabilizes, the changes are constant and enduring, with no fluctuation. They are altered traits.

Compassion meditation shows stronger benefits from the get-go; as few as seven total hours over the course of two weeks leads to increased connectivity in circuits important for empathy and positive feelings, strong enough to show up outside the meditation state per se. This is the first sign of a state morphing into a trait, though these effects likely will not last without daily practice.

Beginners also find improvements in attention very early on, including less mind-wandering after just eight minutes of mindfulness practice—a short-lived benefit, to be sure. But even as little as two weeks of practice is sufficient to produce less mind-wandering and better focus and working memory, enough for a significant boost in scores on the GRE, the entrance exam for graduate school.

Some Buddhist traditions speak of this level of stabilization as recognition of an inner “basic goodness” that permeates the person’s mind and activities. As one Tibetan lama said about his own teacher—a master revered by all the Tibetan contemplative lineages—“Someone like him has a two-tier consciousness,” where his meditative accomplishments are a steady background for whatever else he does.

The stronger the connectivity between the meditators’ prefrontal area and amygdala, the less reactive they were. The surprise: the greatest increase in prefrontal-amygdala connection correlated with the number of hours a meditator had spent in retreat but not with home hours.

The Visuddhimagga advises practitioners to find as a guide someone more experienced than they are. This ancient list of potential teachers starts at the top with, ideally, direction from an arhant (the Pali word for a fully accomplished meditator, someone at the Olympic level).

A more inclusive—and more current—typology by Richie with his colleagues Cortland Dahl and Antoine Lutz organizes thinking about meditation “clusters” on the basis of a body of findings in cognitive science and clinical psychology.12 They see three categories: Attentional. These meditations focus on training aspects of attention, whether in concentration, as in zeroing in on the breath, a mindful observation of experience, a mantra, or meta-awareness, as in open presence. Constructive. Cultivating virtuous qualities, like loving-kindness, typifies these methods. Deconstructive. As with insight practice, these methods use self-observation to pierce the nature of experience. They include “nondual” approaches that shift into a mode where ordinary cognition no longer dominates.

Among the paramitas, embraced by the practice traditions of the yogis who came to Richie’s lab, are generosity, whether material, like the Dalai Lama giving away his prize money, or even simple presence, giving of oneself; and ethical conduct, not harming oneself or others and following guidelines for self-discipline. Another: patience, tolerance, and composure. This also implies a serene equanimity. “Real peace,” the Dalai Lama told an MIT audience, “is when your mind goes twenty-four hours a day with no fear, no anxiety.” There’s energetic effort and diligence; concentration and nondistraction; and wisdom, in the sense of insights that come via deep meditation practice.

The sense of a life mission centered on practice numbers among those elements so often left on a far shore, but that may matter greatly. Among others that might, in fact, be crucial for cultivating altered traits at the level found in the yogis: An ethical stance, a set of moral guidelines that facilitate the inner changes on the path. Many traditions urge such an inner compass, lest any abilities developed be used for personal gain. Altruistic intention, where the practitioner invokes the strong motivation to practice for the benefit of all others, not just oneself. Grounded faith, the mind-set that a particular path has value and will lead you to the transformation you seek. Some texts warn against blind faith and urge students to do what we call today “due diligence” in finding a teacher. Personalized guidance. A knowledgeable teacher who coaches you on the path, giving you the advice you need to go to the next step. Cognitive science knows that attaining top-level mastery requires such feedback. Devotion, a deep appreciation for all the people, principles, and such that make practice possible. Devotion can also be to the qualities of a divine figure, a teacher, or the teacher’s altered traits or quality of mind. Community. A supportive circle of friends on the path who are themselves dedicated to practice. Contrast that with the isolation of many modern meditators. A supportive culture. Traditional Asian cultures have long recognized the value of people who devote thei...

IN A NUTSHELL From the beginning hours, days, and weeks of meditation, several benefits emerge. For one, beginners’ brains show less amygdala reactivity to stress. Improvements in attention after just two weeks of practice include better focus, less mind-wandering, and improved working memory—with a concrete payoff in boosted scores on a graduate school entrance exam. Some of the earliest benefits are with compassion meditation, including increased connectivity in the circuitry for empathy. And markers for inflammation lessen a bit with just thirty hours of practice. While these benefits emerge even with remarkably modest hours of practice, they are likely fragile, and need daily sessions to be sustained.

Dr. Susan Davidson, Richie’s wife, is a specialist in high-risk obstetrics—and, like Richie, a longtime meditator. Some years back Susan and a few others decided to organize a meditation group for the doctors in her hospital in Madison. The group met Fridays, in the morning. Susan would send out regular emails to the hospital’s physicians reminding them of the opportunity. And very often she would be stopped in the hallway by one or another of them who said, in effect, “I’m so glad you’re doing this.” And then add, “But I can’t come.”

The Kindness Curriculum begins with very basic, age-appropriate mindfulness exercises where the four-year-olds listen to the sound of a bell and pay attention to their breathing as they lie on their backs, small stones placed on their tummies rising and falling with each breath.

Kindness, caring, and compassion all follow a line of development that our educational system largely ignores—along with attention, self-regulation, empathy, and a capacity for human connection. While we do a good enough job with the traditional academic skills like reading and math, why not expand what children learn to include such crucial skills for living a fulfilled life?

Tenacity is the name of a video game based on research in Richie’s lab on breath counting.

Playing the game for just twenty to thirty minutes daily over two weeks, Richie’s group found, increased connectivity between the brain’s executive center in the prefrontal cortex and circuitry for focused attention.

“What if we could exercise our minds like we exercise our bodies?” The fitness industry thrives on our wish to be healthy; physical fitness is a goal most everyone espouses (whether or not we do much about it). And habits of personal hygiene like regular bathing and tooth brushing are second nature. So why not mental fitness?

Sona’s team developed a web-based course, derived from MBCT, called Mindful Mood Balance; the eight sessions reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety such as constant worry and rumination.

In Brewer’s lab, mindfulness has helped people addicted to cigarettes kick the habit.12 He has developed two apps—for overeating and for smoking—applying his PCC findings to breaking addictions.

Okay, the mice didn’t really meditate; researchers used a specialized strobe light to drive the mouse’s brain at specific frequencies, a method called photic driving, where the rhythm of EEG waves lock into that of a flashing bright light.

“What if, by transforming our minds, we could improve not only our own health and well-being but also those of our communities and the wider world?”

But the finding that was most startling was that the primary auditory cortex, the sector of cortical real estate that receives the initial upstream input that begins in the ear, showed robust activation in response to the circles presented off to the side, but only in the deaf subjects. The hearing subjects showed absolutely no activation of this primary auditory region in response to visual input.

The Desert Fathers were early Christian hermits who lived in communities located in remote areas of Egypt’s desert in the early centuries AD. There they could better focus on their religious practices, mainly the recitation of Kyrie Eleison (a Greek phrase meaning “Lord, have mercy”), a Christian “mantra.” These hermit communities were the historic predecessors of Christian orders for monks and nuns; repetition of Kyrie Eleison remains a primary practice among Eastern Orthodox monks, e.g., those on Mount Athos.