All language subtitles for Meditation Can It Change You 2017 - האם מדיטציה יכולה לשנות אותך

Coming up on Catalyst.

Science puts meditation to the test.

Can it really transform your mind and body?

("Catalyst Theme")

The ancient art of meditation has moved out of the temple

and into our daily lives.

(dramatic music)

It's practiced by top-class athletes.

Even taught in some of the most powerful

corporations in the world.

You don't have to be Buddhist to meditate.

You just have to be a person with a functioning mind.

New discoveries in science suggest

it may, indeed, have benefits.

80%, that's enormous.

Boost memory,

and treat depression.

I decided I was well enough to come off the medication.

And meditation may even slow the aging process.

The studies are very promising.

They actually do suggest there are benefits.

From brain scans to blood tests,

from the psychological to the biological.

Depends on what your definition of pain is.

I'm going to investigate the hard evidence

to see if meditation lives up to the hype.

And I'm going to put my own brain to the test,

and undertake eight weeks of mindfulness meditation.

Will it make me less stressed?

Will it improve my memory?

I did better at that?

Will it change the structure of my brain?

(dramatic music)

Londoner Nick Brewer is a yoga and meditation teacher.

But life hasn't always been so serene.

For 10 years, Nick ran a drug empire,

smuggling cocaine out of Colombia.

Essentially, I was quite a wealthy young man.

I had a property asset holding company,

a night club restaurant and all the toys that goes with it.

You would've looked at me as being quite

a successful entrepreneur,

unless you knew what I do for living.

In 2004, he was arrested in South America

and sentenced to prison there.

It was probably one the worst places

you could ever imagine your entire life.

It was poor, it was broken, it was corrupt.

You're anxious about absolutely everything.

You're anxious about staying alive,

about where your next plate of food gonna come from,

if you got any money,

if you haven't got any money.

I mean, if you're gonna get raped, killed.

A year into his sentence,

Nick was shown a book by his cellmate.

Yeah, I asked him what he had,

and he says, I got a book on yoga.

So, obviously at the time, I said, you know,

you must be some sort of weirdo.

Soon, he was hooked and began practicing

yoga and meditation everyday.

It was the sitting practice, and the yoga practice

that helped to, you know, find some

kind of serenity in there.

Nick transformed his life.

I have a very happy life, extremely humble.

I have a lot of amazing clients that I teach.

So, you know, the last five years have been

completely transformational.

Like Nick, I guess, I'd never really contemplated

whether meditation could do anything for me,

but the more I hear about the research,

the more keen I am to see whether it has any effect.

So, I'm gonna try it myself for two months.

Step one, learning how it's done.

I'm off to see Dr. Richard Chambers.

Who's a clinical psychologist, but also an expert

in mindfulness.

He's gonna teach me how to meditate, apparently.

Mindfulness is a type of meditation where

we focus our attention on the present moment.

On the body, the breath, that kind of thing.

Mindfulness meditation is the most

well-researched type of meditation.

And just taking a few moments to check in,

just notice the state that your body's in.

Checking in with the mind.

Some scientists say it can boost physical

and mental health,

and improve cognitive abilities.

And when the mind inevitably wanders,

just noticing that, and see if you can bring it back,

gently without any further thinking.

Most of us focus our attention on daydreams,

and distraction, and rumination, and worry,

and a whole bunch of stuff.

If we can train ourselves,

and we can, we can actual build a mindful muscle

to train ourselves to be focused and present.

Just enjoy the moment more.

Key to building this so-called mindful muscle

is strengthening the prefrontal cortex.

If the brain were an orchestra,

the prefrontal cortex is like the conductor.

When we notice our attention's wandered,

and we bring it back to the present moment,

we activate the prefrontal cortex.

It's forming new synapses, new connections,

and getting thicker and stronger kind of like a muscle.

And will I feel a greater sense of well being,

or more relaxed, or...?

Why don't we wait and see what happens for you.

I mean, I'm gonna predict yes,

but one of the best ways to learn mindfulness

is through the doing.

For me, to take meditation seriously,

I need some hard evidence that it's changing

my brain for the better.

And that's the weapon.

That's the weapon.

We'll put one of these on you, it's an EEG cap.

So, I've come to see neuroscientist,

Dr. Neil Bailey.

He's about to put me through a raft of rigorous tests

to get a measure of my brain power at the beginning

of the eight weeks meditation.

All right, Graham, looks we've

got some brain activity.

Fantastic.

Contrary to popular opinion.

First up, an EEG to measure my brain's electrical activity.

When we activate it, it will give you

a gentle electrical shock.

Oi, that's annoying.

(laughs)

Is it annoying, but not painful at all?

Well, it depends on what your definition of pain is,

but yeah.

The tests will measure my memory,

my reaction time,

and my ability to focus.

You're to respond to the meaning

of the emotion of the word,

and try and ignore the emotion on the face.

Okay, so angry face could have the word happy underneath.

Exactly.

Electrical activity in the brain is produced

as neurons communicate with each other.

The synchronized signals are brainwaves.

When you meditate, alpha and theta waves increase,

and activity in some parts of the brain decreases

allowing me to focus.

The idea is, after eight weeks, the brain activity

changes I experience during meditation

will have a lasting effect on my brain.

According to Dr. Bailey, I'll be better able

to concentrate, make faster decisions,

and remember more information.

Most extraordinary though, my brain might even

become more energy efficient.

You're performing better,

but your brain is exerting less energy.

You're getting a decrease in neural activity.

You might be able to do just as well in your job,

but be exerting less mental energy.

So, when you get home, you're less tired.

Beyond enhancing my brain's performance,

I also wanna know if meditation can have an even

more dramatic effect,

and actually change its physical structure.

I must say I hate being locked in confined spaces.

Not looking forward to this.

So, I've come for an MRI to have some before and after

brain structure scans.

This next one is gonna go for about six minutes.

Try not to think of anything,

just let your mind go blank.

Recent research from Harvard University

showed that just eight weeks of meditation

can physically change the structure of the brain.

Everything we do affects the brain.

So, any skill we learn, anything we practice

will change the way our brain is structured.

So, over time if you're repeating a practice,

for example mindfulness,

it's going to strengthen certain connections

in the brain and change the gray matter, for example,

volumes of the brain.

Gray matter is the darker tissue of the brain

where most of the nerve cell bodies are.

The Harvard research found that gray matter increased

in key areas, such as the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex,

and temporoparietal junction.

And these are parts of the brain that help

us to remember, to focus, to learn,

to inhibit impulses, and regulate our emotions.

If we sat there daydreaming for 20 minutes,

we'd be strengthening a different part,

or different parts, of the brain.

And we get to chose what we want to strengthen,

we've got a use it or lose it brain.

No, it is early days for a lot of this research,

but the possibility of meditation changing

the structure of my brain certainly sounds exciting.

I have to wait eight weeks to find out my results.

I'd better start meditating.

Okay, the end of week one.

It's now breathing meditation, and that's more challenging.

You're just focusing on that one thing, your breath,

which I find very easy to get distracted from that.

But can meditation change the body as well as the brain?

A handful of studies show it may be good for our health

by reducing inflammation and stress hormones.

So far, there's an interesting growing list

of some of the different ways that

meditation affects the body.

The question US researcher Dr. Elissa Epel

wants to answer is, can it also slow down aging?

In looking in particular at aging markers,

by now the field has a pretty good collection

of very interesting studies that do suggest that

there are benefits to our rate of aging.

Signs of aging can be seen inside

the body's cells.

Specifically, in the tiny caps at the end of each

chromosome known as the telomeres.

Our telomeres protect our genes.

Now, what happens as we age our immune cells divide,

and the telomeres shorten.

Those protective caps get shorter and shorter.

So, we want to keep those intact.

Basically, the shorter the telomeres,

the faster the aging.

Several studies have compared the telomeres

of meditators to non-meditators.

It looks like telomere length that measure

of how are immune cells age, stabilizes more

and doesn't shorten in the meditation group.

Other studies have measured telomerase,

the enzyme that protects those precious telomeres.

Those studies have suggested that telomerase

can go up and telomere length can be better maintained

during those periods.

And we wait for lots of replications before

we say something is true, or a fact.

The studies are very promising, very suggestive.

We've seen how meditation can change

you biologically,

but how about psychologically?

One of the most widely studied areas of meditation

research is the effect on mental health.

Ross Bunn has been coping with depression for years.

I wasn't really comfortable in my own skin.

I was very sort of agitated, quick to anger,

I didn't really feel I knew who I was.

I was not doing the things I loved and enjoyed.

I wasn't seeing my friends or family anymore,

and my relationship was, well, strained, really.

It was very difficult.

Ross was given meditation,

but he didn't like the side effects.

It really didn't make me feel very well.

I still didn't feel like myself.

I still wasn't sleeping.

I was still very agitated.

I just felt pretty detached from everything and everyone.

Ross is one of a growing number of people

using meditation to treat their depression.

I actually practice mindfulness whilst hiking.

I find it's quite easy to focus on putting

one foot in front of the other,

and then just noticing the world around me,

and then how my body feels.

People who practice mindfulness show better

mental health than 70% of the population on average.

People with depression and anxiety

have even larger gains than that.

The data shows that reduces depressive symptoms,

but the big finding is that it halves the rate

of depressive relapse for people who've had three

or more depressive episodes.

If they learn mindfulness, as part of their treatment,

they're half as likely to get depressed

again down the track.

Indeed, for some, meditation

could be an alternative to their medication.

Paper that came out last year, a meta analysis,

has found that it's as effective as antidepressants

for preventing relapse which

is a pretty significant finding.

Did it make a difference to you?

Yes, absolutely.

Probably would've been about eight months or so,

I decided I was well enough, able enough,

to come off the medication.

Dr. Richard Chambers believes mindfulness

meditation works because it breaks

the cycle of depressive thoughts.

Depressive thoughts that maybe go through people's minds

that they don't normally notice,

they're just running in the background like an app,

and producing people's mood.

So, mindfulness helps them to notice that,

and then, just to recognize it as a thought

rather than taking it seriously, believing it,

trying to push it away,

which then gets the attention very much caught up

in that kind of rumination.

Just noticing it, let it go, bring the attention

back to the present.

Doing the meditation really helps break that

rumination cycle.

And overall, that allows me to focus on all sorts of things.

If I need to focus on work, my mind's not wandering away

thinking about something else.

So, it's training my brain to focus.

That's the main aim.

So, how exactly does meditation train the brain?

One of the things that many types of meditation do

is exercise our attention muscle,

and boy that's an important muscle.

This so-called attention muscle may exert

some control over one of the brain areas

tied up with emotion, the amygdala.

When the amygdala gets activated,

that's when we feel fear and anxiety,

and that sort of thing.

So, its purpose is to give,

experience an emotional salience.

In something like depression or anxiety,

it becomes overactive,

and so it's constantly activated and providing that

sensation of anxiety, or fear, or hyper-vigilance.

After meditation, other parts of the brain

appear more in control of the amygdala.

What happens is, in theory at least,

and from what we can tell from the brain scans,

when you've practiced a lot of mindfulness,

both the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus,

those regions exert more regulation on the amygdala,

and dampen the effect of that anxiety or fear coming up.

Meditation's list of benefits does seem

remarkable, and some are concerned media hype

is falsely overselling them.

After all, the research is still in its infancy.

The few studies that have looked at it

haven't found that mindfulness was any better

than other forms of therapies.

Which in itself is not a bad outcome,

but there simply isn't enough research.

Professor Farias believes certain people

should exercise particular caution.

All kinds of meditation were originally designed

to rattle your sense of self.

If there is something which has traumatized

you in your life and you've forgotten about it,

by meditating you may become aware of it,

and this will exacerbate all the symptoms.

It can actually increase stress.

It can lead to greater levels of anxiety, panic attacks

in some people.

There were times where it would dredge up past

experiences that I really didn't wanna go back to,

and it was really quite disturbing,

and confronting at the time.

So, I never expected for that to occur.

Professor Farias also believes there

may be an inherent bias in the research.

99% of the researchers have only been looking

at the potential benefits, at the positive effects.

They haven't really been asking people about

the adverse effects.

If you've got a psychotic disorder,

if you're really anxious, or if you're getting it taught

to you badly, maybe it's not gonna be so good.

Do you know when you're going through a stressful time,

you got a lot on your mind,

it is really hard to get all that stuff out

when you're meditating.

I'm finding it really hard, at the moment.

It's time for a catch up with Dr. Richard Chambers.

So, I might just check in.

How's your practice been going?

I'm the scientific type.

You know, I'd like to do a lot more experiments

before I draw any conclusions,

but I'm feeling more relaxed than I have been for some time.

Yeah.

I notice the stress, but it's not like I'm sucked into it.

I just sort of cruise through which is very good.

Reducing stress is one of the most commonly reported

effects of meditation.

You know the stress

isn't actually in the situation,

the stress is in our relationship with the situation.

But stress is a complicated thing.

We can't avoid stress.

Stress is an embedded part of life,

and in fact, engaging in new things and challenges

is very good for us.

But we need to make sure that we have enough reserve

in our days, or at the least in our weeks.

And that's where meditation might help.

Meditation and mind-body activities are a wonderful

way to build our kind of physiological

and psychological resiliency.

To get a better idea of how meditation

works on a bigger scale,

I've come to Nan Tien Temple to meet

meditation teacher Chokyi.

She believes it has an important role to play in society.

When I first started meditating.

I remember I was telling everyone this is the cheapest

form in dealing with stress, anxiety,

that's available to you.

It's totally free.

Really, 'cause it's just you and your mind.

Chokyi is part of an international project

teaching meditation to inmates

in New South Wales correction centers.

People get into prison, and in one way,

you can say it's a bit like going into to retreat,

you know.

Because you go into a closed environment,

a lot of things are taken away from you,

and one thing you do have is time on your hands.

So, what you're gonna do now is you focus

all your awareness, strongly, on the sensation

at your nostrils as you breathe in and out.

You just feel that.

Take one more breath and you'll feel it, okay?

She believes it improves mental health

and aids rehabilitation.

And it doesn't take very long to see the effects

in a prison environment.

Former inmate Nick Brewer experienced

these benefits firsthand.

There were deep shifts in my psychological patterns,

and thought patterns about the way I felt

about myself and life.

And it started a whole rehabilitation process.

I think every one of us, whether we're in prison or out,

we look at our lives by not going on inside ourself

until the words vomit out the mouth,

or until the fist does the punch.

You know, you get into trouble in life.

They learn more about themselves.

They learn what is it that triggers me.

What triggers me to anger?

What triggers me to act out in ways, selfish ways,

or ways that do harm to others?

Professor Farias studied the effect

of meditation on prison inmates in South America.

He believes it helps in some ways, but it's no magic bullet.

We did find they became less stressed,

they had a lower probability of having

psychological problems.

On the other hand, we also found out that there

weren't differences, in terms of, aggression,

or interpersonal behavior.

Which is something we were looking for.

My old self is very alien to me now.

I can relate to the old Nick, the character,

but from what I did, you know, it's dead.

It's eight weeks later and my personal trial

has come to an end.

Who would've thought I'd ever take part

in a group meditation session?

There you go.

Anyway, my eight weeks is up now.

I'm off for my results.

Ah, Neil!

I'm back to Monash to find out if all

the dedication has paid off.

Thank you, I'm keen to see if I've made

a difference to my brain.

Yeah, let's see.

Three hours of cognitive tests and brain scans later.

It wasn't bad this time.

I gotta wait a week for the results, apparently though.

And it's results time

with Dr. Bailey and MRI expert Dr. Chao Suo.

Overall, you did better in three of the five tasks.

That are behavioral performing.

Oh, that's fantastic!

Not only that, you exerted less brain activity.

So, you spent less energy to do better.

This one, in particular, was your memory task.

I did better at that?

You did better that--

I felt like I was guessing.

That was a very hard test.

Yes, it was very hard.

Oi, that's annoying.

(laughs)

It was actually one where we were distracting you

with that tiny electrical shock.

I remember it well.

At the same time as you were

trying to remember stuff.

It feels like it's easier for me to intervene

if my brain's doing something I don't want it to do.

Yeah, that's cool.

And that's actually a really interesting point

for this next slide.

Your reaction time to unexpected events,

you cut your reaction time by 400 milliseconds.

Really?

That's almost half a second.

Yeah.

That's huge.

That's massive.

If you're driving a car, and a pedestrian steps out

in front of you.

400 milliseconds is probably a lifesaving amount of time.

That's very good news.

I feel like I passed.

Yeah.

I was better at the tasks,

but had my brain physically changed?

So, what do my brain scan results show?

All right, let's start with the structure changing

at the three brain regions that's been reported before.

There were indeed changes in my gray matter

density in several parts of my brain.

They're big changes in the scheme of things.

Yes, yes, that's very interesting finding, yeah.

The most dramatic change

was in a part of my hippocampus

known as the dentate gyrus where new brain cells

are produced in adults.

22.8%

It's enormous.

Yeah, it's huge.

That's really large, and it means something's

definitely going on and you've got what we call

neurogenesis happening.

In other words, new brain cells were growing.

And there's more.

My hippocampus is also exerting more control

over something called the default mode network,

which is associated with anxiety.

These changes are not usually seen in someone my age.

Younger people show that pattern more than older people.

It's as if my brain's getting a little bit younger.

Yeah, you've reversed the aging process a little bit

in your brain.

Who could complain about that?

(gentle violin music)

Now, sure my personal experience is not a proper

scientific study, so we can't say for sure

these brain changes were the direct result of meditation,

but hey, I'm impressed

and certainly feeling happy with my younger, heavier brain.

("Catalyst Theme")

(downtempo guitar music)