Physics of Meditation – 1 [A Referenced Guide by Akshay kumar ]

I was always Enthralled by the spirituality as same as Theoretical Physics. My actual understanding perhaps the way I understood science of spiritual was Nomadic.I refer nomadic because the knowledge of spiritual science evolved in Imperceptible way. I like to express a gratitude to My Guru Mathaji.

She is the one who given ideology of ancient Vedanta’s and their use in day to day life. How we able to use the benefits of ancient Tantric and Meditations to achieve a better life cherishing the stressful life. And repair the oxygen – blood incompatibility. Many more which I’m going to discuss in future posts.Meditation means awareness of everything around us. Whatever you do with deep awareness is meditation. “Listening your breath is regarded as meditation” listening to the chirping of birds is meditation. As long as these activities and including the activities which occurs naturally are free from any other distraction to the mind-body, its the true meditation.  

The word meditation, is derived from two Latin words : meditari(to think, to dwell upon, to exercise the mind) and mederi (to heal). Its Sanskrit derivation ‘medha’ means wisdom. Tantra is an ancient science dealing with many different systems for increasing the speed of human evolution. In present Technology, suppose think about a car/vehicle which moves by the Fossil fuels.The car may give out an excess or sometime optimal exhaust, what if it gives large than usual you make an arrangement like changing Engine/repairing, Filters, the filters may work efficiently or may not. But the main goal is to control the amount of carbon content and Sulphur content. And also, the proper throw out of waste increase the durability of engine, and vehicle of course. As the same way, our Human body is a constantly running engine which must be repaired or maintained in order to perform an efficient metabolism in cells of body, so the improper cell metabolism may lead to the risks of disease. Isn’t it this happens?

May be our day to day life with many contamination can be thrown away by meditation techniques. My one of neighbor said after reading above sentence I knew this. And instantly I asked him, Wow how about you doing daily? He replied, That’s a bad idea! Because its difficult to do meditation  in cold mornings.So, what I need to convey is this, the meditation techniques are more practical than illusion of techniques. So, actual practice of yoga and pranayama only helps. So, you can’t simply read this try to do it in mornings or evenings. Meditation is something that most people have heard about, few have any true conception about and even fewer have actually experienced.  And coming back to Meditation it’s a routine based, you need to Take extra effort.

Research on meditation concerns research into the psychological and physiological effects of meditation using the scientific method of the western tradition.

In recent years, studies have been involved the use of modern scientific techniques and instruments, such as fMRI and EEG validate.

And which are able to directly observe brain physiology and neural activity. Surprisingly during the act of meditation, or even before and after a meditation effort, thus allowing linkages to be established between meditative practice and changes in brain structure or function.

Since the 1950s hundreds of studies on meditation have been conducted. Yet, many of the early studies were flawed and thus yielded unreliable results.Contemporary studies have attempted to address many of these flaws with the hope of guiding current research into a more fruitful path.In 2013, researchers at Johns Hopkins identified 47 studies that qualify as well-designed and therefore reliable.

Based on these studies, they concluded that meditation appears to be as effective in treating some forms of anxiety and depression as antidepressant medication.

Their findings were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in early 2014.The process of meditation, as well as its effects, is a growing subfield of neurological research.Modern scientific techniques and instruments, such as fMRI and EEG, have been used to study how regular meditation affects individuals by measuring brain and bodily changes.

Brain areas that are thicker in practitioners of Insight meditation than control subjects who do not meditate. Graphs show age and cortical thickness of each individual, red= control subjects, blue = meditators. This work has been taken by the National Institutes of Health, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the AlterMed Research Foundation – Own work

Let us know Physics of Chakras : 

Coming to the actual topic of today’s post Physics of Chakras. The scientific research on these things were carried out long back. In Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, a chakra is thought to be an energy point or node.

By using chakra yoga to keep the energy centers of our body clean, open and balanced, anyone can get access to supreme health and organs of human body working efficiently to their highest possible. According to the ancient, there are 7 major energy nodes.

Below I attached a picture representing the Chakras Chakra positions in relation to nervous plexi, from a 1927 textbook.

Chakra positions in relation to nervous plexi, from a 1927 textbook

In the book Anatomy of the Spirit which was published in 1996 by an American author Caroline Myss describes the function of chakras as follows:

“Every thought and experience you’ve ever had in your life gets filtered through these chakra databases. Each event is recorded into your cells…”.

The chakras are described as being aligned in an ascending column from the base of the spine to the top of the head. New Age practices often associate each chakra with a certain color. In various traditions, chakras are associated with multiple physiological functions, an aspect of consciousness, a classical element, and other distinguishing characteristics.

They are visualized as lotuses or flowers with a different number of petals in every chakra. The chakras are thought to vitalize the physical body and to be associated with interactions of a physical, emotional and mental nature. They are considered loci of life energy which is thought to flow among them along pathways called nadi. The function of the chakras keep the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical health of the body in balance whenever it goes wrong or sometimes the yogic practitioner experience a difference in life from meditational life to normal life.

Changes in the brain

Mindfulness meditation also appears to bring about favorable structural changes in the brain.One recent study found a significant cortical thickness increase in individuals who underwent a brief -8 weeks- MBSR training program and that this increase was coupled with a significant reduction of several psychological indices related to worry, state anxiety, depression.

Another study describes how mindfulness based interventions target neurocognitive mechanisms of addiction at the attention-appraisal-emotion interface.A meta-analysis by Fox et al. (2014) using results from 21 brain imaging studies found consistent differences in the region of the prefronal cortex and other brain regions associated with body awareness.

In terms of effect size the mean effect was rated as moderate. (Cohen’s d = 0.46) However the results should be interpreted with caution because funnel plots indicate that publication bias is an issue in meditation research. A follow up by Fox et al. (2016) using 78 functional neuro-imaging studies suggests that different meditation styles are reliably associated with different brain activity.

Activations in some brain regions are usually accompanied by deactivation in others. This finding suggests that meditation research must put emphasis on comparing practices from the same style of meditation, for example results from studies investigating focused attention methods cannot be compared to results from open monitoring approaches.

A 6-week mindfulness based intervention was found to correlate with a significant gray matter increase within the precuneus.[40] Interestingly a positive relationship has been found between the volume of gray matter in the right precuneus and the subject’s subjective happiness score.

A Tibetan Lama was being monitored on a brain scan machine by a scientist wishing to test physiological functions during deep meditation. The scientist said – “Very good Sir. The machine shows that you are able to go very deep in brain relaxation, and that validates your meditation”. “No”, said the Lama, “This (pointing to his brain) validates the machine!”. These days it is commonly understood to mean some form of spiritual practice where one sits down with eyes closed and empties the mind to attain inner peace, relaxation or even an experience of God. Some people use the term as “my gardening is my meditation” or for jogging or art or music, hence creating confusion or misunderstanding.

Some Video links to understand

Knowledge credit :

1.https://www.myss.com/

2.Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing 1996. ISBN 978-0-609-80014-0

3.Swami Sivananda Saraswati(1971). The science of pranayama. Divine Life Society. 4.Swami Sivananda Saraswati (1979). Practice of yoga. The Divine Life Society.

5.Can the Excellence of the Internal Be Measured? – A Preliminary Study Pradeep B. Deshpande*1, P. Krishna Madappa2 & Konstantin Korotkov3

 

References :

1.  https://dx.doi.org/10.1093%2Fscan%2Fnss104

2. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fnyas.12305

3.https://dx.doi.org/10.3389%2Ffpsyg.2014.01220

4. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.neubiorev.2014.03.016

5.https://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.neubiorev.2016.03.021