Episode 12: Meditation, the brain and meta-cognitive awareness
Episode 12 of M3CS’s Contemplative Science Podcast saw Sara Lazar come on to the podcast to talk about her research on the effects of meditation and yoga on brain function.
For the full podcast, check out the episode here.
In this episode, we cover...
How meditation and therapy can be effective partners in treatment.
The composition of the brain, and how meditation and yoga can alter it.
How you can set about changing your relationship to your world!
Sara Lazar is an associate researcher in the Psychiatry Department at Massachusetts General Hospital and Assistant Professor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School. Her work centres on neural mechanisms and the beneficial effects of meditation and yoga on cognitive and behavioural functions.
Here are some of the key insights from the conversation...
Meditation is all about improving meta-cognitive awareness.
”A lot of times people refer to meditation as a form of attention training because you're sitting there, you're focusing on something... your mind starts to wander, you bring it back. So if nothing else, you're training sustained attention and both we and others have data demonstrating that sustained attention improves. But in order to do that, what you're really doing is you're improving your ability to monitor your mind. That's called meta-awareness.”
Taking time to meditate allows us to reflect on our thoughts and actions.
“As we start to meditate, we tune in to that voice more and more. We pay more attention to it. And that voice is not always as kind as we think we are, right? Some of our motives are perhaps not as kind as we think we are, we do things that are perhaps a little bit morally grey. Normally we just brush that off and go past that. But with mindfulness, you really start to tune into it and you realise... my thoughts and my actions are perhaps not aligned with my thought of myself and with my morals, and so it really helps us clean up our act.”
Meditation helps us to gain perspective we often lack in a personal crisis.
“When we're in the middle of it, you know, we can't solve our problems, but we turn to a friend cause they've got perspective on it. And when we help a friend, we've got perspective on them. So now what if we could get that same perspective on ourself?And I feel like that's part of what meditation helps us do.”
The best place to find Sara Lazar is here.
See you next week!
