Translator: Nancy Reeves Reviewer: Trina Orsic I have a five-year-old daughter. Right now, she is learning to ride a bicycle. The other day, for the first time we went out to the street.
She was very excited because she had learned to do something that weeks before seemed impossible. But as she is small, she doesn’t know the dangers of the street. She was going along happily and was approaching the sidewalk.
At that moment a car was approaching. Well, I don’t know how I did it, as any mom would, but in that moment the world disappears. I only could see that my daughter was approaching the sidewalk and without realizing it, I flew like a gazelle and managed to stop her.
What had happened to my brain? Well, technically, it had been hijacked by the amygdala. In our brain, inside, in the deepest zones we have a structure called the amygdala.
It’s called that because it’s the size of an almond. It’s a very important zone because it is involved in the management of our emotions. It’s the one involved, the one that activates when there is something I like, when there is something I don’t like.
This was discovered for the first time in the year 1984 at New York University. And since then, the amygdala is the region of emotions par excellence. However, that same university years later discovered that the amygdala has one peculiarity; the amygdala is an alarm detector.
When something seems alarming, something that puts us in danger, it activates in a very strong way and activates a secondary road. Meaning, it does not respect the brain’s hierarchy, it activates a road and accesses the frontal cortex directly. The frontal cortex for neuroscience is the jewel of the crown.
It is the zone which is most involved in the management of our behavior, for example. We refer to it more commonly as the brain’s headquarters. So when the amygdala reacts, when something really frightens us, and there is a strong emotional reaction, it takes control of the amygdala.
At that moment it blocks the rest of the systems and nothing else exists. It only processes the information in which the amygdala is involved at that moment. As you can imagine, this is a marvelous advantage.
At that moment, I reacted like a gazelle and I was able to stop my daughter. Now what the scientific literature tells us is that when we are under stress and specifically when we have chronic stress or when we have too much anxiety, the amygdala detects alarms where there are none. We get angry for a reason which may not justify it, we are too emotionally reactive, we see negative things everywhere.
This is neuroscience, and it has been observed that the amygdala hypertrophies, that is to say, your cerebral volume increases. It is bigger than it should be. Also, it’s observed that the amygdala is hyperactive.
The neurons that make up this structure begin to issue electric shocks non-stop and generate a great hemodynamic consumption. This transforms what was an advantage for us into one of the greatest sources of vital dissatisfaction. We are constantly irritable seeing problems that may not exist because the amygdala has lowered its threshold to detect these alarms.
Through scientific research we study how we can cause that amygdala system to regulate itself. So it doesn’t have to disappear, but it also doesn’t have to be so hyperactive. One way we study this at university is through meditation.
Like when we do meditation on a regular basis, we can shape and balance that system. We always ask ourselves, and I who dedicates my life to research ask, what do I have to do to meditate? Do I have to go live in a monastery to meditate?
That’s not necessary. There’s no need to lead a life of retreat. There’s no need to live in certain conditions.
There’s no need to meditate for hours, nor leave the mind blank. What meditation means, what neuroscience tells us is that five days after starting to meditate we begin to observe changes in the structure of our brain. But it’s not until after two months that these changes become significant.
There are zones that increase, zones that decrease, connections that generate. And how can we begin to meditate? Well, one of the most recognized forms in scientific literature allowing for the easiest transition into meditation, is to start observing sensations within our own body.
It’s much easier to observe sensations in our own body than to try to control our state of mind, control our thoughts. One of the most common forms, for example, is to observe our breathing. How does the air go in?
How does it go out? What sensations are produced when we are breathing? When we do this, what we do is contemplate our own condition, observe our own sensations.
Breathing affects our brain. Each time we inhale, the dynamic of our neurons change. Breathing is one of the important zone pacemakers, for example, the hippocampus, which is the memory, the frontal cortex which we have talked about, the amygdala which are the emotions.
Observing our breath increases the power that breathing already has on our brain. We are observing one of the processes with the greatest affect on our dynamic. We are bringing our attention to the present moment and we are observing our own selves.
Now you will ask, what does this have to do with hijacking the amygdala which we have started to discuss? What the University of Munich saw is that when we start to meditate, and we meditate for about half an hour, 3/4 of an hour a day, and it doesn’t have to be every day, it can be five days a week, as stress is reduced, the amygdala is reduced and the amygdala returns to its own size. It recovers its equilibrium.
Why? Because what we’re doing is to observe our sensations evenly. There is a second mechanism by which meditation shapes our brain.
Do you remember what we said about the amygdala, how when it kidnaps our brain, it kidnaps the frontal cortex? When we are observing our own sensations, when we are observing ourselves, we are fortifying the frontal cortex. When we fortify it and the amygdala attempts to hijack it, it becomes much harder for the amygdala to do this.
Therefore, meditation increases our well-being, improves our emotional intelligence, helps us to manage our emotions, increases our ability to prevent those amygdala kidnappings. Namely, it improves our quality of life. Just as my daughter found it absolutely impossible to learn to ride a bicycle, what neuroscience has seen and what we observe in the laboratory almost every day when someone tells us, “I am not able to meditate, I just can’t,” well, our capacity to mold and shape the brain, which is brain plasticity, allows us to incorporate habits which we did not believe.
In classical Greece, Plotinus told us, “I am not as I am but rather as I am used to being. ” 2000 years later, Ramon y Cajal told us, “We all can be sculptors of our own brain. ” But there is one more reason why it is important that we learn to regulate our amygdala, our amygdala system.
In the year 2015, the University of Paris discovered that for us to be able to perceive what is happening, the heart and the brain must communicate. Each time the heart emits a beat, the neurons of our brain must change their electric rhythm. Thanks to this communication, we are able to perceive what is happening.
If our brain does not respond to the heart beats, we do not perceive what is happening. Well, one of the doors through which the heart accesses the brain is the amygdala. The one we shape when we can practice meditation regularly.
Returning to classic Greece, I believe that neuroscience corroborates that when we learn to know ourselves we become sculptors of our own sculpture. Thank you.
