Meditation and running as methods to improve mood | Charles Raison
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Several researchers believe that meditation can produce the same types of mystical experiences as psychedelic drugs. Long-term meditators exhibit different patterns of activities and changes in volume in some regions of their brains. Even non-experienced meditators may experience changes in their brain following a two-month rigorous meditation program. Dr. Patrick shares that while she is not a meditator in the traditional sense, she finds running to have meditative and mood elevating qualities. In this clip, Dr. Charles Raison and Dr. Rhonda Patrick discuss the potential benefits of meditation and running to improve mood.
- Charles: In fact, last week I was having this really, I’ve got a colleague named John Dunn, who’s kind of one of the world’s great experts on Tibetan Buddhism, a great, great scholar, talking about meditative stuff. We were talking about absolutely that we know people, you know, you can meditate your way into the same types of experience, and I suspect much more profound experiences, because then you develop. You’re like an athlete of the mystical world, you know, it’s not just happening to you by a drug. You’re controlling it, so there’s a very strong overlap.
- Rhonda: I’ve seen multiple studies where first there’s studies looking at the brains of long term meditators, and how they various changes in brain volume in some parts of the brain, and all sorts of things going on. And that taking people that are not experienced meditators and putting them apart of this like two-month program, how they can have similar changes in their brain. So clearly, like you’re saying you’re kind of like an athlete of this world, where you’re absolutely changing, you know, the way your brain’s responding to emotional stimuli.
- Charles: Yeah. We did one of those studies, it’s interesting.
- Rhonda: Right. Yeah, so you did the study?
- Charles: Yeah, looking at compassion meditation and mindfulness meditation, and then that kind of health discussion with two groups. Yes, absolutely, we found some very interesting results. And Ricky Davidson, a colleague of mine, one of my sort of mentors at the University of Wisconsin has done studies showing that you can take people that are novices and get effects, if you really give them like eight weeks of hard core meditation. Of course then, there’s all sorts of interesting data of these people that are just, you know, amazing long term meditators, having very different types of brain pattern activities.
- Rhonda: Yeah. I think I even mentioned to you, I’m not a meditator in the traditional sense where I’m sitting in a quiet room with my eyes closed, but I do, for many years, running has been my meditation.
- Charles: Me too.
- Rhonda: Yeah. There’s a place I go in my brain when I am running that I am, sometimes I’m in the present, sometimes I do daydream, sometimes, you know, but it’s a very, like I just feel so good, it feels so good after, and it helps calm me. If I’m anxious about something and I go for a run, I mean, it’s immediately therapeutic for me.
- Charles: Absolutely.
The term "mindfulness" is derived from the Pali-term sati which is an essential element of Buddhist practice, including vipassana, satipatthana and anapanasati. It has been popularized in the West by Jon Kabat-zinn with his mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program. Large population-based research studies have indicated that the construct of mindfulness is strongly correlated with well-being and perceived health.
A class of hallucinogenic substances whose primary action is to alter cognition and perception, typically as serotonin receptor agonists, causing thought and visual/auditory changes, and "heightened state of consciousness." Major psychedelic drugs include mescaline, LSD, psilocybin, and DMT. Psychedelics have a long history of traditional use in medicine and religion, for their perceived ability to promote physical and mental healing.
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