My Life as a Researcher

is not even close to the "real" thing, but ever since I've been taking this Mindfulness class I have been much more cognizant of my brain and all the activity related to its workings.

Last week in class a study from the University of Wisconsin Madison was shared on happiness. It is detailed in Jon Kabat-Zinn's book, Coming to Our Senses.

Here's the gist. Two groups from a cutting edge biotechnology business are asked to take MBSR. One group takes the class immediately, the other is put on a waiting list. Their brains are examined with electrodes before and after.

When examining the frontal and prefrontal areas of our brain there was a definite difference in the groups.

The frontal and prefrontal handle our emotions. On the left side is happiness and alertness, the positive emotions. The activation for this emotion is approach. On the right side is the difficult and disturbing, fear and sadness. The activation for this emotion is avoidance. Approach or avoidance, doesn't that just explain a lot? I love it! It was sort of an AHA moment for me.

 For years scientists felt that our emotional temperament was thought to be fixed for life. How we balance these emotions in our reactions and response to life, did not change. And as you can imagine where I am going with this, they do change. The study showed that the people who were in the MBSR class had a shift toward more positive emotions and were more effective at processing the difficult emotions under stress. Plus they discovered that the greater the brain change, the great the immune response.

Just how can you argue with science?

So how does this affect me as a novice researcher? Well meditation affects our alertness. Our ability to focus and return back to the subject at hand. I have discovered that over the years in teaching I became increasing more ADD. And it makes sense. I was constantly interrupted in thought or conversation by either a child, a colleague or a bell. Rarely did I have more than 15 minutes of uninterrupted time in my day to think. So my mind just adapted to two seconds here, four minutes there.

Now I've been trying to keep my brain engaged and I work on Sudoku or Scrabble or other video games to keep my neurons firing. Earlier in the summer I was beginning to wonder if I would ever see improvement. In fact I thought I was forgetting more things. I do Sudoku on my iPad and there is a timer. Sometimes it would take me 17 minutes to complete a game. I felt I was on a downhill slide.

Then this week I did a game in seven minutes. Things just clicked. It was the same level, same App. I was shocked. I've repeated it two more times and I may not be at seven minutes but at less than ten. I also feel like my memory has improved and I am able to concentrate more. Which is what meditation is supposed to do.

When you meditate and your mind wanders, you just bring it back. It's the bringing back, the refocus that is the key. I've been meditating now for seven weeks, six days a week.

To quote Professor Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady, "By George, I think she's got it!"