Mindfulness has been shown to be effective in relieving symptoms of depression, anxiety, and even chronic pain.
But how does that happen?
The other day, I told you about a study that looked at how mindfulness can change the anxious brain.
As it turns out, scientists have confirmed another brain connection, with a surprising twist. This is really cool.
Dr. Britta Hölzel and her team of researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital conducted a study to look at the impact of an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program on the brains of patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD).
Now GAD can be a truly debilitating condition that impairs daily functioning. Patients diagnosed with GAD typically have difficulty regulating their emotions and are often plagued by chronic and persistent worry.
For this investigation, researchers recruited 26 patients diagnosed with GAD to participate in the MRI study.
They randomly assigned half to the MBSR group and half to a stress management education program as a control.
The researchers also recruited 26 demographically matched, healthy individuals for baseline comparisons.
Just how and where does mindfulness impact specific areas of the brain? Click To TweetAt the beginning of the study, all of the participants were scanned using fMRI. During the scan, participants viewed photographs and labeled the facial expressions within each as angry, happy, or neutral.
This baseline comparison revealed that patients with GAD showed higher amygdala activation than the healthy participants when viewing neutral, not happy faces. The amygdala, as we know, is the part of the brain that’s associated with fear responses.
The researchers took this to mean that the brains of GAD patients at the beginning of the study reacted more strongly to ambiguous stimuli than the brains of healthy participants.
After GAD participants completed their respective programs – either the MBSR training or the stress management course – they completed several self-reported measures of anxiety and stress and also participated in another round of fMRI scans.
Here the researchers noted some interesting changes.
Participants from both the MBSR and stress management groups reported improvement in their symptoms following their trainings. And post-study fMRI scans of both groups showed decreases in activation of amygdala in response to neutral images.
But what’s interesting is that the patients who received mindfulness training also showed increases in connectivity between the amygdala and several regions of the brain that are responsible for successful emotional regulation.
So what can we conclude?
This study has identified particular regions in the brain that seem to correlate with the symptom improvement associated with mindfulness training. Remember, correlation does not imply causation, so we need to be cautious when interpreting the results.
In addition, this study was conducted with a small sample size. I would love to see it replicated with a larger group.
But I do think the findings are promising. If you’re curious to learn more about this, you can find the study in NeuroImage: Clinical, volume 2.
How has mindfulness helped relieve your patients’ symptoms of anxiety or other disorders? Please leave a comment below.
The info on mindful approach is really good. Informative and will be useful in my work.
Sorry, but with all the stuff out there on the topic, I personally think that mindfulness and meditation are a load of nonsensical crap that people employ to stay out of touch with reality. “Going back to the breath”? Telling one’s self “kind” things like, “May I be well”, “may I experience peace”, buying totally into the self-compassion myths, etc? Those things are so out of touch with common sense and reality! I definitely struggle with ADD, shades of PTSD (work-related – extraordinary bullying and harassment), depression, and lifelong major anxiety. But engaging in these sorts of contemplations ultimately serves to engender a false sense of “interconnectedness” with the world, a false sense of security within dealing with tough issues, and an attitude of arrogance and vaunting of self. None of us needs to use something like Dr. Neff’s “self-compassion break” as much as we need to use other methods of discerning the roots and causes of our issues, and dealing with them in ways that don’t require us to keep contemplating our breathing. That just seems to be yet another way to “actively” avoid life’s problems. Until there is far stronger scientific evidence that these things produce amazing, long-lasting results, I remain unconvinced that “navel-gazing” is a viable solution for PTSD, trauma-related issues, and other anxiety/depression/ADD-connected struggles.
Great work! Thank you for sharing your study findings. I agree they are promising. Being an Executive Mindfulness Trainer myself I appreciate the information. I will share. Keep up the good work!
Jenn Fairbank, MSW
Cornerstone Mindfulness, LLC
Thank you. Liked your informative article.
thank you!
As a quasi client, not a practitioner, this piece and the explanation of the Amygdala’s role was very helpful. Especially liked the reminder that the data was only correlative, not causal. Thanks.
I’m not a mental health professional, but can personally attest to the benefits of mindfulness and the relation to decreased episodes of anxiety.
It is better than medication or drug, and it’s totally free!
Thank you for this … These offerings make such a difference in my life and in my practice.
With much gratitude, Joyce
Thank you.
Great short review of some very interesting and important research. Thanks I will pass it on
Gabrielle Lawrence, PhD
The MBSR 8 week program is worth its weight in Gold~
Where can this be done. Is there anywhere in SE Qld?
Check out Openground in Brisbane and Sunshine Coast and also Alison Keane. Both fantastic!
cheers
Lynda
I am glad to see that you clarified at the end of the article that this shows a correlation not causation and in fact the sample size was small. Important things to note, especially for those who tend to think one study “proves” whatever it is about. I’m assuming there are some lay people who read these articles .
Thanks
I find mindfulness and meditation are so helpful in terms of personal as well as continuing my practice as a counsellor.It gives me great energy for tapping my resources in living my life .I practice two or three times a week.Definitely I feel the result.
Very helpful advice …Thankyou.
While I have had many who have experienced relief from anxiety and depression, I have had a few who could not remain focused or remember to use this method regularly. I personally have been able to end high blood pressure medication using mindfulness and yoga for several years twice a day.
Thanks for sharing these recent results. I reinforces my conviction that mindfulness is the cure for the 21st century.
I recently did some innovation in my classroom where I integrated mindfulness practices in teaching the course Inter and Intra Personal Development to social work students. I did a pre and post test using a mixed method approach. The narratives of the students from their daily journal were amazing as they spoke volumes about the effectiveness of mindfulness in reducing anxiety.
Thanks for sharing.
Hello, and thank you for your inspiring posts on the effectiveness of mindfulness. In your last post, the study contrasted mindfulness with relaxation training, and here it is contrasted with stress management education. As a mindfulness based practitioner who has trained in all 3, I am wondering if readers might wonder what about “mindfulness” per se, might account for these promising results.
Thank you,
Madelaine
Whatever our interpretation of ‘results’ as it were… these will be embedded and funded by our own perspective and requirements. Just by using the word ‘result’ we are already demanding that a tool or practice designed to denounce the drive for a result must show us one. Ah well…
The paradox of mindfulness… 🙂
The paradox of mindfulness…that when we let go of the drive for a result, we get results! That when we accept what is, what is changes somehow…. 🙂
I wonder if we might view “the mind” as a multi-faceted creature. Typically, “it” has narrowed its vision to keeping us safe, and accomplishing the task at hand. This naturally leads to anxiety and stress. With any mindfulness technique, and certainly with the Flash Awake I am teaching (www.flashawake.com), perhaps we are RE-ORIENTING the mind’s perspective to a larger field of awareness. One that includes the present moment and the huge context that even makes the present moment possible (whether you call this huge context God, True Nature, Unifying Field, Cosmos, etc). By shifting the perspective and the context to the bigger picture, anxiety is lowered, and the brain’s negativity bias (Rick Hanson) is changed.
Although we may not yet extrapolate this to show causation, it is another
great example of the amazing unexpected potential for healing due
to the plasticity of the brain. No single method works for all.
Although we are encouraged to find that magic bullet due to
today’s quick-fix society and insurance co. profit margins, perhaps
we can view this as encouragement to trust our biology’s ability
to balance once our minds are no longer providing
obstacles.
open focus is really effective
Mindfulness has helped many clients decrease reactivity in their life.
What do you suggest to recommend, such as an ‘app’ or CD, to a client in ‘talk therapy’ to enhance treatment by practicing mindfulness and/or meditation ?
Hi! I haven’t done as much “literature review” as I’d like–so many more I’d like to test out.
Background…I’m currently disabled and a 20-year client of the mental health system (treatment for bipolar, ptsd, anxiety, ED and now fibromyalgia). Previously, I was a teacher (focusing on critical and creative thinking) with a BA in Elem Ed, a BS in Adult Ed and 2 years postgraduate work in cognitive psychology. I also have some experience in instructional design. Quite the diverse bio
Thank you for continuing to provide us with information on this fascinating topic. As you say, the findings are promising, but we must remain cautious about our interpretation.
Unless there is an active comparison group, we cannot know that MBSR is better than, say, CBT, or more likely, Well-Being Psychotherapy (Ryff). That is works, is clear and we all agree. That it is somehow better, no, we don’t know that, and the likely answer is that it is not. Until Mindfulness researchers do head-to-head comparison, we actually know less than we think we know.
Lynn, this is a good point. One group did receive stress management education, so there is a comparison between the mindfulness programme and whatever the stress management course covered. And the different was higher connectivity between the amygdala and other parts of the brain that regulate emotion. But you’re right in that we don’t know — from this study alone — if other therapies also provide the same benefits, or different benefits. It’s all in the methodology, isn’t it?
Thank you for your cautious, scientific approach. Too often we find people claiming more than the research actually proves, especially in the media aimed at the general public. The research is promising and, like you, I want to see the results replicated with larger sample sizes. And I especially appreciate your pointing out the need for caution because “correlation does not prove causation.” That is a very important tenet often forgotten in the excitement when research seems to prove what we want to hear.
At any rate, this appears to be a careful, well designed study, one that was randomized and double-blinded, not an observational study. And one that used more than self-reported progress. That heartens me too. Thanks for sharing this.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and insights.
Thank you! It reminds me of Dan Siegel’s work around neural integration, and how important it is to understand the biological underpinnings of mindfulness.
Hi Ruth
I congratulate for your beautiful article. You are an expert from science that starts its journey from science and moves to mindfulness. I have devoted my 36 years in understanding, practicing and experiencing the mindfulness/ meditation. I have masters in science, still I consider myself a child who knows a little about it.
First, can we say I know 1% of science and 99% of eastern wisdom, from where this mindfulness/ meditation came to modern world?
I cannot make any claim, how much you are well versed with eastern wisdom. There are hundreds of practices (non-practice if you like to say) of mindfulness/meditation. I am somewhat surprised when researchers claim that mindfulness is Buddhist and meditation is non-Buddhist.
How does it happen is a question? How does mindfulness change the brain?
Any mindfulness/ meditation aims at unfolding subjective reality. This subjective reality is pure state of consciousness.
However, mind divides and perceives.
I am the body – mind says. Who knows deep inside that I am not the body?
If it is mind, then there is nothing in mindfulness at all.
If there is something beyond, then what it is?
Science says, let us explore the brain.
The question comes weather brain and mind are same or different.
Eastern wisdom says that when consciousness and matter comes in contact, mind is created.
Mind can act as matter and consciousness.
When mind is empty, or devoid of any content in it. It becomes transparent. It reflects the consciousness. This consciousness is peace, love, wisdom and happiness.
Great masters explain it by metaphor
The wave claims it is different from ocean, because of ignorance.
Mind claims it is different from the reality, because of lack of awareness.
When mind merges into the consciousness because of devoid of contents in it, it reflects the subjective reality.
Can we say – brain does not receive any actionable information from the mind.
In this state, brain awakens to its highest intelligence and works toward harmony for the existence of an individual.
As by product, we notice changes in the brain as if it is helping and improving the conditions of chronic pain, anxiety and other illnesses.
In reality, in mindfulness state, we do not have any illnesses. The brain picks up the information – fires to the brain to rewire it.
I wonder if I am able to express myself clearly.
Does it make any sense to you?
Please write to me.
Girish, it makes perfect sense to me. And perhaps that’s because I have practiced a yogic meditation in the eastern wisdom tradition for almost 50 years, and have been teaching it for over 20 years. Currently teaching this very simple “deep sky” breath awareness to addicts in recovery, with remarkable outcomes!
You state “…when consciousness and matter come in contact, mind is created.” Brilliant and simple statement of the so-called “fall from grace” that is the separate, suffering mind, and why a calm and quieted mind is essential to rediscover our source, our home and our oneness in Pure Consciousness. Thank you for making my day!
IT MAKE SENSE TO ME, THANK YOU GIRISH.
grounding techniques in combination with learning the techniques of mindfulness in DBT treatment program, has not only saved my life, but kept my dissociation more manageable, allowing further counceling, and deeper healing, as well as empowering me to be able (and willing) to tolerate some exposure therapy. I would LOVE to see more info presented on habitual dissociation as related to early trauma, and learn more skills to address this tendency. The work of Tara Brach, Rick Hanson, Brene’ Brown and Kristen Neff has been helpful, though not specifically addressing trauma.
Thanks for your work!
I am dealing with Biotoxic Illness, which means I have a complex of symptoms, many driven by chronic inflammation
I am also dealing with Depression, Anxiety, and Cognitive issues. According to Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker, these are all connected. I am also a student of Buddhism and meditator. I feel that meditation and mindfulness
Have grateful potential, but require strong intent, patience, and modesty of expectation. I do wonder about the cultural issue of ‘free will’.. when a significant degree of a mood is affected by one’s biology, being Depressed
be ones a moral issue..why not just change your mood a be more positive?
Even with mindfulness, there needs to be enough brain health to allow the level of awareness involved. And deeper Buddhist training and maturity, as well the right support may be important to cope with the,suffering that can come with the practice of ‘staying with one’s pain and suffereing, as well as deepening insights that come with being more inner focused.
Also, note hat EFT also is said to work at the level of the amygdala.
The study is interesting, but I have one question: are the participants clinging to the possible outcome of the study…in other words, enacting the role for the results? Is this true mindfulness. Mindfulness can encompass many definitions. A study must give ‘mindfulness’ it’s definition for the study. We can be creating a panacea without realizing i
It’s understandable GAD sufferers would experience more anxiety with the “neutral” images…1). As we learned in Hakomi, It’s almost impossible to look completely neutral (these people may be more attuned due to impending childhood dangers or whatever) & 2). To someone of that background, “neutral” face can mean waiting for the other shoe to drop…hard. Thanks Ruth for sharing important new messages, & all for important quality comments.
I have been meditatiing for a year, practicing mindfulness when I think worring thoughts. My adult son has terminal cancer and I am distressed and cry often. Iam 86 live far away and we talk often and last week we Skyped. My grieving is out of control some days. Any suggestions?
I am sorry Miriam to hear of your son and can understand how tough things must be for you right now. Can I suggest that you may find some of Tara Brach’s guided meditations helpful particularly when thoughts become really troubling, as you say they do. Wishing you peace and also that you, your son and the rest of your family live with ease in body and mind.
Such a tough time for you, Miriam!
It’s so sad to have a dear one go through such a tough illness!
Without a doubt mindfulness has helped me, my clients and students calm the nervous system, look at the stories feeding the anxiety and not react. “Widening the gap” between stimulus and response changes lives. I’m not surprised to hear about changes in the amygdyla… it makes sense.
Inna Khazan, PhD Clinical Psychologist Instructor of Psychology, Harvard Medical School wrote this excellent book: “The Clinical Handbook of Biofeedback: A Step-by-Step Guide for Training and Practice with Mindfulness” – A practical guide to the clinical use of biofeedback, integrating powerful mindfulness techniques. http://bit.ly/1axuHOv
I use mindfulness and yoga with many of my children and adolescents who experience high anxiety, depression, ADHD and trauma. The feedback I have received is effective and positive, the challenges I have experienced is consistency in session and out.
I find Mindfulness Meditation to be most helpful for anxiety and depression management of self and others. In my own life it helps to soothe my feelings of stress, seems to slow down time, and to allow me to take one thing at a time. When I meditate on a regular basis I am more aware of how my feelings/beliefs affect me physically, emotionally, and cognitively. My clients who meditate regularly are also more aware of the interface between feelings and beliefs and able to emotionally regulate feelings and behaviors.
I’ve been informed that the heart controls the brain.
I wonder if “Mindfulness” is enough to heal the world…
It might help, Herbert, but without an objective moral standard, it is not good enough. The standard is stamped in human hearts, but we would have to to be consciously aware of it, and logically attached to it at all times. Most people refuse to do it. Emotional thinking is encouraged and practiced by all when it suits them, including governments and politicians. Logical absurdities and tragedies abound.
Hi! I’ve been following your site for a while now and finally got the courage to go ahead and give you a shout out from Huffman Texas!
Just wanted to tell you keep up the fantastic job!
It really grabbed my attention. I try to use it in my classroom environment.
You can learn more about using mindfulness effectively in the classroom from mindfulschools.com
Mindfulness helped me taper off antidepressants and remain depression for two years.
Mindfulness has helped me taper off antidepressants and remain depression-free for two years.
Many years ago I practice Zen meditation and after a couple of months doing that a fairly consistent sadness was lifted.
I am very glad to hear of this research. In my experience, the way mindfulness is triggered may be different for different individual. As I have always been a visual-dominant thinker, my experience of expressive arts and Creative Journal has been that using both hands to both draw and write about the emotions, does trigger a state of creative reverie or absorption. This I believe results in the same effects on the brain as taught mindfulness. As Buddhists will teach, doing things mindfully is as important as breathing mindfulness, meditation, etc.
Exciting research, especially since GAD seems to be increasingly diagnosed. I find the findings about increased brain ‘negative’ reactivity over ambiguous stimuli to be consistent with what I’ve noticed in people with GAD; uncertainty causes flaring of symptoms. It’s so exciting that something nonpharmaceutical can be so helpful; low cost and no side effects!
Thank you so much for sending us this research.
Though some of the language is not familiar to me, the abstract and the entire study is good to follow. Of course the results bring joy to any Hakomi Therapist’s heart since we’ve been using the practice routinely since Ron Kurtz developed and began to share this method in the late 70s.
Thank you, blank, Thank you, youhoo, thank you
Interesting research. Thank you! I agree with previous commentator, mindfulness needs to be thought of and positioned as an adjunct tool not a panacea. And for some people it can be downright overwhelming to sit down and watch their thoughts and body sensations, especially if not we’ll guided. Having said that, it is here to stay and it is a much needed tool for want of a better word in an increasingly hectic, stressed and pressured Western world.
I have found mindfulness training very helpful for anxious and depressed clients. It has also proven to be helpful for other conditions including marital distress, anger management, etc. but not alone. It is an adjunct therapy in that the practice of mindfulness is helpful for practicing other cognitive therapies as when the client becomes aware of negative thoughts then they can change them.
As far as PTSD it is not very helpful alone as the intrusive thoughts/images can overwhelm the client so the client often needs other strategies to deal with this thoughts/images but mindfulness is still helpful for other areas of the client life as the client integrates his therapy within in his/her mind.
Dan Siegel will be very happy with this.”.. increases in connectivity between the amygdala and several regions of the brain that are responsible for successful emotional regulation.” The importance of integration (connectivity between brairegions) cannot be be over-emphasized. To reach a state of balance intgration is needed. Wonderful that mindfulness can ais us in achiveing this!
Listening to a lecture by Peter Levine, being asked about the usefulness of Mindfulness for trauma, he responded a negative. So how is NICABM thinking about Mindfulness and trauma and Mindfulness and severe attachment disorders, like avoidant or ambivalent attachment? Personally i found Mindfulness, mostly practiced through the original cd programms by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a lifesaver. It helped me stand lifethreatening emotions. I have wondered however for a long time, if it keeps the condition stagnant, not progressing into more healing. Suffering from prenatal trauma, which once was thought to be incurable by Peter Levine, i now find myself more and more in the core of these preverbal, pre hippocampus development, traumatic emotions. Connections with others regularly are off, but it seems that often has more to do with the other then with me. Being an extreme empath, i seem to feel and take over the negative emotions of others, which, when unclear, where and how they originate, is very confusing. Could it be that somehow my brain lingers in a prenatal state where as a foetus i heal the mother, in these days everyone in my surroundings. Scientifically proven a foetus does heal physical conditions of their biomoms. I always felt i did prevent further suicideattempts of my mother. She did 3. I sort of became her mother/confidante at 5 years of age. But possibly earlier on our brainconnection started that much earlier. If it were only my attachment issues, i would expect the other person to react similarly. They do not. I am despised by some, deeply welcomed by others. Sometimes that concerns my dissociated part, but sometimes the traumatised, never born foetus. Somehow a lot of these human conditions, emotions never applied to me and in many aspects my thinking functions on a high soulaspect. That however created problems in contact/relationships with my now adult children, who could not/ chose to no longer want to handle the traumatriggers/traumastates.
There are psychotherapeutic techniques that use mindfulness in particular, selective ways to help with trauma and traumatic attachment experiences, such as Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. sensorimotorpsychotherapy.org Focusing in on very small parts of the experience can help to reduce the potential overwhelm that can occur otherwise.
Gertrude,
My mother was bipolar, diagnosed long after I had reached adulthood. She made suicidal statements many times as I was growing up, but she didn’t become actively suicidal until she was in her 70’s. Unlike you, I spontaneously turned inward, focusing on techniques for my own survival instead of developing empathy. For decades I was unable to practice mndfulness because I was unable to focus my attention on anything for more than a very brief period. I believe that a near-death experience brought me to the point at which I was able to focus long enough to experience the benefits of mindfulness. My experience gave me assurance of the existence and presence of God, and this led me to an acceptance of everything just as it is. Traumatic memories continued to arise, but they didn’t have the same power to envelop me and block me off from my current surroundings and experiences.
Today I heard the story of a man who suffered from PTSD after having lost his legs in battle. He said his turnabout came when he began to practice yoga and felt the pull of the earth as he followed prescribed movements. So it became clear to me that although I had been insisting on relief only through belief in a personal God, a similar relief was quite possible from recognition of an undefined but powerful and benevolent force that governs us. It’s the understanding of Julian of Norwich that “all is well and all shall be well.” I hope this information is in some way helpful to you.