Calming the Brain through
Mindfulness
Rewire Emotions with the Power of Neuroplasticity
Dr. Mark Beischel
Adjunct Professor of Psychology
Peru State College of NE
[email protected]
Development of the
Brain
• Social by nature—capacity
developed through secure
attachment
• Development of frontal and
limbic cortices
• Schore’s “Relational Trauma”
Limbic System
• Hypothalamus– regulates
hunger, thirst, pain, pleasure,
anger, and aggression
• Hippocampus—organizes
information for long-term
storage
• Amygdala—encodes and
identifies emotional arousal:
identifies trust vs. betrayal
Location of the Amygdala
Frontal Lobe
• “Thinking” part of the brain: logic and
“means to end thinking.”
• Coordination of motor movements
• Luria and the “executive control
center.”
Barkley’s Executive
Capacities
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1. Spatial
2. Temporal
3. Motivational
4. Inhibitory
5. Conceptual/abstract
6. Social
7. Cultural
Neurotransmitters
 Neurons transmit information from
neuron to neuron forming circuits and
networks
 Neurotransmitters are chemicals that
either promote or inhibit the message
 The balance of these neurotransmitters is
set during the first year of life primarily
through the attachment process
Neurotransmitters
• Noradrenalin-- regulates alertness, anxiety,
tension as well as positive feelings of motivation.
Neglected monkeys and depressed patients have
low levels.
• Serotonin– regulates mood, anger and
aggression. Subjects of neglect and abuse have
lower levels of Serotonin
•
Dopamine “feel good” neurotransmitter
Regulates attention, sociability and pleasure and
learning.
Neurotransmitters
• GABA– inhibitory neurotransmitter that
is involved in sleep regulation,
emotional balance and anxiety.
• Acetylcholine– released through vagus
nerve stimulation—important in long
term memory formation.
• Glutamate– excitatory neurotransmitter
important in learning and memory
DNA Telomeres
• Telomeres—protective casing at the
end of DNA strands.
• Chronic stress results in shorter
telomeres, cell death or the cells
become pro-inflammatory.
• Anxious mothers have infants with
shorter telomeres and prone to
illness.
Von Economo Neurons
 Unique long neurons found only in humans,
great apes, elephants and whales.
 Found in the anterior cingulate cortex & Frontal
insula
 Function of these neurons seem to be related
to self awareness, cooperative relationships,
understanding the feelings of others and
empathy.
The Social Brain
 Attachment is the link between us and larger
organisms: families, tribes, organizations
 Survival depends on being
wired to connect to those around us
 Infants who are well cared for build healthy
resilient brains, while insecure connections
result in brains at risk for dysfunctional
stress and physical and psychiatric illness.
Fear, Anxiety and Survival
•
Bowlby has suggested that the real
insecurity of attachment is “fear of
survival.”
• In the last century children in
orphanages were dying. Initially it was
thought to be related to the spread of
microorganisms.
When that hypothesis failed it soon
became apparent that it was due to
social connections
Mirror Neurons
 Specific neurons fire when a behavior is
observed, but also when the observer
repeats the action.
 This explains social learning theory, onetrial learning, and the rapid acquisition of
language in small children.
 Mother and child develop an
emotional attunement—the
capacity to develop intimacy.
Attunement
• Takes place between mother and infant
through MUTUAL REGULATION of
AROUSAL
• Mother has to be sensitive to changes in
the infants states
• Infant responds to the mother’s attempt to
reduce arousal
• Insensitive and non-responsive parents
have infants who cannot regulate well and
have intimacy skills
Intimacy Skills
• Self-awareness– requires a healthy ego
with the sense of security. Fluctuating
ego states often results in termination of
relationships
• Empathy– being able to look at an
emotion or situation from another’s
perspective. Preoccupation with your own
needs interferes with the ability to pull
back from your own needs to imagine
how another might feel.
Intimacy Skills
• Communication of Emotions– you have to
know how you feel here and now. When
your ego is highly defended and impulse
control low. “I love you” often means “I
need you” or “I want to control you.”
• Conflict Resolution– both parties must be
able to regulate affect and sensitive to
the other’s position. Insecure individuals
are preoccupied with getting their own
needs met due to fear of not surviving
Intimacy Skills
• Sustaining Commitments– if you have
an impaired ego you do not know who
you are and where you are going.
• Commitments are difficult to sustain So
we easily change careers, interests and
relationships. The “throw-away” society
tends to support the instability.
Neurobiology of Meditation
 At lower levels of training the prefrontal cortex
and the anterior cingulate cortex become more
active, and the thalamus and amygdala less
active.
 As meditation skill increases the PFC becomes
less active and the anterior insula and
somatosensory cortices become more active.
 Adept meditators have a thickening of the insula
(sensory awareness) and reduced neural
structures (amygdala) emotional processing.
Emotional Benefits of
Mindfulness
 Trait Mindfulness (day-to-day mindful
attention) produces the following on
negative emotions:
1. less suppression
2. greater emotional clarity
3. more effective down-regulation
4. non-judgmental acceptance of
experience
Emotional Benefits of
Mindfulness
• Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
(MBSR)showed the following results:
1. decreased reported fear of emotions
2. less worry
3. less rumination
4.. less emotional regulation difficulties
5. reduces the vulnerability to sadness
• May also benefit experience of positive emotions:
pleasure, joy and contentment
Anxiety & Fear
• Our brains are organized to recognize danger
in order to survive
• Some fears ae biologically organized (snakes,
spiders, heights) in the limbic
area, others are learned in the PFC.
• To survive perceived dangers we have to act
very quickly: increased blood supply to our
large muscles as well as epinephrine and
glucocorticoids prepare us for survival actions
that we could not muster in our normal relaxed
state
Anxiety & Fear
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Fast circuits--- for survival happens automatically--directly from the limbic system
Slow circuits—routed through the hippocampus (recall of
past memories) and PFC (problem solving).
We learn to pair any situation with the biological
responses. See this in PTSD victims.
Unconscious fears and anxieties have their roots in
disorganized and violent homes
We learn to regulate our fears and anxieties in organized
predictable environments through secure relationships.
Benson’s Relaxation
Response
 History of medical research suggests that the only
viable “cures” for disease was surgery or
medications.
 Benson has been doing research at Harvard on a
third alternative: relaxation
 He found out that mental states change
physiological function
 He theorized that many medical problems were
due to over-stimulation of the autonomic nervous
system
Relaxation response
 Decreases in: metabolism, heart rate, blood
pressure, respiration rate and calming brain
(limbic system) activity.
 Increases in: attention and gene activity
 Researchers at Harvard found the answer in
“transcendental meditation.”
---decreased oxygen consumption
---increased alpha waves
---thicker cortices in the frontal area
---lowered blood pressure due to environmental
stress
Gene Expression changed
 The relaxation response was able to change
how genes were expressed
 The areas studied were:
---cancer
---heart disease
---anxiety and depression
 Discovered through placebo studies that
about 50% of depression symptoms could
be reduced due to the expectation of being
helped.
Relaxation Response
Also elicited through:
 Aerobic Exercise due to blood supply of
oxygen and other nutrients
 Repetitive Prayer– whether a “mantra”
or “Hail Mary” it seems to work due to
“repetition in a mindless state.”
Relaxation Response
 Progressive muscle relaxation—tense
muscle group for 10 seconds and relax for
15 seconds sequentially muscles in the
hands, biceps, triceps, forehead, around
the eyes, jaw, neck, shoulders, chest,
stomach, lower back, buttocks, thighs, calf
and foot.
Used for many years in the treatment of
anxiety disorders such as panic disorder.
Relaxation Response
 Music—Benson also found that the
relaxation response can be elicited through
playing or listening to music.
-- the brain has evolved in a way that
music engages the whole brain
-- increases muscular and molecular energy
-- heartbeat and metabolism
-- so played in hospital and healthcare
offices
Relaxation Response & Visualization
 “Mindless” repetitive movements also relax
us according to Benson.
-- the sounds of motors, air conditioners,
ocean tides and the human heart beat.
 Benson and his researchers found that to
get the best results from relaxation using
any of the above means, they had to add a
visualization exercise
Visualization Exercise
 Long history of using visualization or imagination to get
better control
--close your eyes and see yourself in a
healthy state.
-- see yourself as care free, perhaps as a
child running and doing summer-saults
-- relive a state of wellness from the past
-- see yourself as being able to control a
situation that is very stressful in real life
-- 8 to 10 minutes after the relaxation exercise
Relaxation & Visualization
 Relaxation and visualization (about 30
minutes a day) works because your
expectation of an unhealthy body and mind
turns into the expectation of a healthy one
 Results in activation of the executive
control center—better attention and
concentration– the brain becomes calmer
and open to new thoughts
 Expectations determine choices of behavior
Benson’s Eight-step Program
Step 1: pick focus words, image or focus
on your breathing; must be related
to your deepest beliefs.
Step 2: find a quiet place, usually away from
the distractions of home.
Step 3: close your eyes—in a “safe place” so
the limbic system is not working in
survival mode.
Benson’s Eight-step Program
 Step 4: With eyes closed relax the body—
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focus on relaxing the muscles in
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the following body parts
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sequentially: toes, feet, legs,
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abdomen, back, shoulders, neck
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and face.
 Step 5: Focus on breathing slowly and naturally and
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begin to repeat the word, prayer or image you
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have chosen as your “mantra.” Keep an erect
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position.
 Step 6: Keep a “don’t care” attitude, focus on the
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mantra—stay in the present experience
Benson’s Eight-step Program
Step Seven: Try to get the meditation period up to 12-15
minutes in order to get the brain calming and
physical effects.
Step Eight: Find a time of day to do so daily and with no
distractions– for many this is early in the morning.
Make a commitment to do it for 30 days in order to
get the health and calming effect due to brain
circuits releasing the opioids and dopamine.
Mechanisms of Action
• Re-perceiving: the ability to dis-identify
with the contents of consciousness (one’s
thoughts, emotions & value judgments).
• Shift of perspective from being in one’s
life narrative to witnessing it from the
outside nonjudgmentally– resulting in a
deep equanimity and clarity.
• Definition of Mindfulness: a way of being
with all one’s experience– a perception of
what is here NOW because it is here—not
what one wants and desires but what is!
Teasdale’s Eight Themes in
Treatment of Depression
 Theme for session one: learn how to turn
off the “automatic pilot” and become aware
of each moment
 Theme for session two: focus on the body
makes clear how mental “chatter” controls
our reactions
 Theme of session three: learning to focus
on the breath allows us to be more
attentive and gathered
Teasdale’s Themes
 Theme for session four: the mind is most scattered
when it clings to or escapes things, so this session
is on taking a wider perspective to experience.
 Theme for session five: “allowing” the experience
to be without judging or changing it –seeing more
clearly if anything needs to be changed.
 Theme for session six: negative moods and
accompanying thoughts restrict our ability to relate
differently to our experience. It is liberating to be
freed from them.
Teasdale’s Themes
 Theme of session seven: What to do when
depression threatens—take a breathing
space first, then decide what action to take.
 Theme of session eight: link your good
intention to a positive reason for taking care
of one’s self. Begin with body scanning.
Learning to keep the balance.`
Roger’s Mindful Parenting
 Meditation techniques to expand present
moment awareness
 Meditations, visualizations and verses are
used
 Designed to bring about feelings of
joyfulness
through a deepening awareness of the
parent’s connection with his or her own
child
Mindfulness and the Therapist’s
Attitudes
 How to pay attention in a therapeutic
session: acceptance, letting go, nonjudging, patience and trust.
 In mindfulness practice it begins with
compassion: ability to feel empathy for
another along with the wish to act on those
feelings.
 This requires self-attunement—being able
to relate to ourselves with greater
acceptance and compassion
Mindful Therapist
 Empathy is a necessary condition for
success in therapy
 Research suggests that meditation can
significantly enhance empathy in therapists
 The neuro-biological change in meditation
may be in the mirror neurons. When a
client expresses emotions the mindful
therapist experiences the same emotion
but at a lesser level
Mindful Therapist
 An essential skill for therapists is to be
able to express their own feelings and
when to control them outwardly
 Therapists trained in meditation are
better at using the “witness” function to
observe and hold both the client’s
process and the therapist’s experience of
the client
 Also helps to keep the boundaries.
History of Eastern and Western
Meditation
 Earliest evidence of meditation goes back to
about 1500 B.C.
 Buddhist used meditation as early as the 4th
century B. C.
 In the West Philo of Alexandria wrote of
spiritual exercises involving “attention and
“concentration.”
 Some evidence that the Jews always
practiced meditation
Christian Meditation
• In the Byzantine Churches meditation was
borrowed from the Eastern meditation
involving the use of a “mantra.”
• In the 3rd century AD a group of Christians
moved out into the desert to avoid the
persecution of Diocletian and practiced an
ascetical way of life—to ward off
temptations they repeated the psalms by
heart. This eventually migrated to a word
or words from Scripture, the purpose was
to experience unity with God.
Neuroscience of Religious
Experience
 The following circuits have been identified:
--occipital-parietal (concrete images in
children)
-- parietal-frontal (relationship between
“you and “God”)
-- thalamus (makes God feel “real” and
integrates ideas about God)
-- amygdala (emotional valence to the
concept of God)
-- striatum (inhibits fear and allows you feel
safe in God’s presence)
Maslow’s “need” for Spirituality
 At the peak of Maslow’s need hierarchy is spirituality– the
“self-actualized” person
 It is interesting to look at the characteristics of the “selfactualized” person and the effects of meditation:
Superior perception of reality
Increased acceptance of self, of others and of nature
Increased spontaneity
Increase in problem-centering
Increased detachment and desire for privacy
Increased autonomy, and resistance to enculturation
Greater freshness and apperception, and richness of emotional reaction
Increased identification with the human species
Changed interpersonal relations
More democratic character structure
Increased creativeness
Changes in the value system
Keating’s “Centering Prayer”
 Keating developed a meditation method for
Christians that got the meditator in an attitude of
“listening and receptivity”
 He saw it as a means of reducing the
“hyperactivity of our minds and our lives”
 You are directed to pick a word from scripture and
“focus” on it for twenty minutes or longer
 Thomas Merton describes a similar form of
meditation called “prayer of the heart”: abandoning
distractions with words from the Bible in a “spirit of
intense faith.”
Research on Christian Meditation
 Most of the research on mindfulness and
meditation has been done with eastern
meditation
 Newberg (2010) did study the “Centering Prayer”
of Keating and found that:
1) brains of meditators looked very
different than human brains at rest
2) neurological changes were very
similar to Buddhist monks
3) What is common between the Buddhist monks and Christian
nuns are the ritual techniques of breathing, staying relaxed, and
focusing one’s attention on a concept that evokes comfort,
compassion and a spiritual sense of peace.
Child & Adolescent Mindfulness
Training
 Relatively poor research in this area
 Mindfulness training with children & adolescents
involves the practice of “sustained and
nonjudgmental attention to present moment
experiences.”
 Such training has probably improved executive
functions (associated with high achievement
motivation), attention & selective attention
 Also some evidence that it can reduce anxiety
and depressive symptoms.
 More practice than research on children & adol.
Mindfulness & Self-Control
 Social Importance of self-control
 Attachment security and emotional
regulation ability
 Under-control and over-control
 In DBT the essence of mindfulness practice
is learning to be a in a state of being in
which one is fully aware in the present
moment without judgement—to become
one with the experience.
Mindfulness Based Cognitive
Therapy for Depression (MBCT)
 MBCT arose out of Kabat-Zinn’s MBSR
 Because it is CT it includes psychoeducation
about depressive symptoms and automatic
thoughts, etc.
 Formal meditation practices helps clients focus
and deconstruct experiences and then exercises
from CT can be used
 Thoughts, feelings and body sensations are seen
as transient and dynamic aspects of experience.
Mindfulness Based Treatment of
Anxiety
 Incidence—28.8% of the population will
experience criteria for anxiety disorder in their
lifetime.
 Treatment involves traditional meditation to learn
how to focus on the present and also moment to
moment ways of controlling anxiety when it arises
(value-consistent actions) e.g. physical exercise
 Research on these interventions have inconsistent
findings.
Mindfulness Addiction
Treatment
 At lower levelsalcohol acts like a stimulant, but
at higher levels as a sedative. This is partially
due to increased availability of dopamine and
norepinephrine at lower levels but at higher
levels there is a decrease of theses
neurotransmitters available
 It is believed that the cognitive changes may
be due to narrowing attention, disrupting
appraisal capacity, or interfering with selfawareness.
Mindfulness-based Addiction
Treatment
 Alcohol consumption is often an emotional
regulation strategy (often boredom, anxiety or
depression), but ends up with emotional
dysregulation (the inability to control anger, sex
and depression).
 Psychiatric patients often self-medicate in order to
get relief from negative emotions.
 The probability of developing alcohol dependence
is greater if there is a comorbid anxiety disorder,
mood disorder, or antisociality.
Mindfulness-based
Addiction Treatment
 Alcohol consumption is often an emotional
regulation strategy (often boredom, anxiety or
depression), but ends up with emotional
dysregulation (the inability to control anger, sex
and depression).
 Psychiatric patients often self-medicate in order to
get relief from negative emotions.
 The probability of developing alcohol dependence
is greater if there is a comorbid anxiety disorder,
mood disorder, or anti-sociality.
Mindfulness-Based
Addiction Treatment
 Mindfulness-based relapse prevention
(MBRP) seems to be a combination of
procedures form MBSR and MBCT.
 The training develops mindful awareness
and coping skills from CT.
 Initial research seems to favor MBRP over
other modalities but more research to match
clients to which therapy modality is needed
 No neurological studies to explain the “why.”
Linehan’s Dialectical
Behavior Therapy (DBT)
 Now a treatment model to treat any difficult-tomanage disorder of emotional regulation.
 Linehan now sees borderline personality disorder
as a serious dysregulation of the affect system.
 The core skills of treatment are:
mindfulness skills of observing,
describing, being nonjudgmental,
focusing on the present, spontaneous
participation, & focusing on effectiveness.
Linehan’s DBT
 Due to the imbalance of negative over
positive affect, more positive and fewer
negative emotional experiences must be
managed.
 To accomplish this two
sets of skills are involved:
biological & contextual.
 The biological skill set involves: treating
physical illness; balanced nutrition; avoiding
mood altering drugs; getting sufficient sleep
and exercise.
Lineham’s DBT
 Context change involves developing a life
characterized by mastery and self-efficacy in
order to reduce negative emotions.
 Regulating situations that increase
unwanted emotions through
problem solving skills.
 Asking for what one needs and learning to say
“No” to unwanted requests.
 Redirecting attention away from the normal
negative emotional responses.
 Check your assumptions against observed facts.
Linehan’s DBT
 Evaluate the positive and negative consequences
of emotional reactions in order to get control over
them.
 Develop a response appraisal change that involves
complete acceptance of the current negative
emotion.
 Physiological intervention:
manage high arousal
(icy water in the face);
intense physical exercise; progressive relaxation to
reduce the physical tension.
Linnehan’s DBT
 Opposite action– the patient is taught to
act contrary to emotional urges. Instead
of anger or depression, respond by
walking away of expressing forgiveness.
 Replay of emotional experiences
including the appraisal of the experience,
actions stimulated by the emotion, as
well as other consequences of the
emoiton.
Summary
 Most of us experience some level of neglect or
abuse in growing up. This has left us with
some feeling of insecurity and a less than
healthy brain that tends to leave us with an
imbalance between the limbic and frontal
systems of the brain.
 One way that man has used for many centuries
was to meditate and remain in a calmer more
“mindful” state. This may require a cultural
revolution in the Western world.
My latest published book
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Dr. Mark Beischel
1318 N 131st Circle
Omaha, NE 68154
402-639-5901
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[email protected]