As participants in a collegiate atmosphere, we are all quite aware of the stress and trials of academic life. In the Oct. 8th issue of The Guilfordian, staff writer Terah Kelleher shared a number of simple measures that any one of us can take to improve our overall health and well-being such as positive attitude, exercise, proper hydration, and meditation.

But what on Earth is meditation? How is it practiced? Are claims made about the potential benefits of meditation grounded in observable proof, or just mystic superstition? And perhaps most importantly, why should one bother to meditate at all? 

To find answers, I first knocked down the door of Associate Professor of Religious Studies Eric Mortensen.     

“Expecting that someone can figure out meditation in a technical sense without a teacher is just silly,” Mortensen said. “It can’t hurt to just sit and hang out with yourself, but there are certain tried-and-true techniques that have been developed with mastery over centuries and centuries.”

So again, we are met with claims of the potential benefits of meditative practice. But that still leaves one to wonder: is meditation legitimate?

“It’s definitely not superstition.” said Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Dr. Julia Jacks. “At the same time, we don’t know everything that we’d like to know about its effect on the body, but it certainly has been shown in lots of research that it does do something rather than nothing. Exactly what those mechanisms are, physiologically, we’re still not sure.” 

Dr. Jacks cited a study conducted by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in which Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) scans, which measure soft tissue activity in the brain, were conducted on both “novice” and “expert” meditators. 

Expert meditators — who practice meditation ten to twelve hours daily — showed significantly higher empathy reactions than their novice counterparts. Other findings from the study showed an increased ability to process information quickly in meditators, as well as an increased ability to manage stress. 

A local Buddhist monk, Darryl Kitchens — ordained name Bhikkhu Pannadharo, meaning ‘vessel of wisdom’ — devotes four hours or more of each and every day to meditation.

“We create reality every single moment based on what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think,” said Kitchens. “You are creating that moment by thinking about it, by focusing on it. That’s it … this is one of the things that meditation will help you to understand — this nonstop process that’s going on with what you sense and think.”

For beginners, Kitchens recommends Anapanasati — mindfulness of breathing meditation. 

“You know, if you go to the gym, you go there for a purpose, which is to tone the body,” said Kitchesn. “If you go to the gym once and expect to leave looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger did in his heyday as a bodybuilder, you’re going to walk out that first time disappointed. It’s the same thing with Anapanasati.”

Kitchens said that once a beginner masters breath mindfulness mediation, they can move on to Vipassana — clear insight meditation.

The resources to learn and practice refined meditation techniques are local and at our fingertips. Whether we as individuals opt to give meditation a try is up to us. At the very least, it can simply do no harm.