The effect of mediation

[ray245]

I thought it will be interesting to discuss, and ask if mediation can really cause a 'change' in the human body.

Mediation is said to be powerful enough, for you to survive for a long period of time without food for instance, other than that, it is said to be able to allow your body to generate heat by itself.

I was wondering, can mediation really cause those things to happen? Other than that, if it is true, does this mean mediation is basically a placebo effect on the highest level?

[Dominus Atheos]

No, there is absolutely no way mediation can enable someone to survive without food or generate heat without burning calories.

On the other hand, I wouldn't call it a placebo. It's thought that if two people are arguing about something, having them mediate can be an effective way to calm them down so they can resolve their dispute. So it does have it's uses.

[ray245]

No, there is absolutely no way mediation can enable someone to survive without food or generate heat without burning calories.

On the other hand, I wouldn't call it a placebo. It's thought that if two people are arguing about something, having them mediate can be an effective way to calm them down so they can resolve their dispute. So it does have it's uses.

Calories have to be burned off-course, by I am saying mediation allow that to take place for a longer period of time.

[Lusankya]

Ray, do you mean meditation instead of mediation?

[ray245]

Ray, do you mean meditation instead of mediation?

Oh crap, typo error.

Can a mod correct it for me please? Thanks!

[Shroom Man 777]

I thought it will be interesting to discuss, and ask if mediation can really cause a 'change' in the human body.

Mediation is said to be powerful enough, for you to survive for a long period of time without food for instance, other than that, it is said to be able to allow your body to generate heat by itself.

If you are sitting there doing nothing and limiting your body's energy requirements, then you will last longer without food and water than a person who's running around doing something and expanding his body's energy requirements.

As for the human body generating heat by itself, I think Darth Wong mentioned that people also increased their body heat by masturbating. Maybe you can do that by meditating on naughty thoughts.

[Knife]

I thought it will be interesting to discuss, and ask if mediation can really cause a 'change' in the human body.

Mediation is said to be powerful enough, for you to survive for a long period of time without food for instance,

If all you do is just sit there and meditate, then your base metabolic rate will be way lower since you are not doing anything. You'll just need X amount of calories to produce enough energy for your heart, brain, etc.... However, considering typically a human can go without food for ~a week or so, I really don't know how much 'extra' time you can get out of the system with meditation as opposed to say, just sitting there watching tv or something. In a survival situation, you'd pretty much have to move around to survive, thus doing *nothing* would probably kill you faster.

other than that, it is said to be able to allow your body to generate heat by itself.

The body generates heat via expending calories and moving muscle. Either skeletal muscle or smooth muscle, creates a lot of heat when it burns through ATP to move, that heat is circulated via the circulation system (go figure). So no, just sitting there meditating will not produce heat any more than just sitting there watching tv produces heat.

I was wondering, can mediation really cause those things to happen? Other than that, if it is true, does this mean mediation is basically a placebo effect on the highest level?

I can see placebo effect as far as state of mind and how it perceives the body. Classic example is a shot of whiskey in a cold situation; the whiskey burns on the way down and your brain perceives it as warming however, alcohol does not warm the body, in fact it dilates the vessels and allows more heat to be lost. It is hard for your system to break down and though it gives up more calories per gram than protein and carbs, takes more to break down too and has zero nutritional value. But it makes your brain feel like it is warming your body.

Same thing with meditation, you can trick your brain into believing all sorts of things, hell even just being relaxed due to meditation, can lead to benifit. However just because your brain thinks things are good doesn't automatically mean that they are.

[Vyraeth]

I thought it will be interesting to discuss, and ask if mediation can really cause a 'change' in the human body.

Mediation is said to be powerful enough, for you to survive for a long period of time without food for instance,

I'm not sure about surviving without food for several weeks, but I do remember seeing a show on the Discovery channel several years ago about Tibetan monks who were able to change their internal body temperature with an advanced form of meditation.

I quickly googled for articles to make sure I remembered correctly, and found something from the Harvard gazette. It talks not only about being able to raise internal body temperature, but also the ability of certain Indian monks to slow down their metabolism. This seems to be rather valid, but I'm trying to find additional studies or information regarding the issue.

Meditation changes temperatures:
Mind controls body in extreme experiments
By William J. Cromie
Gazette Staff

In a monastery in northern India, thinly clad Tibetan monks sat quietly in a room where the temperature was a chilly 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Using a yoga technique known as g Tum-mo, they entered a state of deep meditation. Other monks soaked 3-by-6-foot sheets in cold water (49 degrees) and placed them over the meditators' shoulders. For untrained people, such frigid wrappings would produce uncontrolled shivering.

If body temperatures continue to drop under these conditions, death can result. But it was not long before steam began rising from the sheets. As a result of body heat produced by the monks during meditation, the sheets dried in about an hour.

Attendants removed the sheets, then covered the meditators with a second chilled, wet wrapping. Each monk was required to dry three sheets over a period of several hours.

Why would anyone do this? Herbert Benson, who has been studying g Tum-mo for 20 years, answers that "Buddhists feel the reality we live in is not the ultimate one. There's another reality we can tap into that's unaffected by our emotions, by our everyday world. Buddhists believe this state of mind can be achieved by doing good for others and by meditation. The heat they generate during the process is just a by-product of g Tum-mo meditation."

Benson is an associate professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School and president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He firmly believes that studying advanced forms of meditation "can uncover capacities that will help us to better treat stress-related illnesses."

Benson developed the "relaxation response," which he describes as "a physiological state opposite to stress." It is characterized by decreases in metabolism, breathing rate, heart rate, and blood pressure. He and others have amassed evidence that it can help those suffering from illnesses caused or exacerbated by stress. Benson and colleagues use it to treat anxiety, mild and moderate depression, high blood pressure, heartbeat irregularities, excessive anger, insomnia, and even infertility. His team also uses this type of simple meditation to calm those who have been traumatized by the deaths of others, or by diagnoses of cancer or other painful, life-threatening illnesses.

"More than 60 percent of visits to physicians in the United States are due to stress-related problems, most of which are poorly treated by drugs, surgery, or other medical procedures," Benson maintains.

The Mind/Body Medical Institute is now training people to use the relaxation response to help people working at Ground Zero in New York City, where two airplanes toppled the World Trade Center Towers last Sept. 11. Facilities have been set up at nearby St. Paul's Chapel to aid people still working on clearing wreckage and bodies. Anyone else who feels stressed by those terrible events can also obtain help at the chapel. "We are training the trainers who work there," Benson says.

The relaxation response involves repeating a word, sound, phrase, or short prayer while disregarding intrusive thoughts. "If such an easy-to-master practice can bring about the remarkable changes we observe," Benson notes. "I want to investigate what advanced forms of meditation can do to help the mind control physical processes once thought to be uncontrollable."
Breathtaking results

Some Westerners practice g Tum-mo, but it often takes years to reach states like those achieved by Buddhist monks. In trying to find groups he could study, Benson met Westerners who claimed to have mastered such advanced techniques, but who were, in his words, "fraudulent."

Benson decided that he needed to locate a religious setting, where advanced mediation is traditionally practiced. His opportunity came in 1979 when the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet, visited Harvard University. "His Holiness agreed to help me," recalls Benson. That visit was the beginning of a long friendship and several expeditions to northern India where many Tibetan monks live in exile.

During visits to remote monasteries in the 1980s, Benson and his team studied monks living in the Himalayan Mountains who could, by g Tum-mo meditation, raise the temperatures of their fingers and toes by as much as 17 degrees. It has yet to be determined how the monks are able to generate such heat.

The researchers also made measurements on practitioners of other forms of advanced meditation in Sikkim, India. They were astonished to find that these monks could lower their metabolism by 64 percent. "It was an astounding, breathtaking [no pun intended] result," Benson exclaims.

To put that decrease in perspective, metabolism, or oxygen consumption, drops only 10-15 percent in sleep and about 17 percent during simple meditation. Benson believes that such a capability could be useful for space travel. Travelers might use meditation to ease stress and oxygen consumption on long flights to other planets.

In 1985, the meditation team made a video of monks drying cold, wet sheets with body heat. They also documented monks spending a winter night on a rocky ledge 15,000 feet high in the Himalayas. The sleep-out took place in February on the night of the winter full moon when temperatures reached zero degrees F. Wearing only woolen or cotton shawls, the monks promptly fell asleep on the rocky ledge, They did not huddle together and the video shows no evidence of shivering. They slept until dawn then walked back to their monastery.
Overcoming obstacles

Working in isolated monasteries in the foothills of the Himalayas proved extremely difficult. Some religious leaders keep their meditative procedures a closely guarded secret. Medical measuring devices require electrical power and wall outlets are not always available. In addition, trying to meditate while strangers attempt to measure your rectal temperature is not something most monks are happy to do.

To avoid these problems, Instructor in Psychology Sara Lazar, a Benson colleague, used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of meditators at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The subjects were males, aged 22-45, who had practiced a form of advanced mediation called Kundalini daily for at least four years. In these experiments, the obstacles of cold and isolation were replaced by the difficulties of trying to meditate in a cramped, noisy machine. However, the results, published in the May 15, 2000, issue of the journal NeuroReport, turned out to be significant.

Herbert Benson, who developed a simple relaxation technique to reduce stress, enjoys a quiet moment at a placid stream near his office in Boston. He directs a study of advanced meditation to uncover capabilities that may help treat stress-related illnesses. (Staff photo by Kris Snibbe)

"Lazar found a marked decrease in blood flow to the entire brain," Benson explains. "At the same time, certain areas of the brain became more active, specifically those that control attention and autonomic functions like blood pressure and metabolism. In short, she showed the value of using this method to record changes in the brain's activity during meditation."

The biggest obstruction in further studies, whether in India or Boston, has always been money. Research proceeded slowly and intermittently until February 2001, when Benson's team received a $1.25 million grant from Loel Guinness, via the beer magnate's Kalpa Foundation, established to study extraordinary human capacities.

The funds enabled researchers to bring three monks experienced in g Tum-mo to a Guinness estate in Normandy, France, last July. The monks then practiced for 100 days to reach their full meditative capacity. An eye infection sidelined one of the monks, but the other two proved able to dry frigid, wet sheets while wearing sensors that recorded changes in heat production and metabolism.

Although the team obtained valuable data, Benson concludes that "the room was not cold enough to do the tests properly." His team will try again this coming winter with six monks. They will start practice in late summer and should be ready during the coldest part of winter.

Benson feels sure these attempts to understand advanced mediation will lead to better treatments for stress-related illnesses. "My hope," he says, "is that self-care will stand equal with medical drugs, surgery, and other therapies that are now used to alleviate mental and physical suffering. Along with nutrition and exercise, mind/body approaches can be part of self-care practices that could save millions of dollars annually in medical costs."

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2002 ... tummo.html

Edit Notes: Fixed a formatting issue in the article, and made two additions to the original post.

[Knife]

"Lazar found a marked decrease in blood flow to the entire brain," Benson explains. "At the same time, certain areas of the brain became more active, specifically those that control attention and autonomic functions like blood pressure and metabolism. In short, she showed the value of using this method to record changes in the brain's activity during meditation."

This guy is a medical doctor?

Why should one be surprised that if you decrease blood flow, thus glucose, to the brain it starts shutting down higher functions and instead fortify the more primitive parts that run autonomic functions like heart rate, respiration and blood pressure? Uhm, duh!

As far as drying sheets in the ice cold while zonked out on meditation, if you don't move you don't produce heat. Smooth muscle movement can produce enough heat for core body temperature as would the 'shivering' mentioned in the article they didn't want to happen. As far as the example is concerned, lots of heat without normal moving or shivering, either massive smooth muscle movment to keep viscera warm or some sort of psychosomatic response. Or both.

[Broomstick]

Some Tibetan monks can raise their internal body temperature via meditation. Better yet, other, non-Tibetan non-monks can also learn to do this. There was another one of those documentary shows where a western man who had learned to do this ran a half-marathon in Finland in winter, wearing nothing but shorts and going shirtless and barefoot over the snow and ice for a couple hours without suffering hypothermia (his feet did, however, suffer some frostbite by the end). It is also possible to learn to control heart rate or blood pressure through either meditation or biofeedback. Through practice, one can learn a degree of control over otherwise automatic body processes. It's about as mysterious as sword-swallowers learning to suppress the gag reflex. In other words, it's something within the range of average human capability, but most people aren't aware that the capability exists and even those who do usually aren't motivated enough put in the effort to learn how to do it. I guess at some point we decided making clothes was less effort.

It should be worth nothing that people who do the internal heat trick also expose themselves frequently to low temperatures, which also has the effect of maximizing the body's passive adaptions to cold. It's not magical, and it won't let you sleep naked on the ice in Antarctica's winter, but the effect does exist.

As far as drying sheets in the ice cold while zonked out on meditation, if you don't move you don't produce heat.

Sure you do - you can lie there absolutely motionless and your body will generate heat. It's how your body maintains a stable temperature.

Smooth muscle movement can produce enough heat for core body temperature as would the 'shivering' mentioned in the article they didn't want to happen. As far as the example is concerned, lots of heat without normal moving or shivering, either massive smooth muscle movment to keep viscera warm or some sort of psychosomatic response. Or both.

Or the same mechanism that generates fever - the body does have the ability to simply have the cells burn more fuel and turn it into heat which I'm probably not expressing precisely, not being an expert in the biology of the thing. It's one reason why working in cold weather burns more calories, you're not just moving your muscles your body is also generating heat to keep you warm, too. There may well be multiple factors allowing these people to perform these feats.

[Themightytom]

trying to meditate while strangers attempt to measure your rectal temperature is not something most monks are happy to do.

you know i'd actually heard that somewhere

[Knife]

Sure you do - you can lie there absolutely motionless and your body will generate heat. It's how your body maintains a stable temperature.

Uhm, your body generates heat via something like 80% through muscle movement. Just because your sitting still doesn't mean muscles are not contracting. For instance, your postural muscles are always working to keep your body upright and not go all rag-doll on you. If you're standing, add your leg muscles in there too. Stomach muscles and back muscles are always working to keep you aligned the way you want to be. Just because you don't have a joint moving doesn't mean your muscles are not contracting and thus are buring ATP and thus heat. A lot of what your body does just so you can stand, sit or even lay down, is isometric contraction. The sarcomer's are still engaged and thus ATP is being used and heat is produced, but no joint movement.

Smooth muscle in your circulatory system and other autonomic systems provide the same service and you'd never know that a muscle contracted.

Or the same mechanism that generates fever - the body does have the ability to simply have the cells burn more fuel and turn it into heat which I'm probably not expressing precisely, not being an expert in the biology of the thing. It's one reason why working in cold weather burns more calories, you're not just moving your muscles your body is also generating heat to keep you warm, too. There may well be multiple factors allowing these people to perform these feats.

Actually, as I understand it, fever is more the body allowing built up heat to stay and not allowing the body to dissipate it. Same with cold environments; your body keeps all the heat it can to compensate for the enviroment. Granted, it's not perfect and heat loss happens, here is where your metabolism kicks in and you need extra fuel to feed the metabolism to up the amount of energy your body has available to make heat. Actually, make more glucose to throw into the Clepp cycle to make ATP but....

The body's ability to have cells burn more fuel and turn it into heat are the muscle cells burning more ATP. So we're saying the same thing in this instance.

[Broomstick]

Sure you do - you can lie there absolutely motionless and your body will generate heat. It's how your body maintains a stable temperature.

Uhm, your body generates heat via something like 80% through muscle movement. Just because your sitting still doesn't mean muscles are not contracting. For instance, your postural muscles are always working to keep your body upright and not go all rag-doll on you. If you're standing, add your leg muscles in there too. Stomach muscles and back muscles are always working to keep you aligned the way you want to be. Just because you don't have a joint moving doesn't mean your muscles are not contracting and thus are buring ATP and thus heat. A lot of what your body does just so you can stand, sit or even lay down, is isometric contraction. The sarcomer's are still engaged and thus ATP is being used and heat is produced, but no joint movement.

Smooth muscle in your circulatory system and other autonomic systems provide the same service and you'd never know that a muscle contracted.

While you are technically correct, that is not what most people mean by "moving". Regardless, the sitting monks are generating more heat than most people do while standing and walking. So while there may be also sorts of what is technically movement going on, it's not movement that would be apparent to the untrained eye. Which is what makes all this seem mysterious.

Or the same mechanism that generates fever - the body does have the ability to simply have the cells burn more fuel and turn it into heat which I'm probably not expressing precisely, not being an expert in the biology of the thing. It's one reason why working in cold weather burns more calories, you're not just moving your muscles your body is also generating heat to keep you warm, too. There may well be multiple factors allowing these people to perform these feats.

Actually, as I understand it, fever is more the body allowing built up heat to stay and not allowing the body to dissipate it.

That doesn't explain how someone's temperature can rise while scantily attired, which can and does happen.

Same with cold environments; your body keeps all the heat it can to compensate for the enviroment.

That's not what's happening this instances. Normally, the body constricts the blood vessels in the extremities to keep blood in the body's central core which is why those extremeties get gold or even frost-bitten. In these monks and the near-naked winter marathoner, though, circulation to the extremities is NOT restricted and their limbs do not become chilled. The entire body stays warm. The winter marathoner has also subjected himself to immersion in cold water where he demonstrated a MUCH greater than average ability to maintain body heat. Somehow, his body is maintaining not only a core body temperature but also maintaining body heat in his extremities in conditions that normally would induce life-threatening hypothermia.

On a more limited basis, it has long been observed that fishermen working in cold waters also maintain more circulation to their hands than typical in cold conditions, but this effect is localized to their hands and not their entire bodies. This adaptation allows them to work bare-handed in wet, bone-chilling cold. You can train your own body to do this by immersing your own hands in ice water every day for gradually lengthening periods of time.

Whatever exactly is happening here it's not the normal heat-conserving reaction to cold. That doesn't mean it's magic, it's just a phyiscal phenomena we don't understand very well.

[Knife]

While you are technically correct, that is not what most people mean by "moving".

It is what I meant and you were replying to my post about it, but ok.

Regardless, the sitting monks are generating more heat than most people do while standing and walking. So while there may be also sorts of what is technically movement going on, it's not movement that would be apparent to the untrained eye. Which is what makes all this seem mysterious.

Indeed.

That doesn't explain how someone's temperature can rise while scantily attired, which can and does happen.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I was wondering if it wasn't some sort of psychosomatic response. Though with this whole tangent, I was thinking, it is possible the priests or your marathon runner had worked up such an array of new capillary beds due to their *training* that blood flow and thus the heat regulation is more efficient in these cases.

That's not what's happening this instances. Normally, the body constricts the blood vessels in the extremities to keep blood in the body's central core which is why those extremeties get gold or even frost-bitten. In these monks and the near-naked winter marathoner, though, circulation to the extremities is NOT restricted and their limbs do not become chilled.

Yeah, I'm thinking at this point the construction of capillary beds through muscle used to produce the heat. Athletes are an obvious example of this, better O2 exchange via the cap-beds, it would also be in conjunction with a more efficient arteriole and artery configuration. People training in cold weather, could I posit, develop new capillary beds to help with thermo regulation. Just a guess though.

The entire body stays warm. The winter marathoner has also subjected himself to immersion in cold water where he demonstrated a MUCH greater than average ability to maintain body heat. Somehow, his body is maintaining not only a core body temperature but also maintaining body heat in his extremities in conditions that normally would induce life-threatening hypothermia.

On a more limited basis, it has long been observed that fishermen working in cold waters also maintain more circulation to their hands than typical in cold conditions, but this effect is localized to their hands and not their entire bodies. This adaptation allows them to work bare-handed in wet, bone-chilling cold. You can train your own body to do this by immersing your own hands in ice water every day for gradually lengthening periods of time.

Whatever exactly is happening here it's not the normal heat-conserving reaction to cold. That doesn't mean it's magic, it's just a phyiscal phenomena we don't understand very well.

Yeah, still going with capillary beds via training at this point. Though a psychosomatic response would be cool too.

[Ender]

I know it can lower the bodies stress, with all the resulting and poorly understood effects that result from that, but that's about it.

[Broomstick]

Growth of new capillaries could well be one mechanism at work here. It would not surprise me if there were others at work as well.

Perhaps the blood vessels are contracting and expanding, which would both generate heat and promote blood flow. Practice might also enable some conscious control over the process, much as biofeedback can allow some alteration in blood pressure or heart rate. I really do wish they'd do more research into these areas, I think this sort of phenomena is too easily dismissed as "woo-woo" when really there is some fascinating biology at work.

[Knife]

Growth of new capillaries could well be one mechanism at work here. It would not surprise me if there were others at work as well.

Perhaps the blood vessels are contracting and expanding, which would both generate heat and promote blood flow. Practice might also enable some conscious control over the process, much as biofeedback can allow some alteration in blood pressure or heart rate. I really do wish they'd do more research into these areas, I think this sort of phenomena is too easily dismissed as "woo-woo" when really there is some fascinating biology at work.

Well to add on to it, added capillaries would increase volume in various places that the body needs to get back. Since the capillaries massively dilute the pressure of the blood from the arteries, a normal human being needs muscle contraction to help *squeeze* blood back from the extremities into the Vena Cava. Granted, mostly smooth muscle but also skeletal muscle too. So with more capillaries, you'll have more volume in certain area's, with more muscle contraction needed to move that added volume back towards the heart with muscle contraction thus more heat. If the capillary beds were *spread loaded* through out the body and not just in the viscera, this would *spread load* the heat too.

Just speculating.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I can control my heartrate over about a 20 point range from the 60's through the 80's by will, with the lowest measure at 64 bpm and the highest at 84 over the past couple of years since I learned how to concentrate and relax and thus enable this ability. I'm not sure if it's useful for anything other than personal amusement when they check my heartrate at doctor's office visits, though. Perhaps it can forcibly calm and concentrate me, or helps a bit during endurance running to lower my heartrate.

Conversely, very long term meditation quite possibly is a cause of damage to your brain. One moment while I fish up that article..

Ahh, here we go. There's where Amy originally posted it.

[WacoKid]

My ex-soviet coach has been meditating for about 50 years. It helps a great deal, the way he puts it, as having full awareness of what you are thinking and at being able to control what thoughts you have. This, as one can imagine, is very helpful in sports. However, If you have good control over your thoughts, it also becomes easier to control body temperature, heartrate, muscle relaxation, etc. Nothing magical about it, it's just how much control you have over your mind. Considering the brain is the control center of the body, this is not particularly surprising. While I am skeptical of such things as yogic flying and mind control and the like, that meditation helps with body control and health is perfectly plausible.

[Akkleptos]

Some Tibetan monks can raise their internal body temperature via meditation. Better yet, other, non-Tibetan non-monks can also learn to do this.

This comes as no surprise, the monks and the other fellows being warm-blooded, homeothermic mammals. Now, something REALLY interesting would be seeing if a reptile or any other cold-blooded animal could raise its body temperature by meditating. Of course, you'd first have to go find a thinking iguana or something and then teach it meditation techniques.

But, seriously, it's relatively easy to "think hot", as some people call it. Pretty much anyone can do it within the first 10 minutes of giving it a real try. I think there is possibly a way to access certain body processes that are ultimately controlled by the brain but usually non-voluntary, as they originate in the brain and its parts are all connected to pretty much everywhere else in the brain, so, why not?

I can control my heartrate over about a 20 point range from the 60's through the 80's by will, with the lowest measure at 64 bpm and the highest at 84 over the past couple of years since I learned how to concentrate and relax and thus enable this ability.

Oh. Well, I can tell Winamp (v2.91) which song (out of over 12,000 on a playlist) to play next with my mind, and it it goes and plays it. I know, I know, it's probably just my selective memory -highlighting the rare successful tries and discarding most of the ineffectual ones- but still it's a fun bit.

Besides, you can get all the benefits of meditation without any of the hassle, according to these guys:
Stimulating your brain with Holosync®
(included in animo jocandi)