Empowering your Brain: The Neuroscience of Contemplative Practices

So far we’ve covered a variety of contemplative practices such as mindfulness and self-compassion, and you’re probably starting to feel some positive changes in your personal wellbeing if you’ve been practising regularly. But have you wondered how contemplative practices do the trick? Research in neuroscience, or science of the brain, has discovered the magic key inside the brains of people who regularly practice meditation. This will be the focus of Lecture 6 where we’ll dive into the neuroscience of contemplative practices and their impacts on the human brain with positive effects on our health and wellbeing.

 

Decades of research in neuroscience has shown that regularly practising meditation, mindfulness, and self-compassion positively impact our brain chemically and structurally. As discussed in Lecture 3 on mindfulness, the purpose of mindfulness practice is to help our habitually wandering mind (remember the monkey?) improve its ability to stay focused on the present in a non-judgmental way. In neuroscientific terms, our habit of mental wandering is due to a highly active Default Mode Network (DMN). But research has found that long-term mindfulness practitioners or meditators have a less active DMN and more activity in another brain network that facilitates focus. In this week, we will explore some of the neurophysiological impacts of contemplative practices on the human brain.