The Shamatha Project, Part II: Collecting Data

By Sarah Sutherland

Editors note: Thanks to a recent $2.3 million Templeton Prize Research Grant from the John Templeton Foundation, researchers are revisiting the results gleaned from Shamatha Project and further analyzing those results. In the first two posts of this four-part series we’re offering people unfamiliar with the project the chance to learn more about the project and its researchers. In our third post we will discuss the next stage of this project funded by the Templeton Prize Research Grant. And in our final post we’ll take a closer look at the lead researcher, Clifford Saron.

Last Friday we introduced you to the Shamatha Project, a comprehensive meditation study done on the psychological, physical, and behavioral effects of intensive meditation. The study, done in two three-month retreats by Researcher Clifford Saron and others in 2007, revealed some astounding results.

“The findings have taught us a lot about the benefits of meditation on our mental and physical health,” said Saron. So, how did researchers measure the results, and what did they discover?

To measure the outcomes, researchers used a comprehensive approach, including interviews, computer-based experiments, physiological measures, behavioral measures, questionnaires, and self-reporting from participants before, during, and after the retreats. In some experiments, participants completed difficult computer-based tasks aimed at gauging attention and perception while their brain waves, heart rate, blood pressure, and other physiological indicators were recorded. At other times, facial expressions were additionally recorded as they watched disturbing images. In a separate, on-site blood lab, participants’ blood samples were collected and processed for later testing for telomerase, an enzyme that repairs genetic material lost during cell division, as well as various hormones and proinflammatory cytokines, which are molecules that trigger inflammation when we’re stressed.

In one key finding, the research team, in work led by Katherine MacLean and Baljinder Sahdra, has detailed how the retreat participants, compared with the control group, were better able to sustain visual attention through improved perceptual sensitivity and inhibit habitual responses. Importantly, the response inhibition improvements predicted psychological improvements as measured in increases in such traits as empathy, openness, and wellbeing and in decreases of depression, anxiety, and difficulty regulating emotions. When the control group entered the retreat, these same improvements became apparent. Many improvements lasted for months after the retreats.

To examine emotional changes from intensive practice, the researchers, led by Erika Rosenberg, studied how people responded to film scenes of human suffering. When responding to painful images, retreat participants showed a decrease in emotions such as anger, disgust and, contempt compared to controls. Instead, retreatants were more likely to respond to the suffering of others with sadness.

In looking at psycho-biological markers, the researchers, led by Tonya Jacobs and Elissa Epel and including co-investigator Elizabeth Blackburn, a molecular biologist who shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine for her work on cellular aging, found increased levels of telomerase in retreat participants. In fact, levels of telomerase at the end of the first retreat correlated with an increased sense of purpose in life, as reported by retreat but not control participants. Also, participants who reported greater mindfulness had reduced stress hormones. Both findings point to a positive link between meditation, health, and possibly longevity, which Saron is eager to explore further.

“There is much more data to analyze and learn from,” he stated. And now, thanks to a recent $2.3 million Templeton Prize Research Grant from the John Templeton Foundation, he and his colleagues can take the Shamatha Project to the next level.

Read the third part in our series: Part III: Forging Ahead or Read the first post.

The Shamatha Project, Part I


Editors note: Thanks to a recent $2.3 million Templeton Prize Research Grant from the John Templeton Foundation, researchers are revisiting the results gleaned from Shamatha Project and further analyzing those results. In the first two posts of this four-part series we’re offering people unfamiliar with the project the chance to learn more about the project and its researchers. In our third post we will discuss the next stage of this project funded by the Templeton Prize Research Grant. And in our final post we’ll take a closer look at the lead researcher, Clifford Saron.

By Sarah Sutherland

If you’ve ever done a retreat at Shambhala Mountain Center, it’s likely that at some point following the retreat, you noticed a difference in yourself. Maybe you felt calmer, or had more patience. Or perhaps you just felt better about your place in the world. And you probably wondered how long the changes would last. If so, you’re not alone.

In the Shamatha Project—the largest and most comprehensive study ever done on the psychological, physical, and behavioral effects of intensive meditation—researchers studied (and still are studying) the effects of meditation on people who participated in three-month retreats at Shambhala Mountain Center in 2007.

“This project represents a true long-term perspective on the developmental consequences of intensive meditation training,” said lead researcher Clifford Saron in a press release from the University of California, Davis, where he is an associate research scientist. “Nothing quite like this has been done before.”

Saron and a team of research assistants, graduate and post doctorate trainees, and nearly 30 investigators and consulting scientists from universities across the United States and Europe looked not so much at what people do while they meditate, but rather at what people do differently because they meditate.

“Three months sounds like a long time to meditate full time, but actually in terms of reshaping the way you regard the world emotionally, it’s not really that long,” Saron explained in a TEDx UC Davis presentation last May. “The study suggests that after three months, retreat participants showed an enhanced ability to keep in mind complex and painful realities without pushing them away. This may be the crucible for the arising of a compassionate response when confronted with suffering in yourself and others.”

With 60 volunteers, recruited mainly from advertisements in Buddhist publications, the researchers created two randomized groups of 30, with the first group entering the three-month retreat, while the second group served as a control group and were flown to Shambhala Mountain Center for testing just like the retreat group. Six months later, the second group completed their own retreat as well.

As part of the project, retreatants received instructions from Buddhist scholar Alan Wallace, the contemplative director of the project and a co-author on study publications. Dr. Wallace taught shamatha meditation and the Four Immeasurables, practices to tame the mind and open the heart.

Shamatha, which is the Sanskrit word for meditation, means resting in a state of quietness, or calm abiding. It is a simple, yet profound practice in which you place your awareness on your breath, following the sensations as you inhale and exhale and coming back to the breath when your mind has wandered off. The point of shamatha, according to Wallace, is to make our minds serviceable—stable and clear—and lays the foundation for cultivating the Four Immeasurables: loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.

In contemplating the Four Immeasurables, we generate qualities of love, compassion, joy, and equanimity toward ourselves and toward all beings. Different yet complementary to shamatha, the Four Immeasurables is a heart-opening practice that deepens our relationship to ourselves and to others.

During their three-month retreat at Shambhala Mountain Center, participants meditated alone for about six hours a day and met in groups twice daily for guided meditation and discussion. They also met weekly with Wallace for meditation interviews. The results were astounding. To find out more, read the second in our series on the Shamatha Project: Part II: Analyzing the Results.

Interview with a Meditator: Learn to Meditate

 

“People realize that they can make friends with themselves and that seems to be the main point”

Greg Smith started meditating in 1976 and began teaching meditation practice in 1982. In this interview he addresses some of the questions that he regularly encounters with beginning meditators, about the purpose of meditation and the Learn to Meditate program, and his own reasons for beginning this powerful practice.

Beginning meditators rarely begin this practice without misconceptions of what it is that they are doing. For so simple an activity, meditation is often made out to be something it is not. “They kinda want to make their minds go away, which is probably not such a helpful approach” says Greg, suggesting that it’s more about leaning to make friends with yourself.

 

Dathun: Before and After Photos

 

Inspired by a piece from a few years back in the Shambhala Times, our fabulous marketing associate, Kaleigh Isaacs, and our equally fabulous development associate, Chris Seelie, put together this series of Before and After shots from participants in the winter Dathun.

Really driving home the truth that “nothing is new” the photo collage below is our tribute to the truth of the theme of this past Dathun, that Feeling and Touching and Being (i.e. Shambhala Meditation) — taking time to sit with our hearts and minds for a month is better than a facial and a lot like falling in love.

Scientifically rigorous, this is not; but regard the eyes.

BEFORE AFTER
Deborah before dathun  Deboarah after Dathun
Lasette before Dathun retreat  Lassette after Dathun Retreat
David before Dathun retreat David before Dathun retreat
Tim before dathun retreat Tim before dathun retreat
Peter after Dathun retreat Peter after Dathun retreat
Guillermo before dathun retreat Guillermo after Dathun retreat
Marin After Marin after Dathun retreat
David before dathun retreat David after dathun retreat

And lastly we have Tom the Dathün Coordinator, who would certainly call his experience transformative!

We had a lot of fun putting these together and seeing people’s responses. Let us know what you think below in the comments!

To learn more about Dathun click here.