'60 Minutes' Explores The Rise of Mindfulness, From Google To Congress - Forbes

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'60 Minutes' Explores The

Rise Of Mindfulness, From
Google To Congress
Alice G. Walton
,
CONTRIBUTOR
I cover health, medicine,

psychology and
neuroscience.
FOLLOW ON FORBES(669)
Opinions expressed by
Forbes Contributors are
their own.
FULL BIO
While the world is getting

more and more
technologically connected, a
lot of people seem to be
feeling more mentally
disconnectedfrom others,
and from themselves.
Im on mobile devices all
day long, said Anderson
Cooper on tonights 60
Minutes (which you can
watch here). I feel like I
could go through an entire
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day and not be present. Its

exhausting.
Mindfulness may be the
antidote, say more and more
practitioners, and an
increasing number of
scientific studies. The
ages-old practice teaches a
person to be more focused
on the present moment,
rather than caught up in
thoughts about the past or
worries about the future.
The practice has gained
popularity in the U.S., and
apparently with good
reason: Every other week
there seems to be a new
scientific study showing just
how it can change the brain.
Corporations and politicians
are also jumping on board,
and learning how to simply
be, in the present moment.
For his story on
mindfulness, Cooper, who
was an admitted skeptic
going in, attended a
weekend-long mindfulness
retreat with meditation
expert of 47 years, Jon
Kabat-Zinn, founder of the
Center for Mindfulness at
the University of
Massachusetts Medical
School, and developer of the
popular eight-week long
mindfulness-based stress
reduction (MBSR) program.
Kabat-Zinns famous
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definition of mindfulness is
the awareness that arises
through paying attention on
purpose in the present
moment, and
non-judgmentally.
By the end of
Coopers retreat, which
included a lot of meditation,
silent meals, and no
electronics, Cooper says he
was so sold on cognitive
benefits of mindfulness, that
hes integrated it into his
everyday life and can feel
the difference. As he said to
his producer on
60MinutesOvertime, It
sounds like Ive sort of
drunk the Kool Aid, but in a
way I have sort of drunk the
Kool Aid.
Recommended by Forbes
A Practice to Quiet the

Monkey Mind
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The tendency to over-think is an occupational hazard of being

human, says Kabat-Zinn, responding to Coopers admission that
he rarely feels that hes in the present moment. Well be projecting
in the future or reminiscing about the past, or what went wrong,
and who did what to whom, or whos to blame.Were creating
narratives constantly. Its the constant narrative in our heads (i.e.,
the monkey mind) that leads to the sensation that were not really
present in a moment-to-moment way. The mind has a life of its
own, says Kabat-Zinn. It goes here and there.
So, in mindfulness, the real practice is bringing the mind back to a
particular point of focus Kabat-Zinn likes to teach people to first
use the breath as many times as it takes. And it may take a lot of
redirection, since, says Kabat-Zinn, the minds nature is to wander.
He likens the mind to the ocean most of the time, youre getting
bounced around by the waves at the surface. But meditation, when
practiced enough, lets you dip below the waves and not be at the
mercy of the choppy surface agitations. When youre below the
surface, in meditation, agrees Cooper, youre still kind of moved
by the currents, but youre not being slapped around by the waves.
In other words, meditation lets us get some reprieve from the
constant rovings of our minds.
Business and Politics Jump on Board
Cooper is certainly not alone in his newfound devotion. Everyone
from politicians to businesspeople is starting to practice it, and
oftentimes, introducing it to their colleagues. One of the attendees
at Coopers retreat was Ohio democratic congressman Tim Ryan,
who wrote the book A Mindful Nation. As a stressed-out
congressman of 10 years, Ryan began meditating to deal with his
chronic stress in 2008. He says that in meetings in Washington,
mindfulness helps him manage his responses to peers who may say
things to rile others up. Hes even started weekly meditation
meetings for congress members and staffers of both parties
though he says no Republicans have joined in yet.
Ryan has also worked to secure $1 million in funding to teach
mindfulness to schoolchildren in his Ohio district. Ive seen it
transform classrooms, Ive seen it heal veterans, Ive seen what it
does to individuals who have really high levels of chronic stress. I
wouldnt be willing to stick my neck out this far if I didnt think it
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was the thing that can help shift the country.

Big companies have gotten into it, too. Google, Facebook, and
Instagram are some of the companies that attend the Wisdom 2.0
conference, and are bringing meditation back to their companies.
One of the job perks at Google, is that its 52,000 employees are
given free lessons in mindfulness. Googles meditation guru, known
formally as the Jolly Good Fellow, Chade-Meng Tan, is charged
with hefty responsibilities, as his official job description is to
Enlighten minds, open hearts, create world peace. Some
meetings at Google start out with a couple of minutes of
meditation. Not only does adding meditation to the work day make
people happier and more present, but it also makes people more
productive. The trick, says Tan, is to get into that frame of mind on
demand, and meditation teaches people to do exactly this.
The Brain Science Behind Mindfulness
Lest people think that mindfulness is new-age gobbledygook,
Cooper allowed himself to be a subject in a one-person experiment
showing the neurological effects of meditation. There are dozens of
studies showing the functional and structural changes meditation
can bring about in the brain, and Cooper wanted to see if his own
practice had any measurable effects. Researcher Judson Brewer,
head of the University of Massachusetts Mindfulness Center,
hooked Cooper up to an EEG electroencephalography machine,
which measures the brains electric potentials through the scalp.
Now knowing how to deactivate the stress centers of the brain,
Cooper wanted to see if the recordings could capture the moment
when he dropped into mindfulness.
And they did, robustly. The central region of interest was the
brains posterior cingulate, which governs emotion processing and
memory. Its also part of the brains default mode network or
DMN, the constellation of brain regions that are active when our
minds are wandering or when the monkey mind is at work.
Cooper was asked to first think of a memory that was anxietyproducing. His brain immediately showed the effect, with the
posterior cingulate activity spiking. But when he dropped into
meditation, the activity in that brain region quickly quieted down.
Meditation is really a form of cognitive training, says Brewer, who
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has studied the effects of mindfulness meditation for years, first at

Yale and now at UMass. His specialty is using mindfulness to help
people with their addictions. This is just the next generation of
exercise, he says. Weve got the physical exercise components
down, and not its about working out how we can actually train our
minds. Brewers research has found that mindfulness meditation
can lead to measurable changes in the brains of both experts and
novices.
If you look at people out on the street, if you look at people at
restaurants, nobodys having conversations anymore, says Brewer.
Theyre sitting at dinner looking at their phones, because their
brain is so addicted to it. Its the same reward pathways as
addiction. All this is leading to societal exhaustion.
So should more people give meditation a try? Its probably not a
bad ideabut thinking of it as a should wont work, says
Kabat-Zinn. If it feels like something extra you have to add to your
day, thats probably not the right motivation. Its not a big should,
he says. They shouldnt do it if it feels like a should its a being.
Follow me on Twitter or find me on Facebook.
9
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SEE ALSO
MEDITATION WORKSHOPS
MEDITATION SECRETS
ART OF MEDITATION
MEDITATION FOR STRESS
SILENT MEDITATION
WALKING MEDITATION
MEDITATION TRAINING
MINDFULNESS
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'60 Minutes' Explores The Rise Of Mindfulness, From Google To Congr...

Pharma & Healthcare

DEC 14, 2014 @ 10:19 PM

Top 20 Stocks for 2016