31 May 2021
33 min 29 sec
Video Overview
Creators:
Maria Kozhevnikov
Abstract:
I will review research evidence which shows that types of meditation developed out of certain traditions such as Vajrayana Tantric Buddhism lead to heightened sympathetic activation and phasic alertness boost in focused attention), while types of meditation from other traditions such as Theravada and Mahayana elicit heightened parasympathetic activity and tonic alertness (vigilance). Such findings validate Buddhist scriptural descriptions of heightened arousal during Vajrayana practices and a calm and alert state of mind during Theravada and Mahayana types of meditation and demonstrate the importance of the cultural and philosophical context out of which the meditation practices develop. Furthermore, I will talk about neurophysiological correlates of main classes of Vajrayana practices, such as Generation stages (Deity self-visualization), Completion stages with sign (Tummo), and Completion stages without Sing (Mahamudra), and will show that Generation and Completion with sign stages produce the state of arousal and associated phasic alertness, later employed in Completion without sign culminating meditations.
Speaker Bio: Maria Kozhevnikov
Maria Kozhevnikov is an Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore and also a Visiting Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. Maria Kozhevnikov received her Ph.D. from Technion (Israel) jointly with UC Santa Barbara. Prior to joining the National University of Singapore, she has held faculty positions at Rutgers University (NJ) and George Mason University (VA). Her research interests focus on examining the neurocognitive bases of creativity and visualization as well as in exploring ways to boost creativity and cognitive capacities through the use of innovative technologies as well as ancient meditative practices.
- This is the second part of my presentation part two. And in this part, I will present the results of those studies, study two and study three. Study two conducted at Gebchak Nunnery in Tibet, and it examined the neurophysiology of Tummo practice which is the completion of sign practice.
- And in studies three, I will present my recent research conducted in Bhutan, which investigates neurophysiological correlates of tantra Mahamudra, that is Mahamudra performed in Vajrayana context of the generation stages. There have been only very few scientific studies so far on Tomo, such as Herbert Benson research, and Alex Levitov have presented in this conference, his study on Tumo, and my own study, which I’m presenting here, but with regard to Tantra, Mahamudra. There have been no scientific studies whatsoever. What has been studied in is only sutra Mahamudra, Mahamudra performed in a restful relaxed state. So we’ll talk about and studies three.
- Study two, which was focused on examining the neurophysiology of Tummo was conducted at Nangchen town in the Qinghai province in China this eastern Tibet. And this region where Nangchen town is located is also known as the Amdo region which had and still have monasteries specializing in Tummo and the best the most experienced Tummo practitioners.
- All Participants were then advanced practitioners, nuns, and monks from local monasteries, was extensive meditation experience. We took the EEG recording and measure the auxiliary temperature while they were doing Tummo and auxiliary temperature was taken to validate the claims that they’re able to increase their core body temperature while to do more, and also to examine neurophysiological processes which contribute to these temperature increases. And I just want to mention that Herbert Benson who already conducted his experiments with Tummo meditators.
- Obviously observed only peripheral body temperature increases and particular increases in finger temperature. But while it’s not a big deal to increase peripheral body temperature, but just by just imagining your hands are put into hot water, it’s a totally different story to increase core body temperature to increase core body temperature. It means to be in control of autonomic nervous system, which is considered to be impossible by contemporary modern medical science series.
- Gebchak Wangdrak Rinpoché helped with all the logistic arrangements and experiments were conducted. Most of the experiments were conducted at Wangdrak Rinpoché's house and Elizabeth McDougal helped, was running experiments and was also translations. Tummo meditative practice is targeted at controlling inner energy. It is also called psychic heat the practice. Tummo practice is characterized by a special breathing technique, vase breathing, where often inhalation. During a period of holding the breath, the practitioners use their abdominal muscles to press down to the navel area, while at the same time contracting the pelvic muscles to push the air up.
- There are different types of Tummo practice which differ in terms of their breathing technique involved and also in their goals and the content of visualization. The type of Tummo practice performed by the practitioners in this study was forceful breath of FB the goal of which is to raise body heat and there is also gentle breath which has a goal which is to maintain heat during the ceremony.
- So, I will show today’s results for the meditation. Since it looks like it is this component of Tummo practice which in fact contributes to core body temperature increases and be involved suppose forceful and vigorous vase breathing and visualization of a rising flame that starts at the lowest level and with each breath rises up to the crowns ahead and lengthy period of training is required before before practitioners can perform Tummo and arrive to any assurance of success.
- This is Gebchak Nunnery I was there in 2011 and they can truly believe it was already 10 years ago. And I was lucky enough to absorb the ceremony of drying wet sheets, which gave check nouns doing every year during the coldest day in the year. And you can see, you can see on the thermometer which I put there, it was around minus 20 degrees Celsius, which is around -4 Fahrenheit.
- And it was extremely cold days, I was not allowed to take any photos of the ceremony of drying but sheets. So I took the photo of the place of the ceremony just minutes before the ceremony. So this is this is a road nonce follow while the dry and wet sheets. And as a testament of the importance of the Tummo practice of capture Nana raises ceremony is held as I mentioned annually, and all of the experience Nuns walk slowly for a few hours around the nunnery complex in minus 20 minus 30 Celsius weather wearing only short skirts and shoes, and the wet sheet wrapped around their neck.
- And as soon as they dry, she did give it the llama and they get another ice cold wet shade to dry it also. And here also the locals already waiting before the sunrise towards the nuns working around the monastery premises. And you can see here how cold this actually, how cold was during that night. And here are nuns also waiting waiting for the ceremony.
- And here are the results. Indeed, we found that Tummo practitioners were able to increase their core body temperature up to 100.8 degrees Fahrenheit which is mild fever, and this is auxiliary temperature which usually is one degree lower than oral temperature. Practitioners were able to reach these increases during about 30-40 minutes of FB meditation. And the monks and nuns usually do not perform FB than that.
- And they perform a FB during the night of ceremony in a repeated sequence was through call through core Tibetan yoga physical exercise. So they performed the whole night. We identified two factors contributing to core body temperature increases. The first one is somatic components, somatic components relate is related to vase breathing and specifically apnea duration, meaning how long they were able to hold their breath. And some participants were able to do it from two to three minutes. And we found that apnea duration correlated with the rate of that temperature increases, that is how fast they were able to exhibit core body temperature increases.
- But what is interesting, we also found that there is a cognitive component, the quality of the visualization and it is the quality of the visualization which correlated with the overall temperature increases, that is how high they were able to raise their core body temperature. And on the left, you can see, you can see the graph representing the increases in core body temperature versus alpha power changes and those were measured using EEG equipment.
- And as you can see here, there is there was a significant correlation between the alpha power increases and the temperature increases. So those who were able to raise that temperature up to 1.2 degrees, they were able to increase the alpha power more than two times. So increases in alpha power and many neuroscience studies considered to represent internalized attention or indicator of increase increase in focused attention resources invested into the task.
- Two things I would like to emphasize here, while it might seem that the increase a one degree Celsius in core body temperature is rather modest, this all depends on the initial body temperature. It’s not a big deal to raise core body temperature from thirty-six degrees Celsius, which is a bit lower than normal, to so the seven degrees Celsius by doing aerobics going to sauna or doing some breathing exercises, but it’s practically impossible to raise core body temperature beyond.
- So the 37.2 degrees Celsius so there’s seven Pour into his a borderline armpit temperature above which one enters into a fever zone. So the 7.2 is a threshold, and here’s a body in his shades, all kinds of processes to bring the temperature back to normal. So, the blood vessels start to dilate, a person starts to sweat and their body temperature goes down.
- Unless of course, the person has some infection and then this threshold is lifted. So, to raise your body temperature voluntarily beyond 37.2 Celsius means to gain control of the autonomic nervous system, and to be able to control processes which are considered to be beyond the realm of conscious control. And you can see here that two subjects were able to do it. The increases in core body temperature as a result of the meditation have major implications.
- They mean paradoxically high arousal, most likely much higher than arousal that could be achieved by generation stages by deity meditation because here, there is a combination not only visualization, but also breathe in specific breathing techniques of mind and body working together to lead to higher arousal. One degree increase in core body temperature means enormous increase in metabolic rate, so it’s enormous arousal, and its issued through focus visualization and breathing.
- So similar degeneration stages completion stages, with sign and in particular Tummo seem to be targeted at generating the state of arousal the state of high wakefulness, a state of high physical alertness, which is apparently needed for completion without sign stages that they employed later in this culminating non dual awareness, tantric meditation. so they really perform on a state of high wakefulness.
- And here is a result of studies three, study three was conducted in eastern Bhutan with experienced Vajrayana practitioners from from Gyeltshen Rinpoche’s retreat center in Trashigang eastern Bhutan and Elizabeth helped me again with all the translation and running experiments. Six of our practitioners were nuns and three, three of the monks were cave monks with more than nine years of meditation retreats. This study is currently in the final stages of data analysis. It has two goals.
- The first one was to examine what is going on during the completion without sign meditations, specifically during Tantra Mahamudra practice. And our hypothesis was that one of the most critical condition to perform tantric style Mahamudra is to be in a state of high arousal, a state which is possible to achieve only eases through preceding generation stages like deity or completion with sign practices like Tummo and as Wangdrak Rinpoche, in his interview mentioned was our generation stages Mahamudra or Dzochen lags that energetic components.
- And indeed, there have been 1000 years debate in Buddhist philosophical literature was a Sutra Mahamudra can lead to the same achievement to the same non-dual state of awareness as Tantra Mahamudra. While there have been discussions in scientific literature on Tibetan style Mahamudra, termed open presence recall or non dual awareness, researchers mostly focus on non tantric sutra type of Mahamudra.
- And it’s associated with a specific type of mindfulness it was called Condor mindfulness object with mindfulness or object plus Shamatha. And its neural correlates were also similar to that of Shamatha. For example, Zorana Sipowicz, was doing several of these studies on Maha Mudra. That is, the instructions given to the participants were the comments, meditating Mahamudra from the restful state, while ignoring generation and or completion of the science stages.
- So no studies so far have been conducted on Tantra Mahamudra, performed in Vajrayana in a context that is after generation stages. So Sutra Mahamudra versus Tantra Mahamudra. This was the first research question, when looking at it from scientific perspective. And the second goal was to look at Tummo practice and to quantify the level of arousal achieved by Tummo practice and compare it with arousal achieved by deity, so we asked our participants to perform Mahamudra after rest. So this is sort of sutra Mahamudra, indicated here as M1. And then Deity, they were performing Deity there, and then they were asked to do Mahamudra too.
- So this is Mahamudra, after deity, more like Tantra Mahamudra. And those practitioners who are experts in Tummo, we also ask them to do more meditation at the end. And also, this is not how they usually perform this practice, Mahamudra performed after Tummo. But here we had only 10 participants who are experts in tumor. So we didn’t want to interrupt the sequence of meditations for other practitioners. So we actually have them to do Tummo at the end. And both HRV and EEG data were collected throughout this experiment.
- These are our HRV results. So vertical axis indicates HF changes. Positive values indicate relaxation and negative values indicate arousal. And the meditative practices in a sequence of wearable homes are plotted on a horizontal axis. As you can see from the graph, first of all, we found that non Tantric Mahamudra one resulted in a relaxation response, very similar to that of Vipassana in our first study, which I presented in part one. As for deity meditation, it caused significant arousal also consistent with the results of our first study.
- An additional interest in finding was that we found a significant correlation between the level of arousal and wrathfulness visualized, the the more wrathful the deity, the higher the arousal, also, just to mention it is not enough to visualize a Deity to experience arousal, based on my other studies, it looks like it should be self visualized, the deity should be visualized from a first person perspective.
- So, one should visualize oneself as a deity, no just visualize add in front of oneself. And apparently this is the this deity should be rather wrathful, since more peaceful deities do not produce the same level of arousal. Also Mahamudra after deity M2 is performed in a state of high arousal also as you can see, this arousal is a bit washed up in comparison with deity, again supporting our hypothesis that tantric Mahamudra does not produce arousal by itself but employs the arousal produced by deity, and finally tummo.
- You can see it produces arousal of double intensity in comparison with deity, and looking at other HRV indicators in addition to HF, such as LF Lau frequency or ratio LF to HF, we found that it is not just withdrawal from parasympathetic system during tummo, but also significant activation of sympathetic system, which means tummo causes not just arousal but it actually cause stress, causes stress. But this stress seems to be well controlled by practitioners by their body and mind
- These are the results of our EEG study,.And I uploaded here scalp maps for different frequency bands for four meditative practices. And each practice is ordered here versus its corresponding baseline which is precedent condition. Red colors indicate increase in the power of a particular frequency band and blue colors indicates a decrease. So, if we look for Delta power, in terms of attention, Delta power could be viewed as interference control. So that increases in Delta could be considered as inhibition of inappropriate actions or thoughts and decreases could be viewed as this inhibition.
- So we can see that during M2 we have significant this inhibition more significant than during and one and here for M3 it is global, while for one, it is limited to frontal areas. As for deity, and tummo, we see here inhibition of inappropriate responses increase Delta power and the level of Delta activity is quite similar for both, tummo and deity. Also for tummo. It’s localized to frontal areas to frontal regions. As for theta activity, I didn’t plot it here because we didn’t find any significant changes.
- And this is in contrast actually to previous studies, which showed increases in setup as a signature of many meditations. Alpha power can be viewed as top down versus bottom up control of attention, or internal versus external attention, that is attention directed inwards, versus outward. An increase would mean internalization of attention while decrease would mean externalization of attention. And here, the most interesting differences between M1 and M2. For M1, we see significant increases in parietal regions especially there were special parallels for low alpha band. For M2 we see significant decreases particular in parietal regions.
- So it looks like during M2 meditation attention is directed outwards, anticipating upcoming stimuli, while during M1 attention is directed at monitoring our internal mental world. The results of increasing our alpha power in parietal areas were obtained also for the person and mindfulness in other studies. And these results are rather consistent with meditation instructions for Vipassana, the instructions is to monitor the content occupies the mind, while for Mahamudra instructions require evenly distributed attention to the outside world.
- But it looks like it's a difficult result of a high state of arousal to direct attention outward. And, as we can see, during M1 attention is still directed inwards to the internal space. So again, this is the most significant difference between M1 and M2 in terms of alpha power. As for deity, and tummo, we see significant increases, especially in parietal areas.
- Also for tomo, they’re more widespread, they’re more global, consistent with previous literature. And not surprisingly because both meditations require internalization of attention directed attention to internal stimuli such as images or video or images of flames. As for beta power, decreases and beta in neuroscience literature attributed to processing of upcoming stimuli and increases in beta attributed to maintenance of the status quo that is maintaining sensory motor set during the next processing step or continuation of the current cognitive set.
- So, as we can see for deity and for tummo, we see better increases and specifically for tummo, quite significant and global. Deity, and tummo require maintenance of sensorimotor sensorimotor sets and cognitive sets subjects need to continue to do images themselves as deity and continue to do different visualizations required by tummo practice.
- As for M1 and M2, they seem to be quite similar, and they both show decreases also M2 show more pronounced decreases in beta, which indicate more readiness to process a novel stimuli. As for gamma, we have really interesting results here. And they contradict most of the previous literature on Vipassana and mindfulness and other open monitoring types of meditation that showed increase, not decrease in gamma power. Here, both M1 and M2 show gamma power decreases which contradict previous literature, both Sutra and Tantra Mahamudra are non dual awareness types of meditations. They do not stress attentional focus or object binding as other styles of meditation, but they stress more distribution of attention across the entire visual field.
- So, if we interpret karma has been responsible for object binding, and for binding of perceptual experiences into moment to moment awareness, the decreases in gamma for M1 and M3 two could indicate that objects are not selected from the background and attentional focus widen. So, that practitioners really looking beyond visual appearances in conclusion about gamma power. Our results are inconsistent with previous studies, which show increases in gamma. And they show that gamma decreases actually could their signature of non dual types of meditation and they might signify an objectless non conceptual state.
- So, in conclusion, deity and tummo that is generation and completion with science stages lead to the state of arousal and cause phasic alertness, significant pumping of cognitive and sensory motor resources with tummo having about double the intensity of deity this is similar to athletes who use visualization before a challenging task to enhance the subsequent physical performance and prime corresponding brain motor areas. But the data is here your generation and completion sign stages to prepare themselves for Mahamudra by enhancing their attention, and also priming related areas in the brain to replace their body with body and mind of a deity.
- Nothing like this, in the case of Mahamudra after rest. Mahamudra after rest shows the opposite pattern of physiological response that shows a state of relaxation, similar to the person or mindfulness and in terms of EEG markers. The most significant difference between Sutra and Tantra Mahamudra is in alpha power band related to top down versus bottom up attentional control.
- We know from neuroscience literature that arousal facilitates enhanced sensory capacity and readiness to respond to incoming stimuli. And it does seem that arousal is critical to facilitate the sense of alertness and direct attention from our internal world to the outside world. Sutra Mahamudra and tantra Mahamudra also have common features which seem to be a common feature actually of all non dual types of meditations performed ease in relaxed or aroused state, both sutra Mahamudra and tantra Mahamudra show decrease in gamma power not not the increase, indicating distribution of attention across entire visual field without selection of any particular object in the background.
- So indeed, this is why as a non dual practitioner is trying to go heavy on objects. Although it’s more a matter of definition, what what we choose to define as meditation, but if you look at Vajrayana practices, we can see that similar to the practices of Theravada and Mahayana, they aim at the same end result full control over autonomic system which so radically means a full control of Mind over body, so they do it through different channels parasympathetic channel, using Theravada Mahayana styles of meditation, or sympathetic channel using Vajrayana meditations.
- The only difference here is that most likely taken control over parasympathetic channels will take much longer time. So not surprisingly, Vajrayana is considered to be the fastest path to enlightenment also, perhaps not the safest one. So what I would like to suggest based on the results of of the three studies I presented here, is to define meditation as a technique to enhance control over the autonomic nervous system, either through parasympathetic or sympathetic channels.
- I want to emphasize that they can control over autonomic systems through sympathetic channel does not mean that Vajrayana teachings aim to teach only how to arouse oneself of course, they also require mastering relaxation techniques to bring the body back to normal state. Absolutely, because it’s not just to reach arousal it 's also to return back to normal set to normal state safely. For example, Vajrayana also teaches practices like the Vipassana, which lead to relaxation response, and vice versa. For example, Theravada and Mahayana meditation involved in visualization all in kindness meditation, which is common to all three Buddhist traditions. These types of meditations specifically loving kindness we know also cause some level of arousal.
- So, the main difference between the practices of different traditions is primarily on what these traditions build upon muster in sympathetic or master and parasympathetic systems. And finally, I want to suggest a revised categorization of meditation according to which we can classify all the meditations in relation to the autonomic nervous system and relations they produce specifically in terms of HF HRP. So, here positive changes in HF means relaxation, and I put here these practices which cause relaxation response such as Shamata, Vipassana, Mindfulness, Sutra Mahamudra. Negative values means arousal.
- So, I put here generation stages and competition stages. And now we have non dual types of meditations, which usually performed in Vajrayana meditation in the state of arousal after generational competition stages with time, or you have also more relaxing types of open monitoring and non-dollar instead of meditations, which, which are performed in a relaxed state.
- Future studies can quantify these HF changes for a variety of meditative techniques, not just from Buddhist traditions, but other traditions. So, eventually we can come up with a very clear classification of different meditations and also it might seem like very crude classification of meditations based entirely on physiological component of meditation and arousal versus relaxation.
- This is not exactly the case because specific attentional and other cognitive processes common along with physiological state. And as I mentioned before, in my first part, in the first part of my presentation, arousal comes with phasic alertness with focused attention, enhanced focused attention and enhanced visual imagery, while the state of relaxation comes with sustained attentional focus, sustained attention and tonic alertness and it characterized by other attentional processes.
- So mind and body here working really together. So actually these classification are not entirely on physiological dimension, it’s actually on the type of Mind Body interaction. And another advantage of such categorization is that it proposes some scientific right theorists such as all logical markers, one can use to evaluate oneself on how well they perform a specific connotation.
- And whether their HRV changes as similar results are in use by experienced meditators during this particular type of meditation. And nowadays, HRV changes can be easily avoided at home using modern devices, such as Apple Watches, for example, so actually needs some kind of marker, some operational definition and some way to evaluate one’s progress in a particular type of meditation.
- And this is the end of my presentation. And thank you very much for your attention.
Loading ... Creator:
Maria Kozhevnikov
Contributing Speaker:
Maria Kozhevnikov
Data Entry:
Visibility:
Public (group default)
Shanti AV Id:
41966