A long time ago, mystics used to spend a lot of time alone and meditate in the woods or on a mountain peak, far away from society. But what did they actually do? In essence, they used to examine their thoughts and everything that happens inside their inner world.

Over time, they arrived at the conclusion that they had a lot of thoughts that triggered anxiety. After long periods of examining their thoughts in solitude, they concluded that these thoughts had no useful purpose and that, if they stopped them, these negative thoughts would diminish their power.

This meant that they made their minds quiet, a process that nowadays is called meditation and, in Asian wisdom, it is called Vipassana, a process that helps people change their mood for the wellbeing of the mind from the inside out.

Quieting the mind is not an easy job. Sometimes, when you want to fall asleep you can’t stop thinking about the fact that you forgot to buy a water bottle for your guinea pig, for example, and that your little friend might die of thirst. Although you know you have to stop worrying about it you can not control your mind. This is where meditation can help.

What neuroscience has discovered just recently

It was only in the last century that science started to investigate what happens when people meditate. In the last 20 years, after the functional MRI was invented, neuroscientists have started to examine what happens to the brains of these mystics after long periods of meditation and they made some astonishing discoveries.

First of all, there is a part of our brain responsible for the periods of time when we wander, and it usually makes us focus on the bad stuff because that is how our brains are programmed, to detect danger and to try to anticipate it. This region is called the default mode network and, in the brains of people who meditate, it quietens down.

Secondly, in our brains, there is a region that is responsible for danger detection and the creation of fear and anxiety, called the amygdala. Scientists have concluded that the amygdala is smaller in people who meditate, meaning that their anxiety response is lowered.

And, last but not least, they have found changes in the sensory regions. These changes were represented by the increase of gray matter in those regions, meaning that people who meditate have an enhanced sense of perception and awareness.

What does psychology say?

Over time, in the field of psychology, a lot of techniques were developed that were meant to help people control their own thoughts. Brain plasticityis now a fact and the truth is that we can change our minds and the way we think. Vipassana sais that, over time, we can realize that our thoughts are not real and we can do that only through regular observation of our inner world.

There is a technique in psychology called cognitive talk therapy that encourages people to monitor their thoughts and tries to teach them that their thoughts are not real and that they are merely an interpretation of reality which they think that it is real because their thoughts are repetitive.

As a conclusion, it is interesting to see how science can come now with the proof that what mystics have known for millennia is actually true. They have long discovered how you can control your own mind to be happier and they developed a philosophy around it. How they were able to do that without any scientific support is another matter that can be explored.