Meditation
Initially I’d think myself a skeptic to the far-east Asian practice of meditation, only ever regarding it as a last ditch effort to regain whatever sanity your predisposed baseline is accustom to. I never really believed in Nirvana, and I’m a Christian, for all intents and purposes, the driving force to keeping me away from heresies. In other words, I’m closed minded to the idea of meditation.
Just recently a friend of mine recommended to me to meditation, I scoffed at him, and told him “The practices of my day all serve a purpose and a higher value than meditation could ever promise”, I thought about meditation, after that scolding. I asked myself if I wasn’t so closed minded what would that entail, the practice I mean, what would the practice even look like?
Step 1: Find a place to sit.
Step 2: Start a timer, anywhere from 3-30 minutes. ALl the literature points toward 30 minutes total in a day yields the most benefit. While 3 minutes is the beginning of the benefit of meditation.
Step 3: Criss-cross applesauce, sit up straight, shoulders back, tongue on the roof of the mouth.
Step 4: Eyes closed, inhale 4 seconds, hold 4 seconds, release 4-8 seconds, hold 4 seconds, and repeat. In other words breath.
Step 5: Get distracted, focus back in on the breath. That is a repetition.
Step 6: Timer goes off, and you’ve completed the meditation practice.
Why meditate? For the layman I’ll answer this question as simply as I can manage, but first why do we pray, why do we write, why do we read, why do we study, when we think about these actions it’s plain to see, there’s a particular focus on the expansion of the mind. With that in all of these actions if we scanned the brain that read, studied, prayed, and wrote, it’s clear to see that when scanned with fMRI these brains are actively engaged, all in unique areas. We’ll break down the neural activation in these brain states in the future, for now, just know, that these brains experience activation and there for growth for being engaged, not passively, but engaged because of intent.
Meditation is not a passive practice, it’s a practice that requires intent. To sit and challenge yourself to let go, and to focus on nothing but the breath. A unique brain state that isn’t quite asleep, but is certainly awake. This will drive your prefrontal cortex, the frontal lobe of the brain to have a drive for higher states of neural function, but most iportantly an imporved ability to recenter focus on tasks that it has set out to do. Now ask yourself "How often do I get distracted”, distraction can get mittigated by one’s own ability to increase prefrontal cortex integrity, this will only happen out of practice. What better way, and it’s completely free than meditation.
you’re directly rewiring your central command system—from the brainstem to the prefrontal cortex.
Here’s what lights up—and what shuts off:
🔥 1. Deactivation of the Default Mode Network (DMN)
The "mental chatter loop"—rumination, comparison, identity noise.
The DMN includes the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex
It’s overactive in anxious, neurotic, and socially conditioned men
Meditation dampens DMN activity, which results in:
Lower baseline anxiety
Increased presence
Reduction in egoic self-narratives
🧠 2. Thickening of the Prefrontal Cortex
The CEO of your brain—focus, judgment, long-term planning, willpower.
Meditation strengthens PFC gray matter volume and density
You become better at:
Task switching
Delaying gratification
Strategic emotional response
This is why calm men are lethal. They’re not passive. Their PFC is stronger than their amygdala.
⚡ 3. Activation of the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC)
The bridge between limbic emotional reactivity and executive control.
Responsible for error detection, self-regulation, and attention switching
Highly active during focused-attention and breath work meditation styles
This is how you get cognitive resilience—you spot distraction and return to the task faster than other men.
🧬 4. Parasympathetic Nervous System Activation
The “rest-digest-regenerate” system.
Meditation shifts your vagus nerve tone
You get:
Lower heart rate
Improved HRV, heart rate variability
Reduced cortisol, stress molecule, you don’t want too much of this
Better digestion
Improved testosterone receptor expression
Meditating daily doesn’t just calm you—it makes you more anabolically efficient.
🌌 5. Neurotransmitter Calibration
These are the biochemical echoes of your inner state.
Dopamine: Increases during focused meditation (especially with posture + nasal breathing)
Serotonin: Stabilized through rhythmic breath work and silence
GABA: Surges after 10–20 minutes of stillness (calms CNS, helps sleep)
Endogenous opioids: Released during deeper states—creates that calm euphoria post-sit
You’re not meditating to relax. You’re shifting your brain chemistry.
Last I want to leave you with a Harvard study, note the shrinkage of the amygdala. The amygdala is where one experiences fear and anxiety notably, it works directly with the sympathetic nervous system, if there is less sympathetic drive there will be a lesser need for this particular brain path way and gray matter. The atrophy is due to less use of the amygdala, there for less prone to falling into fearful and anxiety provoking states. This is likely due to the parasympathetic nervous systems up regulation during meditation and mindful states.
Study: Participants did an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course
Result:
Significant reduction in right amygdala volume
Increased gray matter in hippocampus, PFC, and ACC
Correlated with self-reported stress reduction
Brewer, J. A., et al. (2011). Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness and decreased default mode network activity.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1112029108
Hölzel, B. K., et al. (2011). Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density.
Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pscychresns.2010.08.006
Tang, Y. Y., et al. (2007). Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0707678104
Krygier, J. R., et al. (2013). Mindfulness meditation, well-being, and heart rate variability: A preliminary investigation into the impact of intensive Vipassana meditation.
International Journal of Psychophysiology.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2013.06.017
Streeter, C. C., et al. (2007). Yoga Asana sessions increase brain GABA levels: a pilot study.
The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.
https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2007.6338Kjaer, T. W., et al. (2002). Increased dopamine tone during meditation-induced change of consciousness.
Cognitive Brain Research.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0926-6410(01)00106-9Luders, E., et al. (2012). The underlying anatomical correlates of long-term meditation: Larger hippocampal and frontal volumes of gray matter.
NeuroImage.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.11.056Hölzel, B. K., et al. (2011). Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density.
Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pscychresns.2010.08.006