The ROI of Meditation and Mindfulness in the Workplace Part 2

I’ll begin this blog post about, how Resilience Offsets Illness with a brief description of how and why mindful meditation works, especially how it helps mediate the fight or flight response, first in cave women and cave men, and now in highly stressful workplace situations. I will share the findings of important biological and psychological research using magnetic resonance imaging – MRI – and other measurement techniques.

Then I will discuss some of the research findings on the impact of mindful meditation and associated resilience on major illness categories.

Finally, we’ll review the findings on the other ROI: The Return On Investment on mindful meditation approaches to resilience building.

The Fight or Flight Response Coming Out of My Cave

Over time, the way we humans live and use our brains and bodies has evolved. Your prehistoric brain or limbic system is wired for survival in such a way that we respond to danger/stress with the fight or flight response.

Let me tell you a story about my physical reaction to a sable tooth tiger 3000 years ago. Let’s imagine that I am a cave woman living 3,000 years ago. I am in my cave and wake up one morning. I yawn and stretch as I look toward the entrance of my cave. It is bright, so I get up, walk outside the cave to see a beautiful day. The sun is shining. There is not a cloud in the sky. I feel hungry and my stomach is growling. As I walk along the path outside my cave, my brain is functioning like a prehistoric computer, scanning and taking in information around me and aligning it with past memories. I see some berries that I pick and eat; they taste yummy as I rub my tummy which is beginning to digest the delicious berries.

As I continue on toward the savannah, I hear a loud noise behind me. My memory informed scanning brain signals, “danger, danger, danger,” recalling a tiger that I saw near there two days ago eating his prey. My imagination races with thoughts and fears. My amygdala alerts the hypothalamus and fires away a neural response, releasing hormones from my pituitary and adrenal glands. This is also called the H-P-A Axis.

This is a physiological response that I am going to describe; it is how we evolved, how we are built, how we are wired.

Now changes take place as my body goes from a parasympathetic mode, which tends to be calm, into a sympathetic mode also known as the stress response or the fight or flight response.

Now that my sympathetic nervous system is activated, my stomach stops digesting those berries – not a priority when my environment is perceived to harbor a possible threat to my survival. Fear takes over and the hormones epinephrine, norepinephrine and cortisol increase as my respiratory and heart rates increase. The blood supply to my belly shuts down and directs itself to the extremities and muscles of my legs, feet, arms and fists.

I will need any or all of these to run away from the tiger or to fight it if a tiger approaches you.

I become more mentally alert. My pupils become dilated to enhance my peripheral vision. My impulses quicken, fear heightens, as I prepare mentally and physically to “fight or flee.” Looking, scanning more diligently for the threat, or the perceived threat, I am focusing on survival. All of these physiological changes take place in a matter of seconds. I turn around only to see a large limb of a tree fell to the ground; there is no tiger today. I take a deep breath (take a deep inhale) and exhale slowly.

After the threat of a tiger has disappeared, over time (minutes or hours) my body returns to a state of calm. If the threat persisted for an extended period of time my energy would get depleted and I would become exhausted. In that case, my body would become unable to defend itself against the impact of a new threatened stressor, whether real or perceived, physiological regulation would diminish and if the stress continues it could lead to serious illness or death.

The cumulative buildup of stress hormones that are not metabolized can manifest themselves in the physical body as headaches, an upset stomach (like butterflies) or a number of other physiological conditions. Psychological manifestations can occur causing anxiety, depression, aggression, anger, inability to focus concentrate or remember.

As a cave woman I did not have language skills to communicate my stress and certainly my environmental perspective was very different. I was more physically active and this activity facilitated metabolizing the stress hormones that were released earlier, and this activity now releases feel good endorphins and other neurochemicals. These neurochemicals brought about a state of well-being/homeostasis both physically and psychologically. Today our lifestyles and work don’t always allow a healthy physical outlet.

We have evolved from cave people to a society that has language to communicate, cars to drive, trains and airplanes, computers, phones, TV and more. Our perspectives and thinking skills have evolved as well. As we evolve we can learn to recognize a thought as just a thought or a feeling as a feeling, like anger or being frightened and associate the thought or feeling within the body. Sometimes our bodies react to a thought or feeling with or without thinking. How many of you have ever noticed butterflies in your stomach when you were nervous or anxious? How many of you could recognize the butterflies in your stomach as a physiological response?

The fight or flight response was designed to run or fight with an enemy, but today that would be socially unacceptable, particularly in the workplace. Instead, the fight or flight response is often brought on by situations that require self-regulating skills and behavioral adjustments and if these adjustments are not made with awareness and resilience, it could mean difficulty in the workplace and lead to disease and illness, most commonly high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.

Are you ready to come out of your cave? Call Pat if you feel like you need to build skills to calm down, be present and develop mindfulness. Contact Pat at 305.606.2050 or pat@mindhealinginstitute for a workshop or private session. You can do this!

I will reveal the research in the next blog post.