Evidence shows that meditation helps with many things brain injury survivors struggle with, including attention, both working and long-term memory, and even spatial abilities. These are long lasting benefits that stay with practitioners even if meditation practice is discontinued. Many studies suggest that meditation induces brain plasticity, promoting the establishment of new connections both during the healing process and for the rest of our lives. Beyond this, mindfulness meditation builds a specific type of attention, allowing meditators to act in a responsive rather than reactive manner. Regular meditators attest to increased emotional resilience, increased patience and tolerance, better stress management abilities, and more.
The three primary areas of symptoms commonly experienced during TBI recovery are: somatic (sleep and sensory), cognitive (attention, memory, and processing), and affective (emotional). Fatigue is considered multidimensional since it exacerbates the symptoms in each of these areas. Experiencing symptoms daily in each of these areas, I searched desperately for some kind of relief and happened across an article on meditation that caught my attention, launching an exploration that took me through various meditation styles and ultimately changed my life.
I don’t fully understand all the mechanics of everything that changed; from what I’ve read the practice of meditation actually changes how our brains work. In meditation classes, my instructor taught that while meditation is relaxing, it’s not about what you feel during the meditation so much as what happens in the rest of your life because of your meditation.
The first areas of my life where I started to clearly notice a difference were both the frequency and intensity of my mental fatigue. I’ve learned over time that my brain fatigue comes from two primary areas: poor sleep and overstimulation. One bad night leaves me struggling with patience, concentration, memory, and emotional control the next day – two bad nights in a row leaves me cognitively and emotionally dysfunctional. Overstimulation can come from demanding meetings and work activities, being in a room where multiple conversations are happening, or even just watching an action movie.
About two weeks into my twice-daily meditation practice, I began to notice a difference in the level of calm I could feel in situations that normally triggered my emotional responses. It wasn’t a complete turnaround, or any kind of a miracle fix to my post TBI symptoms, but it felt like my buffer zone was starting to build a little bit of resilience. Now that I have a full year of meditation practice under my belt, I really do have a significantly improved buffer zone. It’s not like it doesn’t still fail me sometimes, but failures happen much less frequently than before meditation. And, the most significant sign of the benefits I’m receiving isn’t just what I notice, it’s what others notice.
While my friends and coworkers occasionally offer comments on how I seem to be handling things better these days, the real evidence comes from those I’m closest to. I’m referring to that limited number of people for whom the walls come down all too often, and who are more often present in my moments of weakness and struggle. Even now, I don’t spend much time out of my own space. I see my mother daily, but with her dementia she rarely notices much of anything about me. My son lives in town, but we see each other only a few times a month. I normally see my girlfriend two or three times a week, and she’s the one who is frequently exposed to the worst of what I have to offer. In my defense, she also sees some of the best of what I’m able to give – but my point in this context is that she has shared with me often that I’m doing better in many areas since starting my meditation practice.
I encourage everyone to explore the benefits of meditation (whether or not you have a brain injury.) While the anecdotal evidence has been accumulating over a couple of millennia, there is a mounting collection of scientific evidence showing measurable benefits of meditation practice and a mindful lifestyle for brain injury survivors. A brain injury offers many challenges; if we can improve our lives, even a little, by setting aside a few minutes each day to calm our minds and release some of our stress – doesn’t that seem worth a try?
My blossoming blog and soon-to-be podcast is about this very thing. I’ve been a practicing Zen Buddhist for 6 years and the ONE THING that has sustained me through my 6 years of sobriety is meditation. I’d love to hear from you!
Hi Andy, thanks for reading and thanks for responding. I see that you have been blogging for a number of years now, I applaud you for your diligence and commitment. Myself, I find that my motivation levels vary from day to day and month to month (as discussed in my post on Getting Things Done). But for what I have been able to post, I’ve been getting positive feedback on value to the brain injury community and I’m hoping I can continue to offer valuable content through the years to come.
As I wrote in this post, meditation has delivered many positive outcomes for me. The Mindfulness Meditation style seems to sit well with me, possibly influenced by becoming, as suggested by neurological testing, over 90% right brain dominant after my brain injury – so being “in the moment” is what I do best. Everyone is unique, as is every brain injury – and what works for one may or may not work for another. I hope to do a post on different meditation styles in the near future.
Congratulations on your sobriety. I was a moderate drinker before my TBI, but I’ve found that alcohol and I no longer mix well. From all that I’ve read, alcohol can be very counterproductive and even damaging to brain injury survivors, so it’s probably for the best that I do things a bit differently now.
Podcasts are the preferred medium for many people, I wish you the best of success in your adventure.