WA4 Rough Draft Gideon Razzaq Community College of Philadelphia English 102: The Research Paper Professor Mark Hughes April 13, 2023 Happinesses is something all humans pursue on a daily basis, from becoming financially stable to keeping their bodies healthy and even finding love and people to share moments with. We all are on a journey to accomplishing happiness and there are many different ways to discover it. One way that many studies have shown and many psychologists say is the key to happiness and well-being is meditation. The practice of meditation has been around for thousands of years. This ancient practice is still widely used today since it is good for both general health and brain function. It is a technique that combines mental and physical exercises to help you focus or cleanse your thoughts by closing your eyes and controlling your breathing. There are many studies that show meditation and its effects on our happiness and wellbeing and they will be presented below. The effects will be broken down into three parts, emotional effects, mental effects and the physical effects meditation has on the human body. Our minds are very complex and they essentially control how we perceive things that happen around us and even things like walking or using your hands. For us to have healthy minds and balanced emotional levels we must workout that large organ that many people forget about. Just as we go to the gym to exercise and grow our muscles we must also do the same with our brains which is the most important organ or part of our body. Through my research I have found that meditation is a great way of relaxing your mind and controlling emotional levels like feeling anxiety or depression which are some examples. In a study conducted by Harvard University to test how meditation affects the brains of patients who are depressed, Powell (2018) says, “including depression, chronic pain, and anxiety — in which well-designed, well-run studies have shown benefits for patients engaging in a mindfulness meditation program.” This means that meditation has significant benefits for treating depression, since it is an emotional setback it can essentially be cured by mental practices such as meditation which helps to think positive and control your thoughts. Another emotional aspect that meditation has an effect on is that it reduces the stress levels and negative emotions in people in times of stress. In a study done by the American Psychology Association (“Mindfulness Meditation: A Research-proven Way to Reduce Stress,” 2019) showed strong evidence that people who received Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy were less likely to react with negative thoughts or unhelpful emotional reactions in times of stress. In the same study they found that, “more than 200 studies of mindfulness among healthy people and found mindfulness-based therapy was especially effective for reducing stress, anxiety and depression.” Also in an article by the Mayo Clinic they list that meditation helps in building skills to manage stress as one of the positives to meditation. (Mayo Clinic 2022). These pieces of information tell us that a large number of people in those studies were affected positively in terms of dealing with negative emotions like stress or anxiety and that through continued practice of meditation, positive effects were shown in times of need. Jonathan Haidt in his book The Happiness Hypothesis talks about there being a happiness set-point in all of us and how no matter if something extremely bad or good happens to us within six months we will gradually get back to that happiness set-point. But in my research I found that the happiness set-point can be changed through meditation. A study mentioned in an article by Psychology Today, Puff (2013), says that through 8-weeks of meditating, one hour a day that people reported to be happier and continued to be than their normal levels. In addition, at the end they reported to be more empathetic towards others and were better at picking up emotional cues from others as well. Another study that showed that happiness and meditation are interrelated is a study done by the Middle East Current Psychiatry, they tested self-disclosure and mindfulness and how they correlate to happiness by using the Arabic happiness scale, they concluded that (Aldahadha 2023), “the results indicate that mindfulness is more effective and beneficial for living a happy and healthy life than self-disclosure.” These pieces of research show us that there is a significant relation between happiness and meditation, from changing your happiness setpoint to treating depression, anxiety, stress and even directly affecting your happiness which was tested through a happiness scale. We can see the positive effects meditation has on emotional aspects of people’s lives. Onto the mental effects that meditation has on our brains such as strengthening areas of the brain responsible for memory, learning, attention and self-awareness. An article by UW Medicine (How Meditation Affects Your Brain and Boosts Well-Being, 2021), and by Psychology Today (Puff 2013) both say that older people who practice meditation do not lose their gray matter as fast as non-meditators the same age. Gray matter is an essential type of tissue in your brain and spinal cord and plays a significant role in mental functions such as memory, emotions and movement. They took MRI’s of both older aged long time meditators and non-meditators and it showed that the long-time meditators had more gray matter in their brains than nonmeditators. This shows us one positive effect that meditation has on the brain is that it helps to keep your brain in good working condition even though through age it can get weaker and lead to things like Alzheimer's disease. The ability to solve problems and concentration are both very important things everyone needs either at work or even solving personal issues. Meditation is something that can boost your problem solving skills and your ability to focus. A study by the Cleveland Clinic (2022) lists, “Improved ability to think, concentrate and solve problems” as one of the benefits to meditation. This information about meditation is the same as almost any credible article about meditation, which confirms the validity of it. These positive effects are a crucial part to human happiness although Haidt in his book does say that happiness does not come from health or wellbeing meaning there are many different aspects to being happy I do believe that it does take in some part of being happy and wellbeing because without good health and wellbeing you would not be able to properly enjoy your life. Illnesses such as Alzehmiers affect a person’s ability for memory as well as other things and without remembering how your life went and the people who were in it can set you back in terms of happinesses. But then again Haidt also says that we all have a happiness set-point which returns to normal after a period of time no matter the situation, so it is not exactly clear and can vary from person to person. Finally for the physical effects that meditation has on humans is that it can help with various different aspects of our bodies. Firstly it can help keep your heart healthy, in an article on Mindworks.org they include a study reported by Psychosomatic Medicine, Team (2022) that shows that frequent meditators have lower amounts of lipid peroxide than non-meditators. Lipid peroxide is a harmful compound that hardens the arteries and causes atherosclerosis. Also in the same source they mention a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison that shows that Team (2022), frequent mindfulness sessions seemed to improve meditators’ immune system functions. This research proves that meditation has great positive effects on the physical health of humans.
