338. The Science Behind Meditation - Ann Swanson

Kara Goodwin: [00:00:00] Welcome to the meditation conversation, the podcast to support your spiritual revolution. I'm your host, Kara Goodwin, and you're going to love this episode with Anne Swanson. She shares the latest research about how meditation helps us physically, emotionally, and mentally. I was fascinated by the insights she shared about sound.

Are you aware of the colors of sound? You'll hear about that a little bit later in the episode.

Anne Swanson is the author of the internationally best selling book, Science of Yoga, which has been translated into over 15 languages. Her new book, Meditation for the Real World, illuminates the fascinating science behind meditation with step by step practices. She worked alongside Harvard neuroscientist Dr.

Sarah Lazar and an illustrator for the New York Times to create this science based visual guide.

overcoming her own chronic pain and anxiety led [00:01:00] Anne to India to study yoga and meditation and China to explore Tai Chi and to earn a Master of Science graduate degree in yoga therapy. now Anne blends cutting edge research with ancient wisdom, resulting in realistic techniques you won't just learn,

You'll love to live by.

Learn more about meditation for the real world and how you can get bonuses for ordering it at meditation for the real world. com. And I'll have that link in the show notes. So I'm so excited for you to hear all that Anne shares and we'll get started in just a minute. I want to encourage you to also check out karagoodwin.com. you can get a free 10 minute meditation there. If you want support for your meditation practice, I have a 21 day online program to help you develop your own practice. And there's also the Healing Hearth membership where you can get live online assistance with your questions about meditation and life.

And we meet regularly for online meditations.

You can also get a personalized [00:02:00] recorded meditation slash energy transmission to help you get through whatever challenges are showing up in your life. I also have a recorded sacred geometry workshop series available. So all of that and more is available on karagoodwin. com and now enjoy this episode.

And I'm so excited to have you on today.

Ann Swanson: I'm so glad to

be here, Kara.

Kara Goodwin: Well, can we start by just tell us about your journey and what led you to going to India and China?

Ann Swanson: Ah, I guess I went to China because I graduated college during the recession and there weren't any jobs in the U. S., I joke, so I went off to China. But I had also studied Chinese, in school and so it was a good opportunity to practice my Mandarin and I went there to teach English but it was

actually super depressing there. I was in a very isolated place. Yeah, it was like gray and gloomy and [00:03:00] polluted. And everybody pointed at me in the streets cause I was like the only one that was a foreigner. And it was very isolating. So during that time I felt depressed and I picked up a lot of yoga actually and Tai Chi in the parks. And that helped me get through that challenging time. And I ended up doing my yoga teacher training. In China, so half of my training for my 200 hour was in Chinese. I had to

deliver my final

Kara Goodwin: that's impressive.

Ann Swanson: but half the teachers were Indian. So that part was in English and they were like, you're already halfway here.

Why don't you just go to India after this? And so I did, I went to India to continue my studies. I went to Dharamsala and the North of India and studied with my teacher, Yogi Sivadas, and he really inspired a sense of curiosity about the human body for me. He Of [00:04:00] course, emphasize the tradition and the philosophy, but he went deep into anatomy and I was like, okay, the best way I can be a great yoga teacher would be to become a doctor or physical therapist or something in the medical field. So with my art degree behind me, I went back to the U S and did the pre med course load, worked in a cadaver lab, studied the physical body from many different perspectives, including becoming a licensed massage therapist. And then that led me to where I am today. I ended up getting a master's of science and yoga therapy. And I emphasize the science supporting yoga, meditation and mind body

practices.

Kara Goodwin: I love it. I am fascinated by the way that science is catching up to these ancient practices and things that, for instance, yogis and sadhus have been doing. saying for, since antiquity, about [00:05:00] the different practices and how they can bring us into balance and what the knock on effects are physically and emotionally and mentally.

and now you have written meditation for the real world where you're really marrying it. the yogic traditions, the meditation traditions with modern life and the struggles that modern people are dealing with. there are so many different aspects, research, practical ways that yoga and meditation help modern.

Life, what are some of the, your favorite, let's say, what are some of your favorite, practices and some of those mysterious things about how these practices help us in our body, mind, spirit complex.

Ann Swanson: we know that long term meditation gives us great benefits by helping our brain tissue which tends to degrade as we [00:06:00] get older, the brain literally gets smaller and meditation rebuilds critical brain areas and so we know that it's good for your brain, we know that it's good for your immunity and every system of your body, even on a Cellular level meditation changes the behavior of your cells. and it also at the end of your chromosomes, if we really zoom in, it can help maintain the length of the ends of the chromosomes, the telomeres, or even in some cases, lengthen them, which is an indicator of longevity, helping your genes act younger and your cells. Be more efficient at what they're doing.

So we know it's helping us on every level from a microcosm to a macrocosm. And we know that long term it has these changes, but I find it so fascinating. But even short term, we can get immediate results within a five minute compassion based meditation. Researchers have seen that there's an increase in [00:07:00] specific antibodies that help your body fight invaders. So your immune system works better for hours. And even through the day afterwards, as well as people reporting that there's more energy, literally from five minutes. And we see changes in reduction and stress hormones immediately. We see brainwave activity change to be more conducive to relaxation and creativity and rejuvenation.

All of this happens in the moment. And like shortly after you're meditating, you get that like sense of, A high like endorphins, like a run, you actually can get that from meditation. So I found that really interesting, even just short practices, many meditations, one minute meditations can give you that reset to your nervous system to feel those immediate results.

To do whatever you want to do better, get into flow state better before you do a activity or creative act, or [00:08:00] perhaps, perform better when you're doing a sport or for me not pass out when I go to the doctor's office, I can get these immediate results that are tangible in my

life.

Kara Goodwin: I love that and what about the, because you talk about the telomeres and some of those more long term benefits, what about the cumulative effect of meditation if you're doing it regularly versus if it's just a one off five minute type of thing?

Ann Swanson: The one off five minutes add up, right? So especially if you're putting the one minute, five minute little meditations through your day, that's going to add up. but we tend to find that within eight weeks of meditating and then. Even long term, like years of meditating that we have these long term results, like you're saying, and that's that preservation of the brain tissue and the changes in the way we think and feel and the balances of our [00:09:00] hormones, as well as neurotransmitters, those things become more balanced.

We're able to come into back to homeostasis to maintain homeostasis. stasis more efficiently, that dynamic balance. So longterm, the results are really incredible. when we put a monk or not even a monk, just somebody that's been practicing, a person off the street that's been practicing years and years, you put them in an FR, RMI scanner. we see a big difference.

Kara Goodwin: Fascinating. So what about you, your personal journey with meditation, has it always been easy for you or did you have any sort of journey to adopting a practice long term?

Ann Swanson: I started meditation because of yoga for a lot of people, I came to the practice for physical and then by the time I was at the end of the class where you're meditating or perhaps you're lying in the final relaxation pose and being guided [00:10:00] through a relaxation. practice. I was like looking at my watch.

I was ready to go. This part was boring to me. I had stuff to do, so it did not come to me naturally. I feel like I am a recovering perfectionist. I was definitely type A intense, and so it didn't come naturally. But then But as teachers would experiment with different practices and techniques, I started to get a glimpse of Oh, wow, that's what you're talking about.

I found things that worked for me and that made a difference. When I saw that little glimpse of light, I started to get addicted to it and addicted to rest.

Kara Goodwin: Beautiful.you have touched a little bit on the things that happen within the brain, but can you go a little bit deeper into meditation and the changes in the brain chemistry? Yes.

Ann Swanson: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. we have [00:11:00] endorphins or these feel good chemicals that are affected from meditation. Just like that runner's high, we are releasing more, serotonin and oxytocin. So that kind of happiness chemical, and then the connection chemical, and then we regulate it. Our dopamine levels and dopamine is that reward system that helps you with motivation.

So keeping that regulated is really good. And then we also are lowering stress hormones and of course, stress hormones through the day, they go up and down. That's good. We want. We want to have a little bit more cortisol, or adrenaline when we're running and when we are perhaps, doing something that we need to focus more or right in the morning, but we don't want them to go up and down like significantly, like a roller coaster. So meditation helps keep them down. And when we have really high levels of cortisol [00:12:00] constantly in our system, we feel fatigued, we feel, overwhelmed, we feel that like weight of the world on our shoulders and we also hold onto fat and inflammation more so meditation helps reduce inflammation, key inflammatory markers, and that's huge because some scientists discuss how inflammation is A key to all chronic diseases.

So if you can keep inflammation down, it could be preventative for many

chronic diseases

Kara Goodwin: Yeah.

Ann Swanson: and we know.

Kara Goodwin: It's crazy.

Ann Swanson: Depression and anxiety have to do with inflammation also. And we know that a lot of the conditions that we're like, Oh, that's in my genes. So I'm going to have it. It's not actually the way it works anymore.

We're realizing that your genetic influence is a very small influence. Your lifestyle that nurture is way more important than your nature. [00:13:00] So you are not destined by your genes. If you feel like there's something in my family, heart disease, dementia, et cetera, your lifestyle makes a bigger impact. And meditation helps people not only like with all the benefits we've been saying, but also it helps people make better lifestyle decisions.

So you'll notice you start to eat. Eat better. You start to go to bed earlier and more on time and have a better schedule. You start to, have a better intuition about the people you hang out with. So you're hanging out with people that are more inspiring and make you feel good and you feel, help them feel good.

So you create community better, have better relationships. So it cascades into every aspect of your life. And we see that in the research too.

Kara Goodwin: That's fantastic. I was really enjoying looking through your Instagram, scienceof. yoga, I think is the handle. And you were writing about different colors of sound and how that can strategically [00:14:00] affect the brain. And I wondered if you could go into this a little bit. what does that mean, the different colors of sound?

Ann Swanson: Yeah. One of the things I cover in meditation for the real world is how to use what we know from science from like tangential areas to enhance your meditation to make you more likely to practice and get the benefits. for example, we know going in nature is really good for you. So meditate in nature. We know, walking is good for you. There's a walking meditation. Now, I have a section about sound and the power of sound. And when I dove into the research, I was blown away because the researchers themselves in these studies call sound different frequencies, different waves that your brain interprets.

They call it quote unquote

digital drugs. That's how powerful sounds can be. And we know that meditation changes our brain waves. So typically, like [00:15:00] right now, if you're listening to this or us talking, me and you Kara, it's in this state of like beta brainwaves focused, but also alert and evaluating and then meditation brings us into that relaxation, the alpha brainwaves. And even we've seen with meditation, we go into theta brainwaves, which are related to like creativity. They're often seen in children and yoga, Nidra, that lying down deep relaxation practice puts us in. Delta brainwaves, which are typically only seen in deep sleep. So you're getting some of these benefits of deep sleep in different sounds can induce different brainwave activity. And feelings. So I mentioned earlier that nature is really good for us, right? going in nature, looking at nature, even looking at a picture of nature is good for your brain and your neurochemistry. It's pretty profound. Your brain feels like you're in it just from looking well, listening to [00:16:00] sounds of nature has a similar effect to your brain.

So if you listen to. the sound of waves, like a recording. Some of us have a white noise machine, right? You listen to a recording of something that's, cicadas rain that is going to relax your nervous system, help you get into that parasympathetic nervous system state at rest, digest and rejuvenate. It also helps block out noise and help you sleep a little better. So white noise, like white light, it's a combination of all the frequencies. So a little bit of all of them. So then it blocks frequencies really well. This is why like therapists will have it right outside their door to block sound. Now I, white noise is okay. It's the TV fuzz can be white noise, but I think that more interesting is pink noise and brown noise.pink noise is like rainfall or the rustling of [00:17:00] leaves, it's,certain sounds of waves, like softer waves, ocean waves can be pink noise. And pink noise helps us with sleep and improved memory and focus. Brown noise is a little bit more intense, like a loud waterfall, or when the waves are crashing in a little bit harder. it's got the lower frequencies in there, more of them, and brown noise is It helps us, with enhanced focus and sleep also. So you might notice that pink noise is something you prefer more if you're, even as you're listening to this, you're like, I really love rainfall, then, putting on an audio of pink noise or.listening to a meditation that already has rainfall in the background, but you can also put it on in the background for your meditation or for your activities of daily living and your life, and that can help induce that state and better. So when I record audio meditations, I'll use different [00:18:00] colors of noise.

specifically to induce the brain wave state that I'm aiming for with that meditation, as well as other like types of sounds that are quote unquote digital drugs. And it helps you like get deeper into it for people that struggle with their mind wandering a lot, people with busy minds and feel like they're too busy to meditate.

Sometimes you need that little extra, to get

into it.

Kara Goodwin: That's beautiful. And so do the pink and brown, do those, are those associated with different brain states, brainwave states, like you were talking with the alpha and beta and

Ann Swanson: Yeah, they are, but also what we do is because I work with a, an engineer, a sound engineer who has two master's degrees in music. So she'll put specific frequencies, they're measured in Hertz along with the pink noise or brown noise to enhance. That effect. you'll see that if you're searching YouTube for meditations, you'll see that it [00:19:00] has a certain Hertz or frequency of 40 Hertz or in the 800 Hertz.

And each of these are associated with different, different feelings that you'd want to induce. And the research is uncovering that this seems to be true.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah. Yeah. it's a really interesting, study to go into because it's also fascinating what our pop music, for example, is attuned to and the history of, yeah.

Why it's 440, when that's not really an optimal, frequency for us, a lot of the sound, it's great to know both sides of it because we want to induce the sound that is beneficial for us and also to be aware of, the sources of sounds that are working not in our favor too.

So what's that with

Ann Swanson: pop music? why is it at that specific

frequency?

Kara Goodwin: I was just watching something about this yesterday and apparently I want to say it was 1936, but [00:20:00] that might not be the exact right year. But there was a a decision that was made to have, popular music be, put out 440, which is actually, makes us more, makes the population more pliable and more, and also, easier to.

in sight, like riots and things like that. Like it, it puts us in like more of a, it makes us more controllable. But it also can make us, work against each other and yeah, it's really interesting. And then that's the industry standard. So it's not across the board. I wouldn't say, I don't want to be like, don't ever put on your favorite pop station, but be aware that at the industry as a whole, that's what they're.

They're just using, whether they, I think a lot of people don't even know that's what they're [00:21:00]doing or why they're doing it or what the effect is. But when you choose like classical music, when you're diligent about, okay,I'll purposefully go onto YouTube or go into,my streaming service and look for ones that call out what the frequency is and be mindful about that.

And. Because sound is very powerful and we get it from all sides, so we're not just getting it from people like you who want to invoke a healing state and a, an uplifting state, but also, how does it work so that, we're not being, we're not put in a place where we're so mindful about what we're thinking about or the actions that we're taking and so forth.

Ann Swanson: yeah. Yeah. And I think that another thing to consider with pop music versus, what you might listening to for meditation or just in the background when you're trying to focus is the beats per minute. So I. Pop music, I would assume, would be, I don't know what the standard is, but like a little [00:22:00] faster, getting your heart rate up, get your adrenaline up so you feel like excited and jumping around and dance, that sort of vibe. Now, what we've seen in research, really interesting research out of, Italy by a cardiologist, named Bernardi. He looks at people singing different songs, chanting different songs. So whether it be like Ave Maria, Catholic hymn, or it be, Om Mani Padme Om, different throughout multiple cultures, we have these songs that we sing. And he found that they all put us in the same breathing rate, about six breaths per minute. When you've seen them or even, listening to them could induce this. So six breaths per minute is sometimes called the perfect breath about, some of, some people say it's like 5. 5 breaths to six around that [00:23:00] range per minute. And, that puts you in a state of coherence where you feel even and at ease. And so it makes sense that throughout history, we've been using songs. in order to induce that state before going into a spiritual practice or a ritual or a religious ceremony. It really works. And whether or not they were conscious of it, they were definitely including the science of sound, throughout

these different cultures.

Kara Goodwin: That's amazing. I, that's the second time today I've heard, that six breaths per minute, and I'd never heard that before, but how that is the, that perfect rate. And, that's so fascinating too.

Ann Swanson: I've been integrating a lot of these sounds into my audio meditations. And if you go to meditationfortherealworld. com and you, you can see how you can get the audio meditations with these sounds and a music album that I've produced with my sound engineer that incorporates. [00:24:00] All everything we just said, brown noise, pink noise, different hurts, as well as a song that's specifically coherent breathing. So it puts you, it's exactly 5. 5 breaths per minute. And it's what's done in the studies to put people into this state, to lower your heart rate, to help you feel more calm and at ease.

And it's a song that like relaxingly guides you

through that breath rate.

Kara Goodwin: And so the person listening to it then sings along.

Ann Swanson: You actually just breathe

along. It tells you exactly when to inhale and exactly when to exhale. And then you get the vibe of it. so you

just breathe along. I'm not much of a singer or a chanter, so I won't, you won't see me teaching that, although

it's very good for you. So I encourage you. to, but yeah,

Kara Goodwin: that's a

Ann Swanson: to just do it through breath

Kara Goodwin: yeah, I mean, the sound that we make is a whole other, aspect that just builds on it where, we are vibration and our voice is [00:25:00] vibration. And then when we're, using vowel sounds or other sounds, how that builds up and when you can see like cymatics, for example, of where we can actually see sound so cymatics being like.

physical ways to see it, if you put sand on a metal table, for

Ann Swanson: Mm hmm.

Kara Goodwin: use a, what's the word like a,maybe, like a tuner or what you would use on a singing bowl, a mallet.

Ann Swanson: Mm hmm. Yep. Mm hmm.

Kara Goodwin: you know, and then the sand will start to organize into shapes and they've done things in the, the great pyramids in the chambers where, they're taking sand and putting them on sarcophagi and sarcophagi.

I'm not sure what the plural is. Sarcophagus

Ann Swanson: Yeah.

Kara Goodwin: and they, are there. The sand organizes itself in like the same sequence of some of the hieroglyphs that, the Egyptian it's mind [00:26:00] blowing the way that sound is, sound of course, like sound and light.

They're the same, it's the same information. like we hear and we see, and it's, we're taking in the same information, but in two different senses. So it feels like light is different than sound or our visual is different than the, than what we hear, but it's all the same. wavelength, yes, but it's just our interpretation with the various senses.

And so it's really wild.

Ann Swanson: And that's also some points for Sanskrit, which has specific vibrations to the way we speak it. And some research has shown that when we chant OM versus just like random sounds, cause they were wondering, is it just the fact that you have an elongated exhale, which we know an elongated exhale is going to help put you into that relaxation response.

It's going to, encourage. Likely encourage activity of the vagus nerve and help [00:27:00] all of your organs just slow down, calm down. So we know elongated exhales are good for you. So in this study, they compared, um, to

just like hissing and they found that chanting, um, had different neural effects. It put you into those brain waves that are better for relaxation than just. So it's not just the elongated exhale. It's also the vibration. There's also something said to Sanskrit, to the

way that they did things.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah. Yeah. and OM is found beyond that's not actually even a Sanskrit word. it's found across the globe and it's at that seven point, what is it? 7. 327, I think something, wavelength and it's. It pervades all of, the universe, it's the sound that pervades the whole thing.

And then when you measure it, it has the distance between our eyes tends to be the same measurement as [00:28:00] Ohm and lots of different ways that it's reflected in the body. It's wild. And it's interesting when you talk about Sanskrit, because that's such a mysterious. Language. I was just reading this week that, there are some scientists decoded a poem, a Sanskrit poem.

I can't remember now which poem it was. And this has been a few decades now that they've done this, but, and I don't know what method they use to decode it, but they put these numeric values to the different sounds. So Ka was one and,they, all the different vowels or the, combinations of syllables had different.

Numerical values and some of them had the same value and they decoded this poem and it came out to. 3. 141596254 and it went on, it was exactly pi forso many decimals. I mean, it just kept going for, and it exactly matched up and Sanskrit is [00:29:00] ancient. we've had Sanskrit longer than we've known the value of pi and been able to take it out as far as this poem took it out.

So it's there's just one thing going on, it's

kara-goodwin_1_03-06-2024_130202: it's

Ann Swanson: all these different ways to access one thing that's happening here, And that's the word one. interestingly, one researcher and the, in the 70s, Dr. Herbert Benson, he's like, okay, do you have to pay all this money to get your secret

Sanskrit word? This is like evidence on the other side. So he's like, is this necessary? He's at Harvard. So he's they're not going to let me chant this.

Yeah. secret Sanskrit word in, in this research. So I wonder if we just compared to chanting the word one. just the word one. And since then, we've had decades of research out of Harvard about using the mantra one, or he often will also let people choose whatever word they want, peace, joy, whatever word you [00:30:00] want.

And you repeat that. There's benefits to just. The action too. So this is evidence in the other direction. Like Sanskrit's wonderful. But if you're more comfortable with just a word that's, meaningful to you or even neutral, like the word one, that has

great benefits too.

Kara Goodwin: That's fascinating. Oh my goodness. Well, tell us a bit about your book, Meditation for the Real World. what will people find in your book and who is your. Who are you reaching with your work?

kara-goodwin_1_03-06-2024_130202: You

Ann Swanson: really reached a lot of yoga teachers and yoga teacher training programs. And that book has been translated into 15 languages and I'm doing an updated version of that next year. now when I put that book out, it was awesome because I worked with one of the best illustrators in the world and he did these amazing CGI images of the [00:31:00] poses and they're very captivating.

Now throughout the book, I incorporate a lot of meditation and breath work and the science of the nervous system and the immune system and the philosophy is integrated. However, what do most people comment on? What are most of the Amazon reviews about the poses? It's all about the poses. I'm not against that.

That's what brought me to the practice too. But I realized that where the magic really happens is like the poses prepare us. For the meditation at the end of class, the meditation is the part that I really want to spread in the world. So that's why I decided to write meditation for the real world.

And this is not just for meditation teachers and yoga teachers. This is really for your skeptical neighbor, your mother in law that was told to meditate by their doctor, but just couldn't get into the practice. This is for busy people with busy minds, because I integrate the science behind. [00:32:00] Meditation, weaving in the research throughout.

I worked with Harvard researcher, Dr. Sarah Lazar, and she advised on the most cutting edge neuroscience to integrate, and I explained it in a very simple way because we had an illustrator. She does work for the New York times and the New Yorker just, Really break it down so it's done in a simple way you can like a, a children's book in a way the illustrations break it down for you and make it more digestible, but the material is rich. It has the research to support it. And then step by step practices of meditations for specific situations. So for example, right before you focus for a work project, that's going to be a different meditation than right before you sleep. Or for me now, I would pass out at the doctor's office.

So I have a meditation for if you get panic attacks, anxiety attacks. What can you use in that moment, versus what would you [00:33:00] use? Perhaps if you find yourself doom scrolling, there's a meditation for that. If you feel like you're experiencing FOMO, there's a meditation for that. So I looked at the research as well as.

Real world situations in the modern day that we are dealing with, because if ancient people needed a meditation, then we need it more than ever. And as you said, the neuroscience is supporting just beginning to uncover what these ancient masters knew for ages.

and it's very clear that if we practice meditation, we'll get not only immediate results, but long term results. So my goal is to spread meditation in the real world. You don't have to sit on a meditation cushion to meditate as the cover of the book, meditation for the real world has, there's somebody.

Sitting on a subway and they're the only one that looks peaceful sitting tall with headphones on listening to, I'd assume they're listening to these digital drugs and meditations and the [00:34:00] people around them are hunched over their cell phones rather than scrolling while you wait. Why don't you meditate while you wait? You can have your eyes open. You can have the sounds of the world behind you. It doesn't have to be this perfect environment

to meditate.

Kara Goodwin: I Guess I'd be meta weight

Ann Swanson: Mmm, I love it.

Kara Goodwin: Don't scroll meta weight. I Love it. Well And this has just been a phenomenal discussion. I've learned so much and I've really enjoyed just connecting with you and being in your presence has been really. Filling my heart. So thank you so much. Thanks for being here and thank you for everything that you're doing to make meditation more accessible for people.

Ann Swanson: And thank you so much, Kara. I've learned so much from you about sound and things that have been coming out about Sanskrit. That was fascinating. And for your listeners, my free gift for you is that meditation for the real world. com where you can find out how [00:35:00] to get the book and you can find out about how to get the meditation audios

with music.

Kara Goodwin: Yes, I will have that link in the notes.

Ann Swanson: Thank

Kara Goodwin: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Anne.