Meditation Heals Trauma

Joey was a middle schooler with a tough reputation as the class bully. When Transcendental Meditation lessons were offered in his inner-city school, Joey started to change. The trauma that caused him to lash out began to heal, his hyper-reactivity quieted down. Bob explains the science behind meditation that can help all of us, Joey included, stay calm amidst the storms of life.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stay Calm is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to Stay Calm,
your daily dose of calmness. I'm Bob Roth, and I've
been teaching people to meditate for fifty years, helping them
to stay calm under pressure, reboot and re energize their lives,
and basically be a happier, healthier version of themselves. And

(00:23):
now I want to help you do the same. Ready,
sit comfortably, take a few deep breaths, and let's begin
today's journey. I want to tell you a story about
a middle school student, I'll call him Joey, who learned
to meditate as part of a stress reducing quiet time

(00:44):
program that we offer for free to students and teachers
in tough urban schools. Joey came from a broken home
and had a well established reputation as the school bully.
But when he heard he could learn transcendental meditation and
practice it as part of his regular school day, he
got genuinely intrigued. He said he wanted to give it

(01:05):
a try. After a week or so of meditating, his
teacher asked him how the practice was going. Joey thought
for a moment, smiled just a bit, and said, I
used to walk down the hall and if someone bumped
into me, I get so angry. I just hit him. Now,
since I'm doing the meditation, when I walk down the
hall and someone bumps into me, I stop and I

(01:26):
think to myself, do I want to hit him? As
funny and as perhaps inconsequential as that story may sound,
it is in fact extremely significant. Why Because no one
told Joey during his meditation course that hitting someone was
bad and that he shouldn't do it. No one told
him how to behave But that pause that Joey experienced,

(01:49):
that momentary, split second pause between being hit and hitting back,
can be the difference between a non event that passes
unnoticed in the course of a school day, or something
that triggers a violent outburst that can escalate into who
knows what damage. How many men and women are in
prison today because they didn't have that split second pause

(02:11):
before blind rage took over. What caused that pause in
Joey's behavior, His brain did. Research shows that meditation helped
to calm his brain helped to heal the trauma. There
are two key parts of your brain that dictate so
much of what we experience in the course of a day.
The first is called the amygdala. This is two small

(02:33):
almond shaped clusters of brain cells that sit towards the
base of the brain. They process strong emotions like fear
and pleasure. When you feel threatened and afraid, the amigdala
kicks in instantaneously, activating what scientists call the fight or
flight response. Signals are sent to other parts of your

(02:54):
brain to release stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline and
prepare your body literally for battle or else to run
for your life. The second key player is the prefrontal
cortex of your brain. This is about the size of
a clenched fist and is located right behind your forehead.
This part of the brain runs decision making, planning, judgment,

(03:17):
ethical thinking, even your sense of self. This is your
rational filter against impulsive decisions. I like to call this
the grown up part of your brain that's in use
when you're not flying off the handle at the slightest
provocation under ordinary conditions, which means unless you're being chased
by a lion or under attack in a combat zone,

(03:38):
the amigala should take a back seat to pretty much
everything in your life, and the prefrontal cortex should run
the show, except these days, that's not the case really
for most of us. Why because stress, the daily, irritating,
aggravating stresses of life, can take your prefrontal cortex offline.

(04:00):
Think about it. Does a stressed person make good decisions,
have good judgment, plan well, have a good sense of self.
When that kid would bump into Joey in the days
before he started meditating, Joey's amigla would light up like
fireworks and activate the fight or flight response. But Joey's
ten or fifteen minutes of meditation at the beginning of

(04:22):
the school day had a spillover effect. It kept his
prefinneal cortex is grown up part of the brain, connected
and online. He was able to pause, even for a moment,
to make a rational decision whether or not to hit
the guy back. So here's my health tip of the day.
Breathe when things get intense. Doctors say that's the moment

(04:47):
to remember to breathe in slowly and evenly through your
nose to fill up your lungs and bring the air
up into your brain and into your head. Then hold
it for a second and then let all the air
out slowly through your lips, and then hold that for
a second, in and out, in and out, do that

(05:08):
a few times. When you breathe them through your nose
rather than anxiously gulping air through your mouth, you are
bringing oxygen up into your brain and that will help
calm your amignalant for a moment, and that calm can
help give your prefrontal cortex the split second it needs
to take back control of the moment and maybe even

(05:30):
your life. All right, let's end this time together doing
something that I think should be a feature of our
everyday life, and that's appreciation and gratitude. So let's take
thirty seconds of quiet, thirty seconds to take a break,
just take a moment. It turns out when we do that,
it's good for our health as well. I'll be right back,

(06:20):
all right. Thank you for joining me today. I hope
you heard something that inspires, that uplifts you and that
you can incorporate into your own life. This is Bob Roth.
Stay calm, hey, all of you out there, I'd love
to hear from you. You can send me your stories,

(06:40):
your questions, or anything else on your mind. Just connect
with me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram at meditation Bob.
You can also send me an email at meditationbobrothat gmail
dot com. I look forward to hearing from you, oh,