Is stillness the missing nutrient in modern life?

As billions of people everywhere are getting ready for World Meditation Day, we can expect to experience an unparalleled moment of clarity. While technology has progressed at an incredible rate over the past century and continues to do so, stillness has become one of the most important, yet difficult, things to obtain as we move forward through continuous engagement with life. World Meditation Day is more than just a moment of collective meditative solidarity across the globe; it signifies an incredible truth supported by the field of neuroscience, psychology, and the Vedic knowledge—as human beings, our brains rely upon the experience of inner stillness in the same way that our bodies require nourishment, rest, and air.In today’s fast-paced world, we live in an era where humanity continues to experience more and more demands for constant participation and involvement in life. On any given day, people are exposed to more data than most individuals would have encountered throughout the entirety of a lifetime just a few hundred years ago. This unending stream of information is causing a highly active activation of the brain's Default Mode Network (DMN), the network of nerves in our brains that are responsible for generating mental “noise,” such as worrying, dwelling upon things we have been thinking about, and so forth. According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an American study conducted by Brewer et al. in 2011 found that the long-term effects of meditation on practitioners are evident in the overall functioning of the brain; compared to those who had never meditated or meditated for only a short amount of time, long-term practices have a continuing impact on the way the brain functions and are no longer primarily affected by mental activity. The results of this study demonstrate that the process of achieving inner stillness is not simply an absence of activity within our subconscious minds; it also indicates an increase in overall, integrated neural efficiency. World Meditation Day gains worldwide attention to the universal human need to meditate. During a time of an increase in stress-related diseases, medical organisations across the globe continue to highlight stress as a significant factor for the 21st century and the impact that thousands of people meditating together on a specific day can make to stress, and ultimately be used as an inspiration for millions to meditate together. Also, researchers are beginning to identify through research and research data that the impact of experiencing serenity internally impacts the mental and physical systems of human beings significantly. The Vedic tradition understood and articulated through thousands of years of intuitive understanding, are now being verified by the Neuroscience community across the globe based upon the fact that there are distinct connections between inner peace, human behaviour, the ability to attain clearer perception and ultimately being in harmony with the natural rhythms of life. Vedic knowledge describes the state of the mind when it attains peace as the essence of human being where nature coexist with everything in this universe, and it is here that the world's greatest ideas and thoughts arise. Modern neuroscience quantifies how the greater the amount of deep time spent inrest, relative to the time required for daily functioning, the more integrated and stable the human mind will function throughout life.Meditation, especially those techniques that are designed to allow the thoughts and busy mind to fall gently towards the thoughtless, has provided many opportunities to experience this kind of inner quiet directly by simply practicing a technique, and it has also supported extensive research in this respect. So far, neuroscientific research has shown that by practicing Transcendental Meditation a person achieves a greater state of physiological rest than is normally possible, experience a significant decrease in stress-related responses, and have a significant improvement in brain coherence. The results of this type of research will allow individuals to enhance their ability to make decisions, manage emotions, and adapt to changes more easily.World Meditation Day brings to life the insights just discussed by adding an additional worldly concept to that; specifically, the day encourages people from different cultures, belief systems, and traditions to join together as a community during that "pause" and simply meditate for the purpose of taking care of yourself and for the intent of becoming a better human being. This collective activity reflects the universal understanding that we have become so far away from the internal source of life that provides us with optimal psychological and emotional well-being through our daily lives that it is as if we are moving further away from our internal source as each day goes by.Stillness is not an optional extra; it is necessary both biologically and cognitively. When society ignores the inner dimension of humanity, the results will be a dramatic increase in anxiety and burnout, an increase in fragmentation between individuals and society, and the eventual loss of the ability to think and act coherently as a society.Millions of people around the world will participate in World Meditation Day, reminding us that by becoming still, we return to our essence as humans - that when we become still, we tap into our greatest resource - that we can be in harmony with ourselves, with one another, and with the universe as a whole - and this is the basis for being at our highest level of functioning.In our fast-paced, noisy world, we may just find that stillness is the missing link to our health and wellness. The willingness of so many people to take a moment's break to participate in a global event like World Meditation Day indicates that the movement toward stillness is already under way.Dr. Tony Nader, MD, PhD, MARR