Can Meditation Reduce Shyness? - Ian Williams Goddard

While meditation is logical therapy for anxiety due
to its propensity for inducing calm, it might also
be therapeutic for shyness (or social anxiety). The
following research leads me to such a hypothesis...

The New Scientist reports that researchers at Harvard
Medical School examined the brains of adults who were
extremely shy as children. They found that

"adults who had been unusually shy in childhood
... displayed significantly higher activity in
the amygdala than people who had been unusually
outgoing as children. The amygdala is a brain
structure involved in vigilance and fear." [1]

So increased amygdala activity may promote shyness.
Now consider recent research that found meditation
REDUCES amygdala activity. According to Reuters:

"research by Paul Ekman, of the University
of California San Francisco Medical Center,
suggests that meditation and mindfulness can
tame the amygdala, an area of the brain which
is the hub of fear memory." [2]

Ergo: IF shyness (or social anxiety) has a causal link
to increased amygdala activity, and IF meditation can
reliably decreases amygdala activity, then meditation
might help people to overcome excessive shyness. Apart
from the cited research, such a hypothesis might not
seem to be indicated given that both shyness and
meditation tend to be associated with more passive
behaviors. Yet meditation might counter shy neurology.

__________________________________________________ __________
[1] "Shyness linked to brain differences." NewScientist.com
News Service. June 19, 2003.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993853

[2] "Meditation Shown to Light Up Brains of Buddhists."
Reuters. May 21, 2003.
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml...toryID=2787394


http://IanGoddard.net

"Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what
we think ourselves to be." Henri Amiel (1821-1881)

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 12:38:29 -0400, Ian Goddard <igoddard@erols.mom>
wrote:

You deleted the crucial phrase:

"When these people were shown pictures of unfamiliar faces, they
displayed significantly higher activity in the amygdala than people who
had been unusually outgoing as children."

In other words, it doesn't matter what your amygdala does 99% of the
time, it's what it does around unfamiliar people that causes the social
anxiety.

What you need to do is to get into and stay in a deep meditative state
whilst gradually exposing yourself to unfamiliar faces, or whatever your
triggers might be.

See, there are neural pathways that send anxiety signals from the parts
of your brain that recognise your triggers to your amygdala.

If you maintain the calm state of meditation, your amygdala will be kept
happy and those same neural pathways will start to learn to trigger
calmness.

Does that make sense?

Dave, http://www.deep-trance.com

David Gould <dave@deep-tranceNOSPAM.com> wrote:


IAN: Good point, it's a heightened amygdala response.
Heightened amygdala responce is also indicated in the
meditation research. After noting meditation's ability
to tame the amygdala, the Reuter's report then states:

"Ekman discovered that experienced Buddhists were less likely to
be shocked, flustered, surprised or as angry as other people."

http://www.google.com/groups?selm=ei...vg%404 ax.com

Shocked, flustered, and surprised are anxious responses
that the Reuter's article appears to link to the amygdala.
So it seems that meditation may suppress amygdala responses.



IAN: Sounds like a reasonable desensitization protocol
that might increase any meditation efficacy. But I don't
think it follows, as might be inferred from your reply,
that the specific protocol you suggest is only way that
meditation might be expected to suppresses shyness. I
think the two reports could be seen as suggesting the
potential efficacy of the forms of meditation examined,
since both reports indicate amygdala responses to stimuli.

http://IanGoddard.net

"Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what
we think ourselves to be." Henri Amiel (1821-1881)

Meditation and its Utility in Daily Life
Swami Premananda's 'Meditation Classes' have become very popular and there
is a great demand. This booklet will help aspirants and seekers.
Formats: .pdf (80 k), .html (55 k)

http://www.thedivinelifesociety.org/...premamedit.htm


http://www.sivanandadlshq.org/messages/messages.htm



"Ian Goddard" <igoddard@erols.mom> wrote in message
news:devgfvot67c4r3ljosjmbolkhh43sjg0l7@4ax.com...

Ian Goddard <igoddard@erols.mom> wrote:

Classic Buddhist meditation teaches you to detect feelings as
they arise, examine them, and decide what to do about them before
you act on them. Not suppress them, but recognize and deal with
them instead of just "feeling" them. Dealing with them can mean
just letting them evaporate and doing nothing.

Add that to the practice of tracing the feelings to their root
cause and yanking out the root and you will develop (after quite
a while) a very serene outlook. That's not to say you can't
surprise or fluster or frighten a Buddhist monk, but with the
more experienced ones, you can usually see a bit of a delay as
they decide whether to let that feeling be expressed.


Tsu

--
To doubt everything or to believe everything
are two equally convenient solutions; both
dispense with the necessity of reflection.
- Jules Henri Poincaré

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 23:57:07 -0400, Ian Goddard <igoddard@erols.mom>
wrote:

You don't want to suppress all amygdala responses.. it mediates
pleasurable sensations like love and lust too

Shyness is a label. For some people it's a phobia of unfamiliar faces.
Other shy people simply imagine being embarrassed a lot (anticipatory
anxiety).

With anticipatory anxiety (ie there's a thought process), you can
interrupt the sequence eg run it backwards.

When it's a phobia (Condition Stimulus) and there's no thought process,
the options are limited. Even flooding uses desensitisation.

Desensitisation can be fun. I might get a client to laugh whilst I
present the stimulus. If you get the timing right, the change is often
instantaneous.

There's a transcript on my website of somebody I helped via ICQ. It
turned out that most of Alison's problems were caused by a phobia of
violence:
http://www.deep-trance.com/NLP-fast-phobia-cure.html

The only other variations for dealing with phobias that I know of are
EFT and other yogic practices of directly manipulating the basic
physiology of the phobic response.

Meditation is one of the few ways that people get taught how to
recognise their thought processes.
So simply because you don't recognise any preceding thought processes,
doesn't mean it's a phobia.

FWIW, I've had a 100% success rate with both types of fear since I
started making the distinction a few years ago.

Dave, http://www.deep-trance.com

Tsu Dho Nimh <tsudhonimh@lumbercartel.com> wrote:


IAN: That's one of the cleanest and clearest descriptions
of classic Buddhist meditation I've ever read, thanks Tsu!
I especially like the first paragraph and the response of
"just letting them evaporate." A feature common in both
Buddhist and Hindu meditation practices is "stepping aside"
(as it were) from thought processes. Observing the coming
and going of thoughts as a detached and thus free observer.

But I think it's indicated from the report (I've not been
able to find the specific meditation study via PubMed.com)
that meditation ultimately suppresses, or reduces, amygdala
responses as opposed to allowing the usual amygdala response
to evaporate. If meditation merely allowed them to evaporate,
then amygdala responses should not initially differ between
meditators and controls. They would only differ over time as
meditators allowed the responses to evaporate versus control
subjects who would show a prolonged amygdala response. While
such findings may be in the study's details, in my reading
of the report, initial amygdala responses probably differ
suggesting an overall suppression of amygdala responses.

http://IanGoddard.net/philo.htm

"Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what
we think ourselves to be." Henri Amiel (1821-1881)

"Tsu Dho Nimh" <tsudhonimh@lumbercartel.com> wrote in message
news:mlrifvgqg6q69ap6re9clia0dn0o6ibqf0@4ax.com...
IME, classic buddhism also teaches that "feelings" follow on the heels of
some kind of judgment, comparison and mental analysis. The suspension or
minimization of these arbitrary judgments lead to minimal "feelings", at
least of the sort that Buddha was trying to teach that we can live without
(and the reduction of suffering that ill feelings can cause), the roller
coaster of emotion that some people seem to generate continuously.




"Counting to 10" is often a good idea.

Now if only I could count to 10 and not think of a rabbit!

zin

David Gould <dave@deep-tranceNOSPAM.com> wrote:


IAN: Good point. And it depends on one's ultimate goals.
Meditation may reasonably be seen as a drug (albeit very
different in that it is self-directed) in which a lower
dose will produce a milder effect and a higher dose will
produce a stronger effect. The goal of many practitioners
is to suppress feelings of lust and even feelings per se.
Such goals are best achieved by high doses of meditation.

"Symptoms of enlightenment" are often characterized
along the lines of an abolition of emotional responses;
a perception of no difference between viable conditions.
Some glimpses of nirvana from the Hindu sage Sri Sankara:

"Neither greed nor delusion, nor loathing, nor liking have I."

"Nothing of pleasure or pain or virtue or vice do I know."

"One who in a dream, sees things good and bad, high and low,
favourable and fearful, thinks that they are actually real,
and never for a moment thinks they are unreal while dreaming.
Even so is this world till the dawn of Self Knowledge."

Source: "Thus Spake Sankara." Mylapore India: Sri Ramakrishna Math.

One could find many more examples of descriptions of the
enlightenment state as the cessation of emotional responses
expressed as a response of indifference to variable conditions.
In light of the topic at hand, we might see that as a result
of high-dose meditation. Lower doses would be indicated for
those wishing to modulate but not eliminate their emotions.

http://IanGoddard.net/philo.htm

"Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what
we think ourselves to be." Henri Amiel (1821-1881)

Ian Goddard <igoddard@erols.mom> wrote:

If the responses go unrewarded (allowed to evaporate, instead of
being acted upon), they would tend to diminish, wouldn't they? I
think it's probably a form of desensitization.

Tsu

--
To doubt everything or to believe everything
are two equally convenient solutions; both
dispense with the necessity of reflection.
- Jules Henri Poincaré

Tsu Dho Nimh <tsudhonimh@lumbercartel.com> wrote:


IAN: Possibly; however the issue you've raised seems to
involve misunderstanding. When I said "So it seems that
meditation may suppress amygdala responses," I was not
describing how meditation is practiced (such as in the
meditator trying to suppress mental activity, which seems
to be what you assumed) but rather than an end result of
meditation seems to be a suppression amygdala responses.

Based on the Reuter's report on Dr Ekman's research,
that appears to be true ipso facto, where "suppressed"
is defined as "to reduce the incidence or severity of."

http://www.google.com/groups?selm=ei...vg%404 ax.com

http://IanGoddard.net/philo.htm

"Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what
we think ourselves to be." Henri Amiel (1821-1881)

Ian Goddard <igoddard@erols.mom> wrote:


Yes. I was pre-coffee.


Tsu

--
To doubt everything or to believe everything
are two equally convenient solutions; both
dispense with the necessity of reflection.
- Jules Henri Poincaré