Oakville Zen Meditation
Meditating on silence : Its positive impacts on your brain as if you were inside it.
During meditation we focus on a specific target such as breathing to anchor our mind to slow down its flow of thoughts and feelings besides achieving a relaxing effect.
There are already few Dharma talks on our website describing meditating on silence despite the fact that silence is a challenging anchor to meditating on.
Why to come back again on its value as meditation practice? Simply because recent
neuro research shows that silence is one of the most powerful meditative tools as far as the beneficial effects of silence- based meditation on structure & function of the brain. What are these positive impacts?
Our Default Mode neural Network is automatically activated when we are not focusing on something. It is made of: daydreaming, self-focused monologue, and rumination of negative feelings. Silence has profound impacts on our DMN.
While meditating on silence, you are actively training your brain to notice when the DMN has hijacked your attention. At this point, we gently bring it back to the silent anchor. Over time, this transforms your baseline brain structure. Even when you are not meditating, your brain becomes much faster at disengaging from harmful or distracting DMN-driven thoughts.
2 De-activation of our Default Mode Neuro Network or DMN
During silent meditation, metabolic activity and blood flow to the core hubs of the DMN -pre frontal- " turning down the volume" on your DMN internal chatter.
This suppression breaks the loop of repetitive self-reflection, providing relief from anxiety and mental fatigue. This is the main source of mental relaxation as seen by the increased activity of beta and alpha waves called meditative EEG waves
3 Decoupling DMN from our self-centered language network
New and fascinating research looking specifically at extended "silence practices" (like silent retreats) shows that practicing silence alters the functional connectivity between the DMN and the brain's language network. In non-meditators, DMN and the brain's language networks are tightly linked meaning every internal feeling or random thought is instantly translated into an internal self-centered monologue ("Why did I say that ? or "What do I need to do next?"). Silent meditation disconect these networks, allowing thoughts or sensations to arise without triggering a cascade of self-focused mental commentary. As consequences:
Because our DMN chatting is mostly “ I, me, myself, mine “, dampening its activity temporarily softens our ego power trap and our fictional mind. Active meditators experience this as a deep sense of peace, spaciousness, and "unbounded awareness"—abiding as a silent witness to the present moment rather than being trapped inside the ego's narrative mostly made of past and future spacetimes.
Your takeaway: Silent meditation more than other types of meditation acts like a master brake for a racing mind. It doesn't permanently erase the ego or your internal narrator, but it builds, via neuroplasticity, the neural infrastructure required to learn
to control and step away from our incessant chatter whenever you choose.
Meditation is a unique tool since it blends at the same time and with a perfect equilibrium mind-body relaxation, and hyperalertness from non-conceptual awareness.
