Dr. Bala Subramaniam, Director of the Sadhguru Center for a Conscious Planet, is a longtime meditator and researcher in the effects of meditation on the human brain, cognition, and anxiety reduction. He was interviewed for an article about Elizabeth Bernstein, a Wall Street Journal Reporter, who had not had any success with meditation in the past but performed a guided meditation under the guidance of Harvard Researchers while hooked up to an EEG cap. See below for Dr. Subramaniam’s comments on the project and the full article by Ms. Bernstein describing her experiences:
"Meditation never worked for me."
That's how Wall Street Journal columnist Elizabeth Bernstein began the hardest assignment of her career: sitting still for 15 minutes in our lab, wearing a 128-channel EEG cap.
Today her story is live in the WSJ. And what her brain showed is worth pausing for.
Within 2½ minutes: theta waves rising.
At 7–8 minutes: peak.
After the session ended: her baseline theta activity was 13% higher than when she started.
She told us she was sorry it ended.
She said the food tasted better at lunch.
Her mind — the one that had never been able to stop — had found the pause.
Every major contemplative tradition — East and West — has pointed to the same place: the breath.
Watch it. Don't control it. Find the pause.
That pause is where the sympathetic nervous system yields to the parasympathetic. Where the yang softens into yin. Where the noise steps back.
These traditions didn't just believe this. They built entire technologies around it — tested across millennia, transmitted across generations.
Our EEG now measures what they always knew. Minute by minute. Electrode by electrode. On a stressed-out reporter with curly hair who had never meditated before.
The hard part is not the science. The hard part is doing it alone.
The NIH recommends starting with a guided meditation practice — because the biggest barrier isn't time or patience. It's not knowing where to begin.
Explore the Miracle of Mind.
Engage. Experience. Enjoy the stillness. 🙏
📱📰 Full WSJ story by Elizabeth Bernstein:
https://lnkd.in/gk_9hkau
