[Excerpted from, 9 Keys to Transcendent Aging: Transpersonal Psychology ©2023]

Our 3rd key to transcendent aging is meditation.

Uniquely transpersonal, this spiritual or metaphysical practice has us going deep within (introspection), focusing (contemplation), and transcending (nonattachment, nonduality, interconnectedness). Its benefits, especially as we age, are enormous.

The ‘empty-mind’ form of meditation can be challenging, and it’s often better to begin with contemplative practice, mindfulness meditation, or introspection – to give our minds a singular focus, something to do, rather than absence. Once our skills improve – and if you’re new to meditation and reach a point (or many points) at which you’re ready to quit and declare that you’re no good at it, remember that it’s a skill to be learned – we can then move on to inner silence and empty-mind.

Meantime: we can focus on our breath. Most of us breathe rather shallowly anyway, and as we age, we need to encourage oxygen supply to tissue even more, so a practice focused on breathing serves at least 3 purposes. When we calm our mind and minimize distractions, then focus on our slow and even breathing, and return our focus to that breath every time it wanders (and it will), we’re nurturing brain and body.

At its core, meditation is a deeply calm state of mind for a period of time. Naturally, that’s an oversimplification – but it is in fact a simple, yet profound, practice. There’s a whole lot more going on than a quieting of the mind, however. We can use it for all manner of psychological and transcendent exploration, as we’ll soon see. And as we refine our skills of focus and attention, this brain training is especially beneficial in our elder years when attention and memory can become compromised (Stevens & Brooke, 2022).

In fact, brain health in a broad sense is a direct benefit, including cognition, emotional regulation, executive function, and memory (Moss et al., 2022; Ramírez-Barrantes et al., 2019). It’s also been shown to decrease and prevent depression (Reangsing et al., 2021). In general, meditation can prevent age-related brain atrophy (Luders et al., 2021; Moss et al.; Vago, 2022) – and also benefits the cardiovascular system by lowering blood pressure and regulating heart rate, decreases inflammation, and contributes to pain management (Vago).

Anti-aging research has focused increasingly of late on our DNA telomeres – and meditation has a measurable effect on minimizing telomere decay, indicating that it slows biological aging (Boccardi & Boccardi, 2019; Conklin et al., 2019). In a wide-ranging ‘evidence map’ review style of 1999-2019 research on meditation, Schlechta Portella et al. (2021) found broad evidence for its benefits both physical and psychological.

Four universal positions for specific uses of meditation were studied by Angeles Arrien (1993). A sitting position is one of learning, of discovering our inner knowledge and wisdom. Lying down for meditation is a form for healing, when we’re focusing on physical or mental healing of ourselves and when undergoing any healing work given by another. Standing meditation accesses our inner warrior, a position of empowerment both physical and psychological. And moving meditation, found in any rhythmic movement that shifts our consciousness into a meditative state, from walks in nature to jogging, swimming, dancing, rocking / swaying, or even perhaps vacuuming, is associated with creativity, innovation, and problem-solving.

As we age and our bodies change, we often like our physicality less (who is that old person looking at me from the mirror??), and meditation, when we consider the physical aspects, can provide a way of reconnecting mind and body, of loving our whole self, aging body included.

In introspective meditation, we can know ourselves better as we observe the thoughts, memories, and emotions that arise, recognizing them, considering their associations, and then gently allowing them to drift away again. It’s a useful tool for self-awareness and for emotional intelligence. As we age, it’s also a safe and effective way to observe our feelings around issues related to our aging process, including fears and anxieties we may have, and while recognizing and attempting to better understand those feelings, also acknowledging their temporal nature as they dissipate.

We may also meditate on our life’s meaning, for example, and on our own sources of wisdom, as we’ve looked at in our first two keys. In this way, we can also engage in meditation on the topic of our life and what it means to be alive, on our relationships and the nature of love, on our experience of beauty and goodness, and much more. We introduce the topic, and wait to see what our unconscious brings forth.

The distinction from contemplation of same is in the meditative state of mind; when meditating, we’ve altered our consciousness from an alert state to one akin to self-hypnosis, in which we can more readily access our ‘deep mind’ or unconscious. Rather than analyzing and assessing meaning or wisdom, for example, which was recommended in our first keys (and both approaches are useful), meditation is a matter of putting ourselves into a dream-like state and introducing the topic, then quietly waiting to see what bubbles up to the surface.

Meditation provides us, then, with a readily accessible method for improved understanding of and compassion for ourselves, mind-body connectedness, and means of accessing innate or noetic wisdom.

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Exercises:

The basic form for meditation involves a quieting of the mind, minimizing of external distractions, and focusing on slow and controlled breathing. When we notice our thoughts have wandered, as is common, we simply redirect our focus back to our breathing. Another basic type is the body scan, in which we enter that same quiet state and slowly and methodically scan each part of our own body in turn; this is also an excellent way to achieve or maintain a cohesiveness of body and mind.

Explore uses of meditation in terms of body positioning. Experiment with the same simple meditation technique of focusing on our own slow and steady breathing, in each of the 4 positions with its corresponding focus – sitting: learning, standing: empowerment, lying: healing, moving: creativity / problem-solving – to discover how they differ, and how you can apply them for personal growth.

Another type of moving meditation comes from Buddhist mindfulness practice: exceedingly slow walking, in which you match each step to an inhalation or an exhalation. Rather than generate creativity as in rhythmic movement, this brings a precision in the sense of increased focus and attention coupled with a greater ability to filter out all distractions. (It’s good for balance and lower body strength, too.)

The Loving Kindness Meditation, also from mindfulness, focuses on compassion. Enter a meditative state as above, then focus on each of 5 areas in turn: compassion for yourself, for a good friend, for a person about whom you feel neutral, for someone you find difficult, and finally, toward all sentient beings. (And perhaps, in a truly transpersonal and mystical sense: expanding infinitely into the cosmos.)

One especially powerful meditation is a focus on one’s own death. Shocking, perhaps, even to contemplate from afar, it can be a deeply moving experience, the goal of which is to remove the sting of our mortality – to transform fear, anxiety, loss, or any other negative feelings we may harbor.

In a related meditation, we can focus on our continuation after death, our ancestorhood and our infinite expansion: in the sense of our wisdom and influence, the people we’ve touched and lives we’ve changed, our legacy which ripples out endlessly in the pond of humanity.

References:

Arrien A (1993). The Four-Fold Way: Walking Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer, and Visionary. New York: HarperCollins.

Boccardi M and Boccardi V (2019). Psychological Wellbeing and Healthy Aging: Focus on Telomeres. Geriatrics 4:1:25. https://doi.org/10.3390/geriatrics4010025

Conklin QA, Crosswell AD, Saron CD et al. (2019). Meditation, stress processes, and telomere biology. Current opinion in psychology 28, 92-101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.11.009

Luders E, Jain FA, and Kurth F (2021). Diminished Age-Related Decline of the Amygdala in Long-Term Meditation Practitioners. Psychosomatic Medicine 83:6, 650-654, 7/8.  https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0000000000000913

Moss AS, Reibel DK, Wintering N et al. (2022). Cerebral Blood Flow and Brain Functional Connectivity Changes in Older Adults Participating in a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program. Behavioral Sciences 12:2:48. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs12020048

Ramírez-Barrantes R, Arancibia M, Stojanova J et al. (2019). Default mode network, meditation, and age-associated brain changes: What can we learn from the impact of mental training on well-being as a psychotherapeutic approach? Neural Plasticity 7067592. https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/7067592

Reangsing C, Rittiwong T, and Schneider JK (2021). Effects of mindfulness meditation interventions on depression in older adults: A meta-analysis. Aging & Mental Health 25:7, 1181-1190. https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2020.1793901

Schlechta Portella CF, Ghelman R, Abdala V et al. (2021). Meditation: Evidence Map of Systematic Reviews. Frontiers in Public Health 9:742715. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.742715

Stevens BA and Brooke N (2021). Meditation and Mindfulness: Resources for Aged Care. In: Gu D and Dupre ME (eds), Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22009-9_146