Meditation changes brain, calms fears

Photo by Sies Kranen | Unsplash.com

By Maureen Salamon
Posted on May 15, 2025

For neuroscientist Sara Lazar, a form of meditation called open awareness is as fundamental to her day as breathing.

“I just become aware that I am aware, with no particular thing that I focus on,” explained Lazar, an associate researcher in the psychiatry department at Massachusetts General Hospital and assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School.

“This sort of practice helps me become more aware of the subtle thoughts and emotions that briefly flit by, that we usually ignore but are quite useful to tune in to.”

Studies show certain types of meditation offer an array of benefits, from easing chronic pain and stress and lowering high blood pressure to relieving anxiety and depression.

In fact, as Lazar’s research has shown, meditation can actually change the structure and connectivity of brain areas that help us cope with fear and anxiety.

“Just as you build your physical muscles, you can build your calm muscles,” she said. “Meditation is a very effective way of training those muscles.”

What counts as meditation?

Meditation encompasses a broad range of practices. Open awareness, Lazar’s go-to meditation, is just one of many forms. Others include focused awareness, slow deep breathing, guided meditation and mantra meditation.

At their core, Lazar said, is an awareness of the moment, noticing what you’re experiencing and nonjudgmentally disengaging from intrusive thoughts that might interfere with your ability to attend to this task.

A regular meditation practice typically involves slowing down, breathing and observing inner experience.

“Meditation can involve flickering candles, breath awareness or mantras — all of these things,” Lazar said. “But there’s definitely an element of focusing and regulating your attention.”

Brain changes in two months

Small MRI imaging studies have zeroed in on meditation’s effects on the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure deep within the brain that processes fear, anxiety and other emotions.

Lazar and her colleagues have spent years laying the groundwork to show how practicing mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) alters the amygdala after only about two months. The MBSR practice in this research consisted of weekly group meetings and daily home mindfulness practices, including sitting meditation and yoga.

One key study involved 26 people with high levels of perceived stress. After an eight-week regimen of MBSR, brain scans showed the density of their amygdalae decreased, and these brain changes correlated to lower reported stress levels.

Building on this, Lazar and colleagues designed a study that focused on 26 people diagnosed with generalized anxiety, a disorder marked by excessive, ongoing and often illogical anxiety levels. The researchers randomized participants to either practice MBSR or receive stress management education.

In this first-of-its-kind research, participants were shown a series of images with angry or neutral facial expressions during MRI imaging. At the beginning of the study, anxiety patients showed higher levels of amygdala activation in response to neutral faces than healthy participants. This suggests a stronger fear response to a non-threatening situation.

But after eight weeks of MBSR, MRI imaging showed increased connections between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, a brain area crucial to emotional regulation.

The amygdalae in participants with generalized anxiety no longer displayed a fear response to neutral faces. These participants also reported their symptoms had improved.

“It seems meditation helps to down-regulate the amygdala in response to things it perceives to be threatening,” Lazar said.

Lazar believes training your brain to stop and notice your thoughts in a slightly detached way can calm you amidst the muddle of work deadlines, family friction or distressing news.

“You can watch your reactivity to the situation in a mindful, detached way, which shifts your relationship to it,” she said.

“It’s not indifference. It’s sort of like a bubble bursting — you realize you don’t need to keep going on this loop. Once you see that, it totally shifts your relationship to that reaction bubbling through your brain.”

How to start

Haven’t tried meditating? To get started, Lazar recommends the Three-Minute Breathing Space Meditation.

This offers a quick taste of meditation, walking you through three pared-down but distinct steps. “It’s simple, fast, and anyone can do it,” she said.

Notice what your experience is right now.
Focus on your breath and the sensations of your breath.
Expand your awareness to also notice sensations in your body.

After you get the hang of it, “Try either doing a longer session or short hits throughout the day, such as a three-minute breathing break four to five times a day,” Lazar suggested.

Another way to enhance your practice is to use ordinary, repetitive moments throughout the day — such as reaching for a doorknob — as a cue to pause for five seconds and notice the sensation of your hand on the knob.

“As you walk from your office to your car, for instance, instead of thinking of all the things you have to do, you can be mindful while you’re walking,” Lazar said.

“Feel the sunshine and the pavement under your feet. There are simple ways to work meditation into each day.”

Tips for new meditators

Choose a time. If you’re most focused in the morning, meditate when you first wake up. If you find that you need to relax before bed, carve out a few minutes to still your mind at the end of your bedtime routine.

Create the ideal meditation space. Choose a space with few distractions. Your bedroom, a sun porch, or a quiet den might be good options.

The space should be calming, with gentle lighting and a comfortable temperature. It’s a good idea to have a standalone timer or your smartphone nearby, so you don’t have to constantly watch the clock.

Sit up straight. While you can practice meditation lying down, standing up, or even walking, sitting tends to provide the optimal combination of focus and relaxation.

You can sit on a cushion, a mat or a blanket on the floor, if it’s comfortable for you. If that’s too uncomfortable, sit back on a chair and place your feet flat on the floor to keep your spine properly aligned.

Position your hands to help still your thoughts. Decide where you would like your hands to be during your practice. You might place them on your knees with your palms up or down, in prayer position at your chest, or in one of the many mudras, or symbolic positions that are part of traditional yoga practice.

Don’t fight the feeling. Relax into the practice. Let your thoughts drift away. Ease into your breath. Even if you feel a little bit uncomfortable, try to give in to the feeling and not push back against it.

Be kind to yourself. If you don’t get the hang of meditation right away, forgive yourself and try again. You will eventually get it.

—Howard LeWine, M.D.

LeWine is an internist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. For additional consumer health information, visit health.harvard.edu.