The Science of Stillness: What Happens when Meditation Meets the Brain
When Henry Shukman was 19, he had an experience that changed how he understood himself and the world around him. Sitting quietly on a beach just taking in his surroundings, he felt a shift; he was no longer a separate entity observing the beach and environment around him, rather he became part of it. In the podcast Healing the Body with Meditation: Simple Daily Practices for Health and Happiness, Shukman presents meditation not as a productivity hack but rather as a way of “coming home to oneself,” a tool for improving wellbeing through stillness, attention, and self-awareness (Chatterjee and Shukman, 2025). As a scientist living in a fast-paced environment that praises achievement over wellbeing, this idea is slightly difficult to accept without a degree of scepticism.
Meditation is often surrounded by dramatic claims: that it can heal the body, rewire your brain, reduce inflammation, get rid of stress… the list goes on. Some of these claims are supported by emerging evidence, while others go beyond what research can currently demonstrate. Yet, despite this lack of concrete evidence, meditation may still be a valuable tool, precisely because it does not need to promise instant transformation. It instead asks us to notice what is already happening within our mind and body and respond with awareness instead of force.
What does Shukman say about meditation and wellbeing?
Shukman grew up with severe eczema, experiencing persistent pain, itching, and anxiety that made it difficult to sit still for long periods and contributed to feelings of shame and discomfort in his own skin. He describes trying conventional treatments, but nothing seemed to give him lasting relief. When he was introduced to meditation, he would do it twice a day every day because he was determined to try anything to get rid of his eczema. Over time, he noticed that meditation helped him create space between himself and the awareness of his pain, bringing him a sense of being at home in his body. His eczema also gradually started to improve.
He mentions a motto in the podcast to encompass this idea: “all sickness is homesickness” - the idea being that when you are at home in your body and in your mind, you can change the relationship you have with strong sensations like pain or inflammation. Instead, he describes experiencing them as waves rather than as a constant state, reducing the time he was mentally absorbed within those sensations.
The important distinction is that meditation alone did not cure his eczema. Atopic dermatitis or eczema is caused by a combination of factors such as genetics, chronic inflammation, skin barrier function, and environmental triggers (Misery, 2011). So it is more likely that meditation gave him an opportunity to regulate the stress that contributed to the chronic inflammation, which in turn likely allowed the treatments he was already using to begin to work more effectively.
Shukman goes on to describe his meditation practice as a journey through 4 distinct "Inns": mindfulness, support, flow, and awakening. This is not the only way to understand meditation, but rather Shukman’s own framework, informed by his experiences as a Zen master. The first Inn, mindfulness, involves leaning into being present with your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations rather than immediately reacting to them. The second, support, involves accepting help from other people. This can be difficult because it requires you to face the shame, insecurity, or fear of failure which is preventing you from asking for help in the first place. Through meditation, the emotional regulation you gain allows you to more easily face those insecurities and seek out the help you need.
The third is flow, or samadhi, which is a state of absorption, effortlessness, and calm. Some people may have already experienced this through sports, music, or creative work. For Shukman, flow teaches us that contentment is possible without constantly striving to achieve something. The final inn is awakening, which resembles the experience he describes on the beach - a sense of belonging in the world rather than separation from it. Whether or not you accept the spiritual interpretation of this inn, the underlying idea is pretty powerful. Many people spend their lives seeking belonging through achievement, relationships or approval, but meditation suggests that connection and belonging can be cultivated within yourself.
These Inns should not be taken as the only way to understand meditation; rather, they are Shukman’s particular teaching model, influenced by Zen and Buddhist practice. This is an important distinction because meditation is an umbrella term covering many different practices across different traditions, so the effects and meaning of the practice may vary according to the technique, teacher, and cultural context.
What is happening on a biological level?
The science behind meditation is still being researched but, from what we currently understand, meditation does not simply switch the body from “fight or flight” into “rest and digest”, nor is the immune system only able to work when someone is completely relaxed (Rusinova et al, 2024). The sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system work together continuously to regulate bodily functions. However, chronic stress can keep the body in a prolonged state of high alert, which affects sleep, mood, attention, and physical wellbeing (Tang et al, 2015).
When we perceive a threat, the sympathetic nervous system prepares you to respond. Our heart rate rises, our breathing becomes shallower, and cortisol is released as part of the stress response (Tang et al, 2014). This would all be useful if you are being chased by a bear, but a constant state of stress, without physical danger, is damaging to our overall health.
A focused meditation practice helps us change how we relate to stress instead of completely removing it. During an intentional meditation practice, a person might focus on sounds, breathing, or bodily sensations. When the mind wanders, try to intentionally bring it back to the object of focus. Brain regions associated with attention, monitoring, and awareness are involved in this process. The prefrontal cortex contributes to maintaining attention, the anterior cingulate cortex helps monitor conflicts or shifts in attention, and the insula contributes to awareness of internal sensations such as your breathing and heartbeat (Fox et al, 2014; Tang et al 2015; Young et al, 2018). Neuroimaging studies have found structural and functional differences associated with meditation practice, particularly in brain areas related to attention and bodily awareness, however these findings require cautious interpretation because many studies are small, use different styles of meditation, and cannot always prove that meditation itself directly caused the observed difference (Zeidan and Vago, 2016).
How does meditation influence stress, inflammation, or even pain?
The strongest evidence for meditation is not that it produces mystical states or cures illness. Regular practice can help some people respond differently to anxiety, low mood, stress and even pain. A review found small improvements in anxiety, depression and pain after engaging with mindfulness meditation programmes, although the evidence for stress reduction, sleep, and broader wellbeing was less certain (Goyal et al, 2014).
The same caution applies to claims about inflammation. A systematic review of randomised controlled trials suggests mindfulness may influence particular immune and inflammatory markers, but results vary considerably between participants, intervention type and measurement method due in large part to non-standardized data collection methods so further study is still needed (Black and Slavich, 2016). It is therefore more accurate to state that meditation may support stress management, which could then indirectly benefit health, rather than reliably claiming that it boosts the immune system function overall.
Meditation may be particularly useful for pain because pain itself is not solely a signal derived from injured tissue; it is also shaped by attention, expectation, fear, and context. Mindfulness can help a person to distinguish physical sensation from the secondary spiral of worry around it: “this hurts” is very different from “this will never end and I cannot cope.” Reducing catastrophising, which may in turn reduce the perception of pain, does not mean that the pain was imaginary. It may, however, make pain more manageable. Reviews of mindfulness interventions for chronic pain report modest benefits, while also emphasising substantial variation in study design and quality.
What benefit would meditation serve for the modern day academic?
This is where meditation becomes less mystical and more practical. The mind will wander to an unfinished essay, a difficult conversation, or an imagined future. The practice is not to suppress those thoughts, but to recognise them without automatically following them. In that sense, meditation is a rehearsal for daily life. It may not stop stress from arriving, but it can create a small pause between a stressful thought and an impulsive reaction.
This pause may be particularly useful in academia. University life can reward constant mental activity: applications, lab work, teaching, peer review, deadlines and the feeling that someone else is always doing more. Rest can seem unearned, even irresponsible. For students and researchers, the pressure is not only to work hard, but to appear endlessly capable of working hard. Slowing down may, therefore, feel threatening because silence leaves us alone with the tasks, doubts and exhaustion that busyness can temporarily hide.
Meditation challenges this culture in a quiet way. It suggests that attention is not an infinite resource and that recovery is not wasted time. Five minutes of deliberate stillness will not solve precarious contracts or unrealistic workloads, but it may interrupt the habit of carrying work mentally into every part of the day. It can help someone notice clenched shoulders before they become a headache, recognise anxiety before it becomes avoidance, or step away from an email before replying defensively. Each of these small changes will ultimately lead to reductions in your levels of stress at rest, and the relationship you have to tasks that previously caused stress such that you actually improve your productivity and can produce more!
How can we bring meditation into our everyday lives?
Meditation is often described as “clearing the mind”, so beginners often feel like they have failed when random thoughts enter their mind. A more realistic definition is much simpler: choose an object to place your attention on, whether it is internal or external, notice when your mind wanders, and practice bringing your mind back to focus. The practice of bringing your mind back is what matters!
Shukman’s approach is useful because it lowers the barrier to entry. He argues that meditation does not need to mean thirty minutes cross-legged on a cushion. It can mean five quiet minutes while the kettle boils, a slow walk without headphones, or a moment between meetings spent noticing your breath. Consistency matters more than intensity (Chatterjee and Shukman, 2025).
A realistic starting point might look like this:
Sit or stand comfortably for two minutes.
Choose one focus: the sensation of breathing, sounds in the room or the feeling of your feet on the ground.
When attention wanders, label it gently as “thinking,” “planning,” or “worrying” and return to the chosen focus.
End without judging whether the practice was good or bad.
For some people, focusing inward can feel calming; for others, especially those prone to rumination or distressing bodily sensations, an external focus such as sounds, walking, or an object in the room may be easier. Meditation should be flexible, and people with significant trauma, severe anxiety or mental health symptoms may benefit from guidance from an appropriately trained clinician or teacher.
Ultimately, meditation is not convincing because it promises a perfect, permanently calm brain. It is convincing because its smaller claims make sense - a practice that repeatedly trains attention, awareness and self-regulation could reasonably help people relate differently to stress and discomfort. The research is still developing, and bold medical claims deserve scepticism. Yet Shukman’s central point survives that scrutiny: slowing down may not remove life’s pressures, but it can make us less absent from our own lives.
References:
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This article was written by Marisa Edmonds and edited by Rebecca Pope, with graphics produced by Ginevra Sperandio. If you enjoyed this article, be the first to be notified about new posts by signing up to become a WiNUK member (top right of this page)! Interested in writing for WiNUK yourself? Contact us through the blog page and the editors will be in touch.
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