When Rebecca Erwin was a varsity rower at the University of North Carolina, the coach had the team’s members take a yoga and meditation class. It had an impact.
“My teammates and I noticed that yoga and meditation improved our flexibility and focus, but also made us feel better, not just when we were rowing but in our everyday lives,” she recalled. “I wondered if yoga and meditation really have scientific benefits, especially if they have specific effects on the brain, and if so, how that works.”
Since becoming Rebecca Erwin Wells, M.D., she has done more than wonder about the effects of mind-body interventions, she has studied them.
“We’re coming to recognize that meditation changes people’s brains,” said Wells, an assistant professor of neurology at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. “And we’re just beginning to gain understanding of what those changes mean and how they might benefit the meditator.”
In separate clinical studies, Wells has looked into the effectiveness of a meditation and yoga program called mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) as a therapy for mild cognitive impairment — problems with memory or other faculties without yet having dementia — and for migraine headaches.