Summary: A week-long retreat combining meditation and mind-body healing produced significant changes in brain activity and blood biology, demonstrating how consciousness-based practices can transform physical health. Participants showed reduced default-mode activity, enhanced neural connectivity, elevated natural opioids, immune activation, and metabolic shifts—effects that extended beyond the brain into the entire body.
Blood plasma collected after the retreat even increased neuroplasticity in cultured neurons, indicating systemic biological change. These results provide a scientific framework for how intensive meditation may influence mood, pain, immunity, and brain function, though clinical trials in patient groups are still needed.
Key Facts
- Whole-Body Impact: Meditation altered brain networks, immune signals, metabolism, and gene expression within one week.
- Neuroplastic Boost: Post-retreat blood plasma promoted neuronal growth and connectivity in lab models.
- Psychedelic-Like Effects: Increases in mystical experience scores matched brain connectivity patterns typically seen with psychedelics.
Source: UCSD
Researchers at the University of California San Diego have found that an intensive retreat combining multiple mind-body techniques, including meditation and healing practices, produced rapid and wide-ranging changes in brain function and blood biology.
The researchers found that the retreat engaged natural physiological pathways promoting neuroplasticity, metabolism, immunity and pain relief.
The findings, published in Communications Biology, provide insights into how consciousness and psychological practices can enhance physical health.
Meditation and other mind-body practices have been utilized by cultures worldwide for thousands of years to promote health and wellness; however, the underlying biology of these approaches remains poorly understood.
The new study, part of a multi-million-dollar research initiative supported by the InnerScience Research Fund, is the first to comprehensively quantify the biological effects of multiple mind-body techniques administered together over a short period.
“We’ve known for years that practices like meditation can influence health, but what’s striking is that combining multiple mind-body practices into a single retreat produced changes across so many biological systems that we could measure directly in the brain and blood,” said senior study author Hemal H. Patel, Ph.D., professor of anesthesiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine and research career scientist at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System.
“This isn’t about just stress relief or relaxation; this is about fundamentally changing how the brain engages with reality and quantifying these changes biologically.”
As part of the study, 20 healthy adults attended a 7-day residential program led by neuroscience educator and author Joe Dispenza, D.C., featuring daily lecture sessions, approximately 33 hours of guided meditation and group healing practices.
These practices used an “open-label placebo” approach, meaning participants knowingly took part in healing activities presented as placebos — procedures or treatments with no active medical ingredient, but which can still produce real benefits through the power of expectation, social connection and shared practices.
Before and after the retreat, participants had their brains scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), an approach that measures brain activity in real time. The researchers also used blood testing to measure changes in metabolic activity, immune activation and other biological functions.
The researchers observed several major changes after the retreat:
- Brain network changes: Meditation during the retreat reduced activity in parts of the brain associated with mental chatter, making brain function more efficient overall.
- Enhanced neuroplasticity: When applied to laboratory-grown neurons, blood plasma from post-retreat participants made brain cells grow longer branches and form new connections.
- Metabolic shifts: Cells treated with post-retreat plasma showed an increase in glycolytic (sugar-burning) metabolism, indicating a more flexible and adaptive metabolic state.
- Natural pain relief: Blood levels of endogenous opioids – the body’s natural painkillers – increased after the retreat, indicating that the body’s natural pain-relief systems were activated.
- Immune activation: Meditation increased inflammatory and anti-inflammatory immune signals simultaneously, suggesting a complex, adaptive immune response rather than a simple suppression or activation.
- Gene and molecular signaling changes: Small RNA and gene activity in blood shifted after the retreat, particularly in pathways related to brain function.
Participants also completed the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ-30) to assess whether they had a “mystical” experience during meditation—characterized by profound feelings of unity, transcendence, and altered states of consciousness. Average MEQ scores increased significantly after the retreat, rising from 2.37 before the retreat to 3.02 afterwards.
Higher scores on these surveys were also correlated with greater biological changes after the retreat, including greater integration of brain activity across different regions. In other words, the more connected the brain is, the greater the likelihood of a mystical experience.
The findings suggest that intensive meditation can trigger very similar brain activity to that which has been previously documented with psychedelic substances.
“We’re seeing the same mystical experiences and neural connectivity patterns that typically require psilocybin, now achieved through meditation practice alone,” added Patel.
“Seeing both central nervous system changes in brain scans and systemic changes in blood chemistry underscores that these mind-body practices are acting on a whole-body scale.”
The study results provide a biological framework for understanding how non-drug mind-body interventions can support health and well-being. By enhancing neuroplasticity and activating the immune system, these practices could help promote mental health, emotional regulation and stress resilience.
Additionally, the activation of endogenous opioid pathways suggests that this combination of mind-body practices may also be useful for chronic pain management.
While the retreat’s effects were measured in healthy adults, the researchers emphasize that controlled trials in patient populations are still needed to determine specific clinical benefits and applications. They are particularly interested in whether mind-body retreats can benefit people with chronic pain, mood disorders or immune-related conditions.
Looking ahead, the research team plans to investigate how each individual component of the retreat — meditation, reconceptualization, and open-label placebo healing — works alone and in combination. Additionally, future studies will investigate the duration of these biological changes and whether repeated interventions can enhance or sustain their effects.
“This study shows that our minds and bodies are deeply interconnected — what we believe, how we focus our attention, and the practices we participate in can leave measurable fingerprints on our biology,” said first author Alex Jinich-Diamant, a doctoral student in the Departments of Cognitive Science and Anesthesiology at UC San Diego.
“It’s an exciting step toward understanding how conscious experience and physical health are intertwined, and how we might harness that connection to promote well-being in new ways.”
Additional coauthors of the study include Sierra Simpson, Juan P. Zuniga-Hertz, Ramamurthy Chitteti, Jan M. Schilling, Jacqueline A. Bonds, Laura Case, Andrei V. Chernov, Natalia Esther Amkie Stahl, Michael Licamele, Narin Fazlalipour and, Swetha Devulapalli, at UC San Diego; Joe Dispenza and Michelle A. Poirier at Metamorphosis LLC; Jacqueline Maree and Tobias Moeller-Bertram at VitaMed Research; and Leonardo Christov-Moore and Nicco Reggente at the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies.
Funding: This work was supported by the InnerScience Research Fund and a Veterans Administration Research Career Scientist Award (BX005229).
Disclosure: One co-author (Joe Dispenza) is employed by Encephalon, Inc., the company offering the retreat; all other authors declare no competing interests.
Key Questions Answered:
A: It reduced activity in regions linked to mental chatter, strengthened connectivity across networks, and promoted measurable neuroplasticity in both brain scans and lab-grown neurons.
A: Blood tests showed shifts in metabolism, increased natural pain-relief chemicals, changes in immune signaling, and gene-expression patterns associated with brain function.
A: The findings suggest that an intensive combination of mind-body practices can trigger whole-body biological changes comparable to those seen with psychedelics, potentially supporting mental health, pain relief, and emotional resilience.
About this meditation and neuroscience research news
Author: Miles Martin
Source: UCSD
Contact: Miles Martin – UCSD
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Neural and molecular changes during a mind-body reconceptualization, meditation, and open label placebo healing intervention” by Hemal H. Patel et al. Communications Biology
Abstract
Neural and molecular changes during a mind-body reconceptualization, meditation, and open label placebo healing intervention
Mind-body interventions offer promising avenues for improving physical and mental health, yet the comprehensive biological effects of increasingly popular mind-body retreat interventions remain poorly understood.
The neural and molecular effects of a 7-day retreat intervention combining meditation, reconceptualization, and open-label placebo healing rituals are investigated in an observational study on 20 healthy human participants randomly selected from 561 retreat participants.
BOLD fMRI functional connectivity during rest and meditation and whole plasma proteomics, metabolomics, exosome-specific miRNA transcriptomics, and neurite growth and real-time metabolism cellular assays are compared pre- and post-intervention.
Meditation decreases functional integration in the default mode (p = 0.00009) and salience networks (p = 0.000003) and decreases whole-brain modularity (p = 0.001).
Compared to pre-intervention plasma, post plasma increases in vitro neurite outgrowth (p = 0.01), enhances glycolytic metabolism (p = 0.008), induces upregulation of BDNF (p = 0.001), inflammatory (p = 0.0001), anti-inflammatory (p = 0.03), and endogenous opioid (p = 0.03) pathways, and modulates tryptophan metabolism (pFDR = 0.03) and neurotransmission-associated exosome miRNA transcripts.
This intensive non-pharmacological mind-body intervention produces broad short-term neural and plasma-based molecular changes associated with enhanced neuroplasticity, metabolic reprogramming, and modulation of functional cell signaling pathways, highlighting the potential of mind-body techniques to modulate neural circuits and pathways important to health and well-being.
