During our INZEUM training retreat in August, Professor Kim Joo-hwan gave a lecture presenting a new scientific understanding of human beings and explaining how this perspective changes the way we understand meditation.
The lecture began with a fundamental question: How should we understand a human being? Our answer to this question shapes what we believe meditation is, how it works, and why we practice it.
Professor Kim rejected two opposing views. One reduces human beings to collections of molecules, proteins, and cells, while the other explains life and consciousness through mystical or pseudoscientific notions of energy. Instead, he proposed that we understand the human body as a dynamic field through which real biological energy continuously flows.
From this perspective, the body is not a static object but an ongoing process. We eat, digest, breathe, move, and transform energy through metabolism. Movement is therefore not merely something the body does; it is fundamental to being alive. This is also why movement meditation plays such an important role in the INZEUM program.
Professor Kim introduced three complementary scientific perspectives on human beings: the neuron-centered, gene-centered, and mitochondria-centered perspectives.
The Neuron-Centered Perspective
From the neuron-centered perspective, meditation works through neuroplasticity. Meditation does not replace our neurons, but repeated practice can reshape the connections among them.
For example, meditation may help stabilize the amygdala, which is closely associated with fear and threat responses, while strengthening the medial prefrontal cortex, which supports emotional regulation. As these neural pathways are repeatedly activated, they can gradually become stronger and more stable.
However, Professor Kim emphasized that neural networks alone cannot fully explain human experience, emotion, or mental health. The neuronal perspective is valuable, but it is only one part of the picture.
The Gene-Centered Perspective
The second perspective concerns genes and epigenetics. In the past, genes were often regarded as fixed programs that determined who we were. Epigenetics, however, has shown that having a particular gene does not necessarily mean that it will always be expressed in the same way.
Our environment, lifestyle, stress levels, and emotional states can influence how genes are regulated and expressed. From this perspective, meditation may affect the biological conditions that shape gene expression.
This does not mean that positive thinking can instantly change our genes. Professor Kim repeatedly warned us against taking a genuine scientific finding and exaggerating it into a pseudoscientific claim. The important point is that our genes do not operate independently of our bodily and environmental conditions.
The Mitochondria-Centered Perspective
The mitochondria-centered perspective was the central theme of the lecture. Mitochondria are tiny structures found inside most of our cells. They use nutrients and oxygen to produce ATP, the energy that cells need to function.
Yet mitochondria do much more than simply produce energy. They are deeply involved in neural activity, gene expression, immune responses, inflammation, and emotional well-being. In this sense, mitochondria may provide an important link among our genes, neural networks, bodies, and minds.
Mitochondria also have a fascinating evolutionary history. They are believed to have originated as independent bacteria that entered into a symbiotic relationship with early cells. Unlike the DNA in the cell nucleus, which we inherit from both parents, mitochondrial DNA is inherited almost entirely from the mother.
Stress, Inflammation, and Exhaustion
The lecture also explored what happens to mitochondria under chronic stress. When the amygdala remains activated for an extended period, sustained stress can impair mitochondrial function. Damaged mitochondria may release mitochondrial DNA, which the body can interpret as a sign of danger, triggering immune and inflammatory responses.
During inflammation, cells may shift toward a faster but far less efficient way of producing energy. This allows the body to respond quickly to an immediate threat, but it generates much less ATP from the same amount of glucose. As more energy is directed toward the immune response, less energy becomes available for other bodily functions.
This may help explain why prolonged stress can leave us feeling physically exhausted, unmotivated, or emotionally depleted. What we experience as burnout, helplessness, or depression may therefore be connected not only to our thoughts but also to changes in cellular energy production.
Meditation as a Bodily and Metabolic Practice
Viewed from these three perspectives, meditation is far more than a mental exercise.
From the neuronal perspective, meditation can reshape neural connections. From the epigenetic perspective, it can influence the conditions that regulate gene expression. Most strikingly, from the mitochondrial perspective, meditation may influence the number, structure, and functioning of mitochondria themselves.
This gave me a more compelling reason to practice meditation. Meditation is not simply about sitting still, calming the mind, or trying to think positively. It is a bodily and metabolic practice that may affect how energy flows throughout the entire system.
The lecture helped me see more clearly that the mind and body cannot truly be separated. Our emotions are embodied experiences, our thoughts depend upon cellular energy, and our well-being is shaped by the continuous interaction among our brains, genes, mitochondria, movements, and environment.
At the same time, Professor Kim reminded us to remain grounded in scientific evidence. Scientific concepts such as energy, epigenetics, and quantum mechanics can easily be removed from their original contexts and turned into exaggerated mystical claims. Understanding the science accurately—and resisting the temptation to overinterpret it—is therefore an essential part of our practice.
The lecture ultimately offered a new way of understanding meditation: not as an escape from the body, but as a way of working directly with the living, moving, energy-transforming body that we are.
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