Science likes Meditation
Although I have been meditating for 35 years I am excited that every time I take a look there are new scientific reports about the benefits of meditation. The changes are not just in our mood and concentration, but in the gray matter of our brains.
Anti-aging
Recently a study from UCLA found that long-term meditators had better-preserved brains than non-meditators as they aged. People who meditated an average of 20 years had more grey matter volume throughout the brain. The wiser you are the younger you feel.
Depression
Researcher Madhav Goyal at Johns Hopkins revealed that mindfulness meditation was at least as good as antidepressant medication symptoms of depression, anxiety, and pain. And given that it is brain training, the more you practice the better you get.
Focus, Memory and Learning
A team at Harvard found that mindfulness meditation can increase cortical thickness in the hippocampus,
which governs learning and memory, and in the areas of the brain that help with emotional regulation and self-referencing. There were also decreases in brain cell volume in the amygdala, which is responsible for fear, anxiety, and stress, which coincided with peoples subjectve experience. One recent study found that just a couple of weeks of meditation training helped people’s focus and memory during the verbal reasoning section of the Graduate Record Exam (GRE). A study at Yale University, found that meditation lessens activity in the parts of the brain where mind wandering occurs. People whose minds wander less to the past (regret) or future (worry) are generally happier.
Social Anxiety
Stanford University team found that mindfulness training brought about changes in brain regions involved in attention, as well as relief from symptoms of social anxiety. The more comfortable you are within yourself, the more comfortable you are wherever you go.
Addiction
People who learned mindfulness were many times more likely to have quit smoking by the end of the training, and at 17 weeks follow-up, than those in the conventional American Lung Association’s treatment. This may be because meditation helps people “decouple” the state of craving from the act of smoking, so instead of smoking they can ride out the “wave” of craving, until it passes. Other research shows that people who meditate are less likely to relapse. Freedom from believing your thoughts means freedom to find what works for you.
Good for Kids
One school district in California started a meditation program in some of its high-risk schools – and saw suspensions decrease, and performance and attendance increase. Learn meditation and pass it on to your kids.
New 8 week course starting 16 February!
Discover the benefits of meditating in nature 19 – 21 February
