Meditation and Current Brain Research
When it comes to falling in love, there’s a huge debate. Is it your head, or is it your heart that makes you experience butterflies in your stomach and your pulse race when the object of your affection walks by? Neuroscientists are still trying to figure that out. However, there is one thing that health experts, scientists, and brain researchers do agree on. That is, mediation is not only good for the body, but it’s even better for the brain. Here’s just a few of the reasons why your brain loves meditation.
Building Healthy Gray Matter
Today, scientists have hard prove that meditation has positive, measurable effects on the brain. For instance, a recent UCLA study found that meditators develop more brain gray matter over time than non-meditators. Gray matter controls important functions in the brain like muscle control, memory, and speech. We need lots of it to stay healthy, especially as we grow older. Meditation, therefore keeps us healthy by supporting the growth of gray matter in the brain.
Getting Rid of “Monkey Mind”
Another reason why the brain loves meditation comes from a 2011 Yale University study. Researchers found that meditation slows down our brain’s tendencies towards wandering thoughts, which in turn creates more feelings of inner calm and peacefulness. In eastern philosophy, this kind of thought-restlessness is referred to as “monkey-mind.” Hint: If you suffer from wandering thoughts, worry a lot about the future, or ruminate about the past, you’ve got monkey-mind. By interrupting these kind of negative thought patterns in the brain, meditation naturally increases feelings of well-being and happiness.
Thinking Happier
At John Hopkins University, scientists discovered that meditators were able to successfully reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety in less than eight weeks, compared to the results of non-meditators. Similarly, Harvard researchers found that mindful meditation decreases cellular activity in the amygdala portion of the brain. Located deep in the temporal lobes, the amygdala controls our autonomic responses, like anxiety and fear. This shows that meditation can be an important tool for both strengthening our emotional resilience and improving our mental health.
Feeling Healthier
It turns out that having a healthy brain is the key to unlocking our ability to feel good about ourselves, age in healthy ways, and get rid of stress and anxiety. Can meditation really help us find peace and calm in our lives? You’ll never know until you try. But researchers agree that with the help of a good teacher, regular practice, and a little bit of time, we can learn new ways to think and feel better. Expanding areas of the brain linked to empathy, kindness, and compassion is what the world needs now. That, and love, sweet, love, is the real reason why your brain loves meditation.
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