Benefits of meditation and relaxation therapy 1. Lasting emotional control Meditation may make us feel calmer while we’re doing it, but do these benefits spill over into everyday life? Desborders et al. (2012) scanned the brains of people taking part in an 8-week meditation program, before and after the course. While they were scanned, participants looked at pictures designed to elicit positive, negative and neutral emotional responses. After the meditation course, activation in the amygdala, the emotional centre of the brain, was reduced to all pictures. This suggests that meditation can help provide lasting emotional control, even when you are not meditating. 2. Cultivate compassion Meditation has long been thought to help people be more virtuous and compassionate. Now this has been put to scientific test. In one study participants who had been meditating were given an undercover test of their compassion (Condon et al., 2013). They were sat in a staged waiting area with two actors when another actor entered on crutches, pretending to be in great pain. The two actors sat next to the participants both ignored the person who was in pain, sending the unconscious signal not to intervene. Those who had been meditating, though, were 50% more likely to help the person in pain. One of the study’s authors, David DeSteno, said: “The truly surprising aspect of this finding is that meditation made people willing to act virtuous–to help another who was suffering–even in the face of a norm not to do so.” 3. Change brain structures Meditation is such a powerful technique that, after only 8 weeks, the brain’s structure changes. To show these effects, images of 16 people’s brains were taken before and after they took a meditation course (Hölzel et al., 2011). Compared with a control group, grey-matter density in the hippocampus–an area associated with learning and memory–was increased. The study’s lead author, Britta Hölzel, said: “It is fascinating to see the brain’s plasticity and that, by practicing meditation, we can play an active role in changing the brain and can increase our well-being and quality of life.” 4. Reduce pain One of the benefits of changes to the brain’s structure is that regular meditators experience less pain. Grant et al. (2010) applied a heated plate to the calves of meditators and non-meditators. The meditators had lower pain sensitivity. Joshua Grant explained: “Through training, Zen meditators appear to thicken certain areas of their cortex and this appears to be underlie their lower sensitivity to pain.” 5. Accelerate cognition How would you like your brain to work faster? Zeidan et al. (2010) found significant benefits for novice meditators from only 80 minutes of meditation over 4 days. Despite their very brief period of practice—and compared with a control group who listened to an audiobook of Tolkein’s The Hobbit—meditators improved on measures of working memory, executive functioning and visuo-spatial processing. The authors conclude: “…that four days of meditation training can enhance the ability to sustain attention; benefits that have previously been reported with long-term meditators.” Improvements seen on the measures ranged from 15% to over 50%. The full article: Cognition Accelerated by Just 4 x 20 Minutes Meditation 6. Meditate to create The right type of meditation can help solve some creative problems. A study by Colzato et al. (2012) had participants take a classic creativity task: think up as many uses as you can for a brick. Those using an ‘open monitoring’ method of meditation came up with the most ideas. This method uses focusing on the breath to set the mind free. 7. Sharpen concentration At its heart, meditation is all about learning to concentrate, to have greater control over the spotlight of attention. An increasing body of studies now underline the benefits of meditation for attention.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 06:01:56 +0000