Meditation is about
way more than just relaxing.
In fact, if I listed
the following meditation benefits from a new pill or potion, you’d be rightly
sceptical.
But all these flow
from a simple activity which is completely free, involves no expensive
equipment, chemicals, books or other products. You should use Peace Starter Meditation daily and enjoy all the benefits.
I’ve also included my
own very brief meditation instructions below to get you started.
But first, what are
all these remarkable meditation benefits? And I think you can enjoy ambient background music while reading so click play below and take a little time to relax your mind.
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 benefits lasting emotional control, even when you are not
meditating.
2. Cultivate
compassion
One of the meditation
benefits long thought central is 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, commented on meditation benefits:
“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 meditation
benefits 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
meditation 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 meditation benefits for attention.
For example, Jha et al. 2007 sent 17 people who had
not practised meditation before on an 8-week training course in
mindfulness-based stress reduction, a type of meditation.
These 17 participants
were then compared with a further 17 from a control group on a series of
attentional measures. The results showed that those who had received training
were better at focusing their attention than the control group.
8. Improve
multitasking at work
Since meditation
benefits different aspects of cognition, it should also improve work
performance.
That’s what Levy et al. (2012) tested
by giving groups of human resource managers tests of their multitasking
abilities.
Those who practised
meditation performed better on standard office tasks–like answering phones,
writing email and so on–than those who had not been meditating.
Meditating managers
were better able to stay on task and also experienced less stress as a result.
9. Reduce anxiety
Meditation is an
exercise often recommended for those experiencing anxiety.
To pick just one of many recent studies, Zeidan et al. (2013) found that four
20-minute meditation classes were enough to reduce anxiety by up to 39%.
10 Fight depression
A central symptom of depression is rumination: when depressing thoughts roll around and around in the mind.
Unfortunately you
can’t just tell a depressed person to stop thinking depressing thoughts; it’s
pointless. That’s because treating the symptoms of depression is partly about
taking control of the person’s attention.
One method that can
help with this is mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness is all about living in
the moment, rather than focusing on past regrets or future worries.
A recent review of 39 studies on mindfulness has found that meditation
benefits depression (Hofmann et al., 2010).
How to meditate
Since meditation benefits’ are so great, here is a quick primer on how to meditate.
The names and
techniques of meditation are many and varied, but the fundamentals are much the
same and I prefer use Peace Starter Meditation (simply click and download free) to enrich my meditation session:
1. Relax the body and the mind
This can be done
through body posture, mental imagery, mantras, music, progressive muscle
relaxation, any old trick that works. Take your pick.
This step is
relatively easy as most of us have some experience of relaxing, even if we
don’t get much opportunity.
2. Be mindful
It’s a bit cryptic
this one but it means something like this: don’t pass judgement on your
thoughts, let them come and go as they will (and boy will they come and go!).
When your mind wanders, try to nudge your attention back to its primary aim.
It turns out this is
quite difficult because we’re used to mentally travelling backwards and
forwards while making judgements on everything (e.g. worrying, dreading,
anticipating, regretting etc.).
The key is to notice,
in a detached way, what’s happening, but not to get involved with it. This way
of thinking often doesn’t come that naturally.
3. Concentrate on something
Often meditators concentrate
on their breath, the feel of it going in and out, but it could be anything:
your feet, a potato, a stone.
The breath is handy
because we carry it around with us. Whatever it is, though, try to focus all
your attention onto it.
When your attention
wavers, and it will almost immediately, gently bring it back. Don’t chide
yourself, be compassionate to yourself.
The act of
concentrating on one thing is surprisingly difficult: you will feel the mental
burn almost immediately. Experienced practitioners say this eases with
practice.
4. Concentrate on nothing
Most say this can’t be
achieved without a lot of practice, so I’ll say no more about it here. Master
the basics first.
Meditation benefits
This is just a quick
introduction on meditation benefits but does give you enough to get started.
It’s important not to get too caught up in techniques but to remember the main
goal: exercising attention by relaxing and focusing on something.
Try these things out
first, see what happens, then explore further.
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