Meditation is the process of training your mind to focus and redirect your thoughts. It helps to increase awareness about yourself and your surroundings. It also helps to develop concentration and ease stress. Meditation is the best way to learn self-discipline, tolerance and healthy living. Meditation forms the epitome of the eastern system of medicine or alternative medicine. For years scientists and doctors alike have done extensive research on meditation and its effects on the human body. They have concluded that meditation has innumerable positive effects on the human body and brain. Listed below are some meditation effects:
- Meditation has been known to reduce depression, anxiety, and stress.
- It helps to regulate mood and anxiety disorders. Meditators are more able to “attend moment-to-moment” to the stream of stimuli to which they are exposed and less likely to ‘get stuck’ on anyone stimulus.
- It helps to increase grey matter concentration in the brain as it helps to increase learning and memory, regulates emotions and sense of self and gives a perspective to life. In fact, research has shown a larger hippocampal and frontal volumes of grey matter for long-term meditators.
- Meditation helps to improve focus, concentration and the ability to work under stress. Evidence has shown that meditators had a thicker prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula, and also to the effect that meditation might offset the loss of cognitive ability with old age.
- Meditation helps with decision making and information processing. Research has shown that meditators have larger amounts of gyrification or folding of the cortex that helps the brain to process information faster, making decisions, improving attention and making memories.
- It gives mental strength, resilience and emotional intelligence.
- Long-term meditation enhances the ability to generate gamma waves in the brain.
- Meditation helps to reduce alcohol and substance abuse.
- Meditation also fosters creativity and divergent thinking.
If we sit down to note down all the meditation effects, the list would just not end. If seen from a holistic point of view meditation helps you with a broader perspective, a deeper sense of calm and heightened clarity.
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