In honor of yoga day, we re-purposed this amazing article! Happy Summer!

A busy life makes you become a runner in a race. Most of us choose to run as fast as we can and feel tired and exhausted. Sometimes, simply sitting down and doing meditation to calm your mind is much more beneficial than being gone with the pace of life. That is the reason why many famous leaders in the world put meditation into their daily routine. Meditation is not only a popular effective way to cope with stress but it can actually change the practitioners’ brains. The changes in brains depend on the kind of meditation you practice.

There are numerous ways that meditation can actually change the brain. Six out of them are described below:

1. Change Structures In The Brain

The first effect of meditation is that it changes structures in the brain. Hippocampus is a part of the brain that performs an important role in regulating emotion and controlling learning and memory. Amygdala is another part of the brain that involves the experience of negative emotions such as fear, stress, and anxiety. Researchers said that regular mindful meditation practice makes the cortical thickness in the hippocampus increase and the volume of the amygdala reduce. This means that meditation helps improve emotion regulation and decrease negative feelings.

2. Bring Considerable Volume Changes To Brain’s Key Areas

Apart from the hippocampus and amygdala, doing meditation can also help change the volume in the brain’s key areas. That is an increase of gray matter in our brain which is the storage of positive emotions. People who practice meditation regularly have a larger volume of gray matter than those who do not.
Considerable changes in the volume of gray matter in the brain may lead to enormous beneficial differences in the prefrontal cortex and body awareness. Scientists carried out a study of eight-week mindfulness with Parkinson’s patients. The result showed that the grey matter density in some areas of the brain of patients with mindfulness meditation practice is higher than those who do not participate in the study.

3. Reduce Mind Wandering

Our mind is like a monkey leaping from branches to branches. Even when we do not say a word, it is still a non-stop thinking mind. Non-stop thinking does not allow us to have a complete rest and we also feel less happy due to mind wandering. Meditation can help reduce mind wandering by paying attention to only one object. Instead of making you overwhelmed with constant intrusive thoughts, you should focus on the present moment, observe the object and let it go naturally. The practice keeps your mindless wandering and calmer. If you repeatedly do mind training like this, you can get amazing benefits from meditation in just a few days. Studies at Yale University found that mindfulness meditation reduces the brain’s default mode network which is responsible for mind-wandering and self-referential thoughts.

4. Improve Concentration And Attention

One more way that meditation has been shown to change the brain is by improving concentration and attention. Many people think that doing meditation is sitting down and doing nothing. However, that’s not totally true. In fact, meditation is active mind training that focuses on increasing awareness of a given object to become calm and relaxed. It’s when you raise full awareness of an object, idea, or activity during the time you do the meditation that can help improve your concentration and attention.

Additionally, meditation causes the reduction of mind-wandering, which also cuts down distractions by external thoughts and improves cognitive performance. This advantage plays an important role in enhancing concentration and attention. Especially, the improvement of cognitive skills is very useful for people on the job and studies. The more you practice, the more achievement you can reach

5. Preserve The Aging Brain

Another way how meditation affects the brain is that it can help preserve the aging brain. Telomeres are protective caps on the ends of DNA. The health and length of telomeres show how old you are. The aging process is when time and troubles make telomeres break down, then provide poor protection for DNA, leading to the breakdown of the cells.

It is the fact that brain aging is the process that everyone wants to minimize. Researchers found that long-term meditators had their brains preserved better than non-meditators as they aged. This is because of two reasons. Firstly, meditation is able to build up the brain matter in the frontal lobe where aging greatly overwhelms. As a result, meditation is a tool for older adults to preserve their cognitive health. Secondly, meditation lessens stress impacts on the telomeres in order that they do not break down as quickly as the telomeres of non-meditators. It makes telomeres longer and slows down the aging process. Thus, the longer you do meditation, the slower the aging process of your brain is.

6. Regulate Stress, Depression, and Anxiety

A lot of people have the idea that practicing meditation offers great benefits for stress relief. And what’s more, meditation changes the structures of our brain, resulting in increased emotional regulation, and decreasing bad feelings like stress, depression, and anxiety. A study in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in February 2004 found that meditation improved practitioners’ perceived level of stress. According to a study in the journal Biological Psychiatry in 2016, meditators had lower levels of a marker in their blood which led to unhealthy inflammation – a cause of stress.

Furthermore, mindfulness practice can be beneficial for people who are anxious or often have panic attacks. It enables them to shift their attention from internal worries to the present moment. They will have a better focus on their ongoing task and do them more efficiently. Psychologists also said that mindfulness meditation works better than drugs in the treatment of depression.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy can be an alternative to long-term antidepressant drugs. When we are sad, depressed, or anxious, we all tend to remember the bad things much more than the good ones. This makes us sink more deeply into depression. Mindfulness training can help reduce symptoms associated with depression and protect you from the relapse of it. Particularly, meditation teaches depressed patients to be more compassionate to themselves and others in order to avoid the brooding of depression. Simply sit down, close your eyes and focus on the rhythm of your breathing patterns. The observation of “come and go” thoughts creates a feeling of detachment which can make you calm and peaceful.

In sum, meditation is not a panacea but it actually brings many good things if you keep practicing regularly. Thus, it’s worth a try because anyone can get benefits from it. Some people may gain benefits from meditation within just a couple of days whereas others need to take more time. Be patient and don’t let this barricade frustrate you in the process of gaining benefits from meditation. Good luck!

About the author:
Victoria Tan is a Health and Beauty expert who has more than 8 years of experience in the Health Care industry. For more health care tips on healthy living, visit her at the website TrueRemedies.com. There, you will find posts on natural treatments, recipes, healthy foods, and so much more.