Meditation can lead us to happiness, production, and creation. Only two minutes of meditation per day can make a change.
What is meditation?
There are various types of meditation, more than we even know about them. And some of them are included in some scientific researches. Those are focused -attention, mindful meditation, focused on a specific thing like breathing, a sensation in the body, or maybe even a particular object outside of us. The main goal of this type of meditation is to focus on only one point and gradually to bring the attention back to the focal point.
Other types of meditation, also used in some studies, are open-monitoring. During this meditation, you are concentrated on everything, and you need to notice everything around you without reaction.
What happens in our brains when you meditate?
This is the most exciting part. Now, when the technology is improved, the fMRI scans can reveal what is happening in our brain when we meditate. The survey is just like how scientists previously measured the creativity in us.
Below, on the picture, you can understand what meditation does to our brain.
The right colors on the left represent the beta waves, and on the right side, they are reduced.
Maybe you don’t know what is shown in the picture so that we will give you an explanation.
Frontal Lobe
This part of the brain is responsible for reasoning, planning, emotions, and self-consciousness. When we meditate, the cortex goes offline.
Parietal Lobe
This part of the brain is responsible for sensory information about the world around us, and it is responsible for time and space orienting. When we meditate, its activity is slowing down.
Thalamus
The second name of this part of the brain is the gatekeeper for the senses.
It focuses us on the crucial things deep in the brain and stops other signals in their tracks.
Reticular Formation
This part is responsible for accepting stimuli and alerts the brain, making it ready to respond. While meditation, we dial back the arousal signal.
How meditation affects us?
When we are familiar with what happens in our brain while meditation, then we can see and understand the researches and learn how it affects our health. It is almost the same as how the exercises affect our brains.
Better focus
Meditation represents a practice for our brain, and it represents an exercise.
Once you start meditating daily, you will have a better focus even when you aren’t meditating. The experts say that it is a lasting effect.
Less anxiety
The influence on anxiety is exciting. The longer time we meditate, the less anxiety we have. The reason for this result is that while meditation, we are loosening the connections of particular neural paths. The 'Me Center' is a part that processes the information and links it to ourselves and our experiences. When we feel a scary and upsetting sensation, it will trigger a strong reaction in the 'Me Center', so you will feel scared and under attack.
So, as a solution to this, we advise you to start meditating. That is how you will weaken a neutral connection. You won’t react strongly to the sensations.
Also, you will make the connection stronger between the Assessment Center, the bodily sensation, and fear centers. So that next time, when you experience scary and upsetting things, you will look more efficiently and more rationally to them.
Increased creativity
Meditation is an excellent solution for people like writers, compositors, artists, etc.
There was a study that shows how meditation can influence our creativity.
The study was made at Leiden University, Netherlands. The research was for the focused-attention and open-monitoring meditation so that they will understand if meditation influences our creativity. The open-monitoring meditation presented better results when they had to create new ideas.
More compassion
Meditation presented that empathy and compassion are better in people who practiced meditation. The study included images of other people who were kind, evil, or neutral in ‘compassion meditation.’They could keep their attention to the right place, and they could reduce the emotional reactions to the images, even though they weren’t in a meditative state.
Less Stress
Mindful meditation is beneficial for those who work under pressure. Because pressure creates stress. In 2012, there was a study that included the human resources managers, split into three groups. The first group practiced mindful meditation, the second group practiced body relaxation training, and the last group didn’t train anything. After the practice, a stressed test was given to them.
The results revealed that the people who had mindful meditation presented less stress.
Focusing on yourself by meditation is one way of loving yourself. By meditating, you get to dig deeper into your consciousness, focus on your core, relieve stress, and heal emotional wounds. One of the common symbol or sound that promotes great effects in meditation is the Om. The Meditation Om Round Non-Slip Mat is a great tool during meditation exercises. The Om symbol on it serves as a reminder to chant it the best possible way to reap its benefits. It is also a reminder to the user to slow down and enjoy what life has to offer.
