Question

What is the research on meditation and how it affects the brain?

Answer 1

Meditation is being completely with yourself. It is the practice of turning your attention to single point of reference. It involves focusing on breathing, bodily sensations, mantras and so on. It's distracting yourself from your own thoughts.

New research shows meditation boosts your health, happiness and leads to success. It increases the immunity and improves overall health. People confess that their pain vanished after attending a meditation class. It increases our positivity as the stress gets released as we focus on meditation. Slowly we get used to the peace and silence hence even when we aren't meditating,we avoid indulging in arguments, our understanding increases. It's is evident in children that practising yoga or meditation at a young age increases their concentration.

Dr Herbert Benson's research is one example. Being a medical student, he saw that patients who practices meditation were seen to have reduced b.p, imorovemimpin diabetes, psychological disorders,arthiritis etc.

According to the scientists , each individual have their own 'set point' in the brain for good and bad emotions. Some people tend to be happy no matter what, i e they do experience grief but if their set point is accustomed to being happy, they do come back to their set point within some days. Same goes with people having a set point of being more anxious and unhappy. They go back to their set point if being happy within a few days of being happy.

Through meditation, people can change their 'set point' of being unhappy to being happy.