The Neuroscience Of Meditation, And The Virtues Of Shutting Up

There are two words that are gaining a lot of steam, yet both are doing so in totally different areas. Meditation is making its way into many lives, a form of mental exercise that anyone can do anywhere, even though it has been around for many hundreds of years already. The other term is neuroscience, which as a scientific field of study and research, is becoming the tool of choice for those interested in how the mind works.

Put the two together, and you get to see all the positive effects meditation has on your brain, then you can decide for yourself whether it’s something for you. This is exactly what a handful of researchers have been doing lately, their findings are helping to persuade the skeptics through empirical evidence of the many benefits to meditation. An article on Huffington Post has pointed us to some of the benefits, starting off with a?story by?Zo? Schlanger:

I was groggy, frustrated by my inability to sit still and hungry for the breakfast that was still an hour off. I got up from the spot on the floor of my bedroom where I?d been attempting to meditate and walked outside, to the new-growth woods behind the residential quarters at the Vipassana Meditation Center in Shelburne, Massachusetts.?It was springtime, and the outdoors seemed spring-loaded with potential: The buds on the trees were sharp little things, and hundreds of fuzzy fiddleheads dotted the forest floor, curled snug.

I’m sure we’ve all felt a similar sensation before,?the struggle in trying to focus the mind amid a myriad of distractions, leaving your mind foggy and tired. If that sounds at all like something you experience, and you’d like to rid yourself of it, the meditation could be for you, check out the research for more.