Mindfulness & Meditation

The Science-Based Benefits of Meditation

As mentioned above, meditation is a hot topic for brain researchers around the world. The benefit of this mass influx of scientific research is that we are now able to truly understand what meditation does to and for the brain. The benefits are widespread, and we are learning more about them by the week. With all this in mind, there are certain benefits are fairly certain about. These benefits include, but are certainly not limited to:

1. Meditation Improves Focus and Lengthens Attention Span

Much of meditation is about the exercise of focus. Just as squats and jumps strengthen the legs, exercising our focus during meditation, strengthens the part of the brain that controls focus for everything else. This leads to improved attention span in many areas of life, outside of meditations as well.

2. Meditation Reduces Anxiety & Stress.

Stress management is probably the most typical way meditation has always been depicted in Hollywood, but what we are now seeing is that this is a science-backed benefit of taking a daily sit to soothe the mind. While a short meditation break can calm the mind, ease the heart rate, and reduce the stress hormones cortisol & adrenaline, a regular meditation practice actually improves our long-term resilience against stress as well. An ongoing practice actually shrinks the place where our stress response triggers anxiety and further stress. What does this mean? It means that as we meditate we calm our body and flush the acidic chemicals of the stress out of our body. As we continue meditating regularly, we begin reducing the opportunity stress has to affect us in the first place. Just imagine who you would be, how productive you could be, and how much more at ease your body would be if you had both less stress, as well as a smaller stress response overall. Yes, it is amazing, and no, it is not too good to be true. There is a reason most of the world’s high producers are daily meditators.

3. Meditation Enhances Emotional Control And Emotional Health

Studies from around the world are acknowledging how effective meditation is at improving emotional control among adults and children who partake in the practice. One of the main reasons for this is that regular meditators experience a strengthening in the brain centers responsible for empathy for both themselves and others. As a result of improved empathy, communication improves, we begin to understand others better, and we are able to effectively understand their point of view. At the very root of it all, we are able to process more accurately the reality that we are all just living our lives as best we can, based on the tools, skills, and mental models available to us. Empathy improves emotional control, it improves relationships, and it improves emotional health. Meditation and mindfulness teach us how to strengthen the muscle of maintaining a calm mind, and that is one modest benefit with powerful implications in the real world. Humans are social creatures, and that is one thing that will never change.

4. Meditation Improves Self-Awareness

When you spend more and more true quiet time, with nothing but you, your thoughts, and your cushion, you naturally get to know yourself pretty well. Explicit self-inquiry is a key element of many different forms of meditation and is coincidentally a key ingredient in self-awareness. This is one of the most powerful impacts of meditation because, with a greater awareness of who we are, and how we hope to live our lives, we create the possibility of creating a reality that is right for us. Not for our parents, not for all the people judging how cool we are, and not for our professors… us. Meditation as well as many forms of mindfulness are powerful tools for bringing more of this into our daily lives.

5. Meditation Helps Improve Sleep Quality

That never-ending mental chatter that keeps you awake at night does not need to be there. With meditation as a toolset, most people report that the practice, regardless of when it is done, helps them sleep better, and fall asleep more quickly. Meditation is a powerful tool for both winding down the mind, and for keeping the brain in balance overall. Improved sleep is one of the most highly reported benefits of meditation, and I will back that up with my own experience. As someone who once suffered from insomnia on a regular basis, I now sleep like a baby, and with my daily meditation routine in full force, I can fall asleep quicker than I have ever been able to do before.