Can Meditation Help Keep Your Brain Young?

Posted on July 12, 2022 by dayat

As people age, their brain’s lose weight and volume. These changes may start to occur in people as early as their mid to late 20s. Previous research has shown people who meditate to lose less brain mass over time than those who do not. In particular, research concluded people who meditated showed less of a decrease in their white brain matter.

White brain matter acts as a connector and insulator for gray brain matter. It carries nerve impulses between the functional parts of the brain. Gray brain matter houses the various neurological centers of the brain,Guest Posting which direct speech, motor skills, memory, etc.

Meditation is something practiced by more than 15 million Americans and many more people around the world. It has its roots in eastern culture, but has been whole-heartedly embraced in western societies.

It has a wide variety of benefits, including:

• Improves sleep
• Inner peace and tranquility
• Reduces chronic pain
• Reduces stress and anxiety
• Reduces depression
• Boosts attention
• Improves immunity
• Helps with weight loss
• Boosts memory
• Improves heart health and lowers blood pressure
• Improves wellbeing and allows for deeper relationships

Now it seems that meditation may also help to keep our brains young.

Interesting Experiments

A team of researchers from UCLA wondered if meditation preserves the gray matter of people who meditate as well. The researchers found meditation to have a widespread effect on the entire brain not just specific regions of the brain associated with meditation.

The study compared people having years of meditation experience with those who had none. The meditators had an average of 20 years of experience with meditation practice. The age range of the of the study participants included people in their mid-20s to their late 70s.
Nearly equal numbers of men and women participated in the study with 28 men and 22 women.

They found the meditators still experienced a decline in gray matter with age but less than non-meditators.

The researchers noted the positive outcome of the study but caution people reviewing the results; they were unable to establish a direct link to meditation and the preservation of gray matter.

Another UCLA study conducted in 2012, showed meditators to have more gyrification, folds in their brains, which may contribute to an ability process information faster than usual.

Meditation appears to allow practitioners to maintain both white and gray matter and form increased connections in the brain; it seems to keep the brain young.

Along with its positive effects on white and gray brain matter, meditation appears to have a positive effect on other body functions.

Anti-Aging Benefits Of Meditation

The youth preserving and renewing benefits of meditation include:

• Meditation increases DHEA, which facilitates the production of the hormones that maintain fat and mineral metabolism.
• An increase in Melatonin, which acts as antioxidant, supplies immune support and fights depression.
• A decrease in cortisol, the stress hormone that encourages the body to retain dangerous belly fat associated with heart disease and diabetes.

The Effects Of Meditation

Part of feeling and maintaining a youthful mental outlook centers around the quality of one’s thinking patterns. Meditators learn to quiet mental chaos and build their ability to concentrate.

They experience greater clarity of thought and tend to react less and respond more to circumstances. In short, they maintain their ability to be highly adaptive and think quickly with the additional benefit of choosing their response to situations rather than reacting to them.

How To Meditate

Meditators typically meditate at least twice a day for twenty minutes per sitting. Most schools of thought recommend meditation to start the day and to close it. However, a person may meditate whenever they have time in their schedule to accommodate it.

Meditation is not an all or nothing proposition. It is also beneficial to meditate in shorter increments of time, sitting for 5, 10, or 15 minutes.
There are also several different methods of meditation, including:

• Primordial Sound Meditation
• Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
• Zen
• Transcendental Meditation
• Yoga Meditation (Kundalini)
• Focused Attention Meditation
• Open Monitoring Meditation
• Vipassana Meditation
• Loving Kindness Meditation (Metta Meditation)
• Mantra Meditation (OM Meditation)
• Qigong (Chi kung)

Getting Started

A person new to meditation needs to be patient; it takes time to train the mind to focus and settle into a meditation practice. The first step is to decide which from of meditation you wish to practice, and then learn how to do it. If possible, obtain the services of an expert, and there are also many books, DVD’s and free information available online that can teach the exact steps of the particular method preferred.

When beginning, try to meditate at the same time every day. If this is not possible, you can still meditate at different time.

Building a meditation practice is more i

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About Meditation to Improve Mental and Physical Health

Posted on June 12, 2022 by dayat

Here you find a general definition of meditation, and an easy meditation technique is explained.

Meditation is a group of mental training techniques. You can use meditation to improve mental health and capacities,Guest Posting for spiritual development, to improve your motivation for your goals and also to help improve the physical health. Some of these techniques are very simple, so you can learn them from a book or an article; others require guidance by a qualified meditation teacher.

WHAT IS MEDITATION

Most techniques called meditation include these components:

1. You sit or lie in a relaxed position with closed eyes.

2. You breathe regularly. You breathe in deep enough to get enough oxygen. When you breathe out, you relax your muscles so that your lungs are well emptied, but without straining.

3. You stop thinking about everyday problems and matters.

4. You concentrate your thoughts upon some sound, some word you repeat, some image, some abstract concept or some feeling. Your whole attention should be pointed at the object you have chosen to concentrate upon.

5. If some foreign thoughts creep in, you just stop this foreign thought, and go back to the object of meditation.

The different meditation techniques differ according to the degree of concentration, and how foreign thoughts are handled. By some techniques, the objective is to concentrate so intensely that no foreign thoughts occur at all.

In other techniques, the concentration is more relaxed so that foreign thoughts easily pop up. When these foreign thoughts are discovered, one stops these and goes back to the pure meditation in a relaxed manner. Thoughts coming up, will often be about things you have forgotten or suppressed, and allow you to rediscover hidden memory material. This rediscovery will have a psychotherapeutic effect.

THE EFFECTS OF MEDITATION

Meditation has the following effects:

1. Meditation will reduce stress and give you rest and recreation.

2. You learn to relax.

3. You learn to concentrate better on problem solving.

4. Meditation often has a good effect upon the blood pressure.

5. Meditation has beneficial effects upon inner body processes, like circulation, respiration and digestion.

6. Regular meditation will have a psychotherapeutically effect.

7. Regular meditation will facilitate the immune system.

8. Meditation is usually pleasant.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HYPNOSIS AND MEDITATION

Hypnosis may have some of the same relaxing and psychotherapeutic effects as meditation. However, when you meditate you are in control yourself; by hypnosis you let some other person or some mechanical device control you. Also hypnosis will not have a training effect upon the ability to concentrate.

A SIMPLE FORM OF MEDITATION

Here is a simple form of meditation. By this meditation technique, you should concentrate in an easy manner. This will allow foreign thoughts to pop up. These are handled one by one as they appear. You proceed as follows:

1. Sit in a good chair in a comfortable position.

2. Close your eyes and relax all your muscles as well as you can.

3. Stop thinking about anything, or at least try not to think about anything.

4. Breath out, relaxing all the muscles in your breathing apparatus.

5. Repeat the following in 10 – 20 minutes:

– Breath in so deep that you feel you get enough oxygen.

– Breath out, relaxing your chest and diaphragm completely.

– Every time you breathe out, think the word “one” or another simple word inside yourself. You should think the word in a prolonged manner, and so that you hear it inside you, but you should try to avoid using your mouth or voice.

6. If foreign thoughts come in, just stop these thoughts in a relaxed manner, and keep on concentrating upon the breathing and the word you repeat.

As you proceed through this meditation, you should feel steadily more relaxed in your mind and body, feel that you breathe steadily more effectively, and that the blood circulation throughout your body gets more efficient. You may also feel an increasing mental pleasure throughout the meditation.

THE EFFECTS OF MEDITATION UPON DISEASES

As any kind of training, meditation may be exaggerated so that you get tired and worn out. Therefore you should not meditate so long or so concentrated that you feel tired or mentally emptied.

Meditation may sometimes give problems for people suffering from mental diseases, epilepsy, serious heart problems or neurological diseases. On the other hand, meditation may be of help in the treatment of these and other conditions.

People suffering from such conditions should check out what effects the different kinds of meditation have on their own kind of health problems, before beginning to practise meditation, and be cautious if they choose to begin to meditate. It may be wise to learn meditation from an experienced teacher, psychologist or health worker that use meditation as a treatment module for the actual disease.

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