Heart Works

Health and Healing

A Study in Meditation

In a small study of brain scans involving twenty people who had extensive training in Buddhist Insight meditation, researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that people who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don't. The brain imaging of just ordinary people who meditate regularly - rather than monks who might do so for prolonged periods as part of their living schedule -- revealed increased thickness in the cortical regions of the brain related to auditory, visual, sensory and internal perception capabilities (such as awareness of one's heart rate or breathing). The researchers found an increased thickness of the brain's gray matter from around 4 to 8 thousandths of an inch with the amount of thickening being proportional to the amount of time a person had spent practicing meditation. If you practiced vipassana "attention" meditation more, the brain became thicker in that cortical region related to internal perceptions.

This is the first scientific evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. The brain scans revealed conclusively that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input even if the individuals were not long term meditators. So this can happen for ordinary people who simply start to meditate a few times a week. That means you and I ...

1.  Start a gratitude journal.

2.  Get out in nature.

3.  Play your favorite music.

4.  Get a bouqet of your favorite flowers.

5.  See a funny movie.

6.  Do something nice for someone else.

7.  Play with a pet.

8.  Dance.

9.  Yoga or some form of exercise.

10. Smile, fake it till you make it.