Meditation – Food For Your Brains

By Suparna Chakaraborthy

Wednesday, February 16, 2011, 11:48

With excessive work pressure and growing demands of education brain health seems to be the worst affected. To boost brain health we have health drinks, gym and exercise but according to a study by Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, the solution to boost brain health lies in meditation and they claim that it shows results in just few months.

To prove their finding that meditation can boost brain health, the research dis an experiment on 16 people. They did it along with stress relaxation exercises and easy stretching. They practiced it for 30 minutes a day. After eight weeks MRI scan on these participants showed significant gray matter density growth in areas of the brain involved in learning and memory, empathy and compassion, sense of self and emotional regulation. It proved that meditation can boost brain power.

Senior author Sara Lazar, a psychology instructor at Harvard Medical School said, "This is really, clearly, where we can see, for the first time, that when people say, ''Oh, I feel better, I'm not as stressed when I meditate, they're not just saying that - that there is a biological reason why they're feeling less stress. But this is proof that it's really the brain exercise that's making the difference," she said.

Gary Kaplan, director of the Kaplan Center for Integrative Medicine in McLean, have also reported that he has also noticed that meditation boosts brain health. He says that patients who follow it typically sleep better, have less pain, less anxiety and depression, and a better general sense of well-being.

“Allowing that chatter to quiet and becoming present in the moment, while being gentle with the thoughts that come in and out of the mind and any anxiety that's there, that can be difficult," Kaplan said.

Hugh Byrne, a senior teacher with the Insight Mediation Community of Washington, says, “It isn"t just about bringing awareness to your experience while you're sitting cross-legged with eyes closed. It's also a practice that you can bring into the rest of your life: when you're eating, sitting in a traffic jam, or relating to a partner, spouse, kids or colleagues at work. Don't be discouraged by a wandering mind. It's totally normal. The important thing is just to notice when you move into planning the future or ruminating on the past or daydreaming, just notice that and gently bring attention back to the present and come back into the body, without judgment or criticism."

Meditation thus has now been proved to be the best treatment to boost brain power and main both physical and mental balance. Medical Science also seems to be going back to the base.