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Brains of Buddhist monks change after Meditation practice.
Scientists are scanning brains of practitioners before and after Meditation.
The findings are very interesting and profound!
Meditation improves memory, concentration, hyperactivity, ADD syndrome, anxiety, social anxiety, depression, addiction, daily stress, trauma and much, much more.
Yoga and meditation are very valuable venues to improve and preserve our overall well-being, health and mental health. There has been an interest from educators to introduce yoga and meditation in schools to improve social behavior amongst students. One district in San Francisco started a twice daily meditation program in some of its high-risk schools – and saw suspensions decrease, and GPA’s and attendance increase. Studies have confirmed the cognitive and emotional benefits of meditation for schoolchildren.
Every day a little practice goes a long way …
Dr Zoran Josipovic is a research scientist and adjunct professor at New York University. His research study focuses on: Consciousness, Meditation and Nonduality. Dr. Zoran himself is a long-term practitioner of meditation in the traditions of Dzogchen, Mahamudra and Advaita Vedanta. Dr Zoran is also the Founding Director of the Nonduality Institute
He has scanned brains of Buddhist monks in a meditation study.
Dr Zoran Josipovic: “I am interested in states of consciousness cultivated through contemplative practice, what these states can tell us about the nature of consciousness and its relation to authentic subjectivity, and what relevance this may have for understanding the global and local organization in the brain. I use fMRI and a variety of visual and other stimuli to explore functional connectivity changes in the brain’s networks.”
Zoran Josipovic, PhD: The Functioning of Anti-Correlated Neural Networks
Please view Dr Zoran’s interview with BBC which was published by:
Researchers also found that mindfulness meditation decreases activity in the brain network which is responsible for mind-wandering also called “monkey mind.”
There is an excellent book to read by the late Shunryu Suzuki: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
Shunryu Suzuki was a Buddhist monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the US.
Madhav Goyal a researcher at Johns Hopkins and his team found that meditation can influence the state of depression as well as conventional antidepressants do. Meditation is an active form of brain training and practiced regularly it can alleviate anxiety, depression, states of unhappiness and in general increase our well-being.
Dr Sara Lazar a neuroscientist and her team at Harvard are researching the impact of mediation as well. Her results and findings are very interesting and to be viewed at The Connection TV
Dr Sara Lazar: “We found people who had never meditated before and we scanned them and then we put them through an 8-week meditation program and then we scanned them again. And we were able to show that in just 8 weeks we were able to detect changes in brain structure.”
You can find Dr Lazar’s talk on meditation on YouTube – Ted Talk
