Hello again,
I'm Don Joseph Gohe,
Author of the book The End of Stress and also the creator of the course here at Insight Timer called The Science of Ending Stress.
In this podcast I want to summarize some of the important research on mindfulness and in particular on mindfulness meditation.
It's mind-blowing.
Research on mindfulness is very much in the news and over the last 25 years the studies involving mindfulness and meditation have soared from just one to more than 500 and counting.
The conclusion one can make from all these studies is that when it comes to the brain,
Mind matters.
Your state of mind determines the state of your brain,
The state of your health,
And the quality of your life.
A negative,
Stress-provoking mindset spirals down into all sorts of serious problems,
Physically,
Cognitively,
Emotionally,
While a positive,
Peaceful mindset spirals upward toward inner and outer fulfillment.
A recent study found that people who exhibit repetitive negative thinking had more cognitive decline and problems with memory,
As well as higher levels of tau protein and aminoid deposits,
Both of which are linked to dementia and Alzheimer's.
That same study found that mindfulness meditation and awareness reduce negative thinking patterns and their debilitating effects.
Just as physical exercise develops and improves your body,
A practice of mindfulness literally strengthens neural connections in your brain.
Meditation and mindfulness stimulate the brain,
Preventing atrophy and functional decline.
Positive effects have been seen in those people who practice for as little as 10 minutes a day.
Ten minutes a day!
Hundreds of other studies have shown that mindfulness meditation promotes well-being and emotional balance,
It enhances focus and attention,
It decreases stress reactivity,
And it reduces negative feelings associated with anxiety and depression.
A review of brain scans of meditators found brain mass to be thicker in areas responsible for all the positive outcomes I just mentioned.
As a result,
They were more open to new information,
Which of course makes people smarter.
All this evidence means that meditation increases your capacity to be more intelligent,
More positive,
More creative,
And less reactive to stressors with more resiliency to stress when you have a stress reaction.
It makes you better able to recover when a stressor gets to you.
Meditation does this by reducing activity in the amygdala,
The brain's fear center,
And by increasing the connection between the lower and higher brain to enable logic and common sense and emotional balance to overrule fear.
Meditation also increases your capacity for empathy and it makes your empathy more effective.
Last but not least,
Meditation has a positive impact on relationships.
People who meditate bounce back from conflicts quicker and they have better relationships with their children.
That's a lot of benefits for 10 minutes of practice a day.
There is a definition of meditation in A Course in Miracles I like very much.
It defines meditation as a deep relinquishment of everything that clutters up the mind and makes us deaf,
Dumb,
And blind to reason,
To sanity,
To the simple truth of how sweet life can be when we're not caught in the ruminations of fear and stress.
