Meditation, Mindfulness, Wellness

Here Is your Brain On Meditation and What To Expect

Meditation reminds us that we are human beings. It gives us the opportunity to slow down and go inward to reach the depths of our soul. It creates a space for you to practice non-judgement and simply observe anything that comes to the surface: your thoughts, feelings, emotions. However, meditation is much more than the spiritual “woo-woo.” There is real science behind this process, and I am here to help you digest it.

Meditation can promote cognitive functions and modify brain activity. Your brain is a flexible organ which develops through neural connections. Practicing meditation strengthens those connections and improves the regions of your brain associated with those networks. As a result, the way you think, feel, act, and experience the world starts to change.

Hippocampal Region

On a more methodical level, meditation helps increase the density of the gray matter in the hippocampus (up to 15%) which helps with learning, memory, and cognition. Meditation also improves emotional regulation and response control through increase in gray matter volumes in orbito-frontal and hippocampal regions. Improvements in the anterior insula and in cortical thickness have a positive effect on self-awareness and attention.

Amygdala

Meditation helps you deactivate your sympathetic nervous system responsible for negative feelings and emotions such as stress, anxiety, and depression. This ancient ritual has the potential to induce neuroplastic changes in the amygdala (the key fight or flight response region) and reduce its activity during stressful situations. In simpler terms, you are less likely to just react, and are better equipped to control your responses.

Summary

Putting it all in the simpler words, meditation has the ability to change the structure and the functioning of your brain. Not only that, but there are also many feel-good chemicals that get released in you body as you meditate such as endorphins, oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin. Incorporating this traditional practice, will improve your focus, self-awareness, attention, mood regulation, sleep, happiness, and overall health and well-being.