Here’s What 10 Minutes Of Meditating Does To Your Brain

0:00 We appreciate your interest in today's Meditation Life Skills podcast. We're sincerely grateful for your support. Thank you for being a part of this special community as we all learn to bring more compassion and peace for ourselves and to the world. Our hope is that you will find great value in the material that we've put together for you to deepen your practice even more. Please visit MeditationLifeSkills .com Here's what 10 minutes of meditation a day does to your brain. Have you ever considered meditation? This is a simple exercise that anyone can try, and that has been shown by a ton of evidence to have significant and profound health benefits. And guess what?

0:51 In order to experience the benefits to their fullest, you don't need to spend hours a day sat in the lotus position. You can meditate for just 10 minutes a day, or even less, and still see some profound changes. And I'll share some of those profound changes with you. And trust me, they're going to blow your mind. 1. Cortical Thickness First, meditation has been shown to increase cortical thickness in the key frontal regions of the brain. In plain English, that means your brain is actually growing. getting heavier as new brain cells are created and new connections are formed between them. As you might expect, this then correlates with improved performance, making us smarter, boosting our memory, and helping us to focus on complex tasks. IQ scores have even been shown to improve as a result of regular meditation. 2. White cells proliferate. When you think of your brain, you probably think of gray matter. Well, the brain is also made of white matter. This tissue has a very important job of protecting the gray matter and supporting it in a range of important processes. It can help to prevent deterioration and encourage signaling to occur more quickly and stronger. In short, you become more alert and switched on. 3. Aging

2:23 slows down. One of the most serious health issues that come with aging is the effect that getting older has on the brain. We all know memory is impaired as we age and we can become more forgetful and absent -minded. Risk of conditions like Alzheimer's also increases, but studies show that the growth of new tissue continues into old age and that this can actually help to slow down some of that deterioration. In other words, meditation is like a fountain of youth for your brain. 4. Neurochemical balance improves. Meditation can also cause changes in the production of various different neurochemicals.

3:06 This reduces the production of stress hormones like cortisol and increases the production of happiness hormones like serotonin. In this way, it can actually work like an antidepressant which is why it should come as no surprise that studies show meditation can be as effective as antidepressants under the right circumstances. Meditation is something that can benefit everyone, and with more and more research demonstrating just how profound its effects are, this is something that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. We'll be looking at three incredibly powerful reasons that you should take up meditation and make it a part of your routine. 1. Meditation makes you smarter. Studies show that meditation can literally make you smarter and increase your score on IQ tests. There are many reasons for this, but one of the most likely is that it works via increasing working memory and concentration.

4:06 In other words, this can enhance your ability to focus on one thing, and that in turn has been linked with our ability to keep information stored while we work on other tasks. This can help you carry numbers across when you're doing math, to know where other players might be on the field while playing sports, and to keep in mind all the subjects you've covered in conversation. In brain scans, meditation has been shown to encourage greater cortical thickness, meaning that your brain literally gets heavier and thicker in the most important areas. 2. Meditation helps you control your emotions. Also highly important is the fact that meditation can make you more emotionally stable. This is demonstrated in studies, and it makes logical sense when you consider that meditation can allow you to shut out stressful thoughts and to find a place of calm. Meditation makes us significantly less stressed on a daily basis, which is incredibly good for our general health and which can improve our performance and our ability to thrive under pressure. What's more is that if you appear to have greater control over your emotions and to be unflappable, then people will respect you more and be more likely to follow your leadership and your advice. 3.

5:29 Meditation gives you discipline. But, perhaps best of all, is that meditation makes you more disciplined and better able to choose what you want to focus on. This means you can accomplish more, work faster, and even perform better in athletic pursuits. Once you unlock that self -discipline, you can take back control over your own behavior and stop being dictated to by your feelings and whims. If that's not enough reason to meditate, then I don't know what is. To deepen your practice even more, please visit MeditationLifeSkills .com