What is Meditation?
Quite Simply - Just Try it!
Meditation is simply the quieting of your mind. Allowing yourself to slow down the activity in your mind by focusing on something other than your thoughts.
16 Seconds to Clairty
This is a wonderful meditation to get started - takes less than a minute to practice and allows you to come back to present moment awareness. Use this tool anytime, anywhere!
(Just don't watch the video while driving...)
The Science behind the Practice
Scientific research-Meditation can be viewed as one of the antidotes to stress
Meditation Benefits are now scientifically proven! We now know that we can Lower our heart rate, slow or deepen our breathing, boost our immune system, slow the fluctuations of our mind, expand our sense of well being , manage our pain, suppress cortisol, glucagon and adrenaline and ease the nonstop swirl of thoughts.
A recent meditation study at the University of Massachusetts, in concert with Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, tracked changes to the physical structure of the brain using MRI scans over and eight-week period, a mere 56 days. All 16 test subjects meditated on there breath for 30 minutes a day and experienced the following structural shifts:
An increase in the size of the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for learning, memory, and spatial orientation
A decrease in the size of the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for fear, anger, and stress.
As brain-imaging software develops and improves, we are finally able to look deep into the brain and see what happens when someone meditates.
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Excerpt from Destressifying by davidji.