Meditation – the benefits and the underlying neuroscience.
Do you walk the talk?
I often find myself recommending various forms of meditation to my clients but if I have to be completely honest, I don’t practice meditation consistently myself. There’s always so much to do – client’s reports, research, marketing, social media, etc. that most days I don’t factor in enough time for self-care. I imagine most NTs are like me, not always practicing what we preach! Self-care though should be one of our top-most priorities if we want to avoid burnout and be at our best to serve our clients.
Daily meditation practice is one way of ensuring you stay balanced and maintain your stress resilience. Let’s have a closer look at some of its benefits the neuroscience behind it. We’ll focus mostly on mindfulness meditation, in which you pay attention to your breath and how you’re feeling rather than repeat a mantra, like in other forms of meditation. Mindfulness meditation can be described as nonjudgemental attention to present-moment experiences (1). It can be practiced any time, anywhere.
Improved focus & attention
Meditation has been found to improve attention control (1, 2). Improved attention means you can maintain better focus, which is a major benefit in today’s world, so full of distractions. Better focus translates into better productivity and being able to get things done in time is key to your professional success. According to some studies, it seems you could start experiencing the benefits of meditation in as little as 4 days (3) and by only investing 10 minutes of your time a day (2). That’s remarkably little! We should all give it a go! These beneficial effects of mindfulness meditation are seen in MRI studies as changes in the parts of the brain involved in attention control such as enhanced white matter integrity in the anterior cingulate cortex (4, 5).
Better emotion control
Running your own business is a big responsibility and things can get emotional sometimes. Mindfulness meditation can improve your ability to control your emotions (1) allowing you to stay calm when faced with challenges or negative experiences (6,7). This effect may be due to the reduced responsiveness of the amygdala to negative stimuli during (8,9) and following meditation (10). This effect is more noticeable in beginners than in experienced meditators (11). Beginners need to make an effort to overcome their habitual ways of reacting to emotions, while expert meditators are able to simply accept their experiences and in each case, different brain pathways are being activated (12).
Increased self-esteem
Meditation can also alter your self-perception in a positive manner, increasing your self-esteem and self-acceptance. This is precious, especially if, like me, you’re a bit of a perfectionist. Buddhists believe that the identification with a static concept of self is the reason for inner distress and use meditation to detach from it (13,14). They practice ‘meta-awareness’ to identify with the phenomenon of ‘experiencing’ instead. Meta-awareness means focusing on awareness itself. All this may seem a little hard to grasp, but the way I understand it, is that by practicing meditation you become aware of the fact you are more than the body you reside in. You are something bigger. Bigger than you have been programmed to believe. Functional MRI studies investigating the ‘default mode network’ activity found it to be decreased in meditators compared to controls (15). Meditation seems to be a good tool to try if you want to stop running on your default program and liberate yourself from the limiting beliefs that stop you from achieving your full potential.
8 comments
admin
September 8, 2015 at 10:44 am
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admin
September 8, 2015 at 10:44 am
Nam liber tempor cum soluta nobis eleifend option congue nihil imperdiet doming id quod mazim placerat facer possim assum. Typi non habent claritatem insitam; est usus legentis in iis qui facit eorum claritatem. Investigationes demonstraverunt lectores legere me lius quod ii legunt saepius. Claritas est etiam processus dynamicus, qui sequitur mutationem consuetudium lectorum. Mirum est notare quam littera gothica, quam nunc putamus parum claram, anteposuerit litterarum formas humanitatis per seacula quarta decima et quinta decima. Eodem modo typi, qui nunc nobis videntur parum clari, fiant sollemnes in futurum.
admin
September 8, 2015 at 10:44 am
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admin
September 8, 2015 at 10:45 am
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admin
September 8, 2015 at 10:45 am
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admin
September 8, 2015 at 10:44 am
Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.
admin
September 8, 2015 at 10:45 am
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.
admin
September 8, 2015 at 10:45 am
Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.
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