Learn Meditation in 7 Amazingly Easy Steps
While meditation is an important spiritual element of major religions like Buddhism and Hinduism, it’s used every day by millions of people who meditate purely for it’s health benefits. Western medicine recognizes mediation’s positive, calming effects, with doctors advising patients who suffer from stress, high blood pressure and chromic pain to take a few relaxing minutes each day to meditate.
It’s like a trip to the gym for your brain by focusing the mind on a single thought or image, even for only 10 or 20 minutes each day, you’re body relaxes, our mind becomes clear, and stressful problems become easier to manage.
Why meditation has a measurable effect on mind and body
To understand how meditation works, it helps to understand how the brain functions. The largest part of the brain is the cortex, divided into left and right hemispheres. The left side of the brain is usually dominant, controlling speech, logic, calculation and writing. The right hemisphere controls creativity, imagination and emotions. Researchers believe that when we meditate we create a connection between the two hemispheres. When subjects hooked up to ECG machines meditate, researchers can measure the intensity of alpha waves the brain waves when we’re in calm, relaxed state produced while meditating. During meditation, alpha waves are far stronger and more consistent between both hemispheres that during other forms of relaxation even sleep.
When the brain is in an alpha state, the parasympathetic nervous system takes over the part of the nervous system that conserves and restores energy, slows blood pressure and heart rate, and controls the digestion and absorption of nutrients by