Category: meditation
Stress reorganizes brain circuits and can leave you even deeper in a rut. Worse, it may change how your brain is wired, and in a bad way. An article published in Science shows that stressed animals tend to make decisions based on habit rather than by taking outcomes into account.
I saw an interesting blog post yesterday evening on the site of the Huffington Post about the potential benefits of meditation – or at least about what one woman thinks might be the benefits.
As part of my class on brain fitness at the Lifelong Learning Institute the past several weeks, I asked interested participants in the class to fill out the fourteen item Perceived Stress Scale. It’s a well known questionnaire used to evaluate someone’s level of stress. Items on the scale ask questions about how often a person encounters things that he or she can’t cope with, and also about how able the person feels to cope with stressors.
I’m interested in stress because lots of research shows that stress has a negative effect on memory. Ever since the pioneering studies of Robert Sapolsky, we’ve know that stress can harm the brain. Other research has shown a negative relation between level of stress and how well people do on memory tests.
Individuals in my class last year at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Miami did the same questionnaire. When we looked at how stress was related to how well those people did on a memory test, we saw what others have found. There was an inverse relation between stress and memory. As stress went up, memory went down.
An important part of any brain fitness program is developing a stress management program. By that I mean you should spend some time in identifying what kind of stressors you have and figure out what to do about them.
Good ways of coping with stress include avoiding the things that you can avoid (that third cup of coffee, or that family member who always upsets you) and then having a systematic way of dealing with the ones you can’t avoid.
Schedule challenging tasks for the time of day when you’ll have the most energy for them. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the things you have to do, make a list and work through them one by one. If a new task just seems overwhelming, break it down into a series of smaller tasks and work through them one by one.
Exercise and meditation help your body cope with stress as well. Regular aerobic exercise helps people manage stress. Remember to talk to your doctor about what kind and how much exercise is safe for you to do.
Meditation is deceptively simple: just stop for a few minutes a couple of times a day and spend some time breathing. For many people, I think meditation is a simple and effective way of coping with stress. It’s effects are cumulative: do it a couple of times a day for a week, and you’ll gradually develop a more relaxed and focused mindset.
Although many people are excited about the potential for using computers to train their brains, we shouldn’t forget that other techniques have been used to the train the brain for many centuries. I’m thinking about the large number of techniques for meditation. While free computer software still requires an investment in a computer, meditation only asks you to sit or lie quietly and focus your mind.
A recently-published study shows parts of the brain in long-term meditators are larger than the same parts of the brain in people who don’t meditate. The article by Eileen Luders and her colleagues appeared in a recent issue of the journal Neuroimage (Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 672-678, April 15, 2009). The study showed that portions of the orbitofrontal cortex and the hippocampus were larger in persons who had been regular meditators for 5 or more years. The study is interesting because the parts of the brain that were larger are often thought to be important in helping people keep themselves emotionally balanced.
A number of strategies are likely to be helpful for meditators. There has been a great deal of interest over the last several years in mindfulness meditation. Researchers have studied how it can be used in reducing anxiety and depression. Mindfulness is based on Buddhist meditation (for a brief article, click here) but you don’t have to be a Buddhist to practice meditation. In fact, one of the most important persons who has promoted mindfulness is Jon Kabat-Zinn, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts. You can see a video presentation by him on YouTube by clicking here.
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Mindfulness meditation as practiced over a long period by experts makes clear changes in someone’s brain function. But what about those of us who don’t have a few years to sit in a monastery in the Himalayas? A new study shows that even brief meditation practice can improve attention.
I saw an interesting blog post yesterday evening on the site of the Huffington Post about the potential benefits of meditation – or at least about what one woman thinks might be the benefits. (more…)
Although many people are excited about the potential for using computers to train their brains, we shouldn’t forget that other techniques have been used to the train the brain for many centuries. I’m thinking about the large number of techniques for meditation. While free computer software still requires an investment in a computer, meditation only asks you to sit or lie quietly and focus your mind.
A recently-published study shows parts of the brain in long-term meditators are larger than the same parts of the brain in people who don’t meditate. The article by Eileen Luders and her colleagues appeared in a recent issue of the journal Neuroimage (Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 672-678, April 15, 2009). The study showed that portions of the orbitofrontal cortex and the hippocampus were larger in persons who had been regular meditators for 5 or more years. The study is interesting because the parts of the brain that were larger are often thought to be important in helping people keep themselves emotionally balanced.
A number of strategies are likely to be helpful for meditators. There has been a great deal of interest over the last several years in mindfulness meditation. Researchers have studied how it can be used in reducing anxiety and depression. Mindfulness is based on Buddhist meditation (for a brief article, click here) but you don’t have to be a Buddhist to practice meditation. In fact, one of the most important persons who has promoted mindfulness is Jon Kabat-Zinn, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts. You can see a video presentation by him on YouTube by clicking here.