10 Remarkable Ways Meditation Helps Your Mind

Meditation is about way more than just relaxing.

In fact, if I listed the following mental benefits from a new pill or potion, you’d be rightly sceptical.

But all these flow from a simple activity which is completely free, involves no expensive equipment, chemicals, apps, books or other products.

I’ve also included my own very brief meditation instructions below to get you started.

But first, what are all these remarkable benefits?

1. Lasting emotional control

Meditation may make us feel calmer while we’re doing it, but do these benefits spill over into everyday life?

Desborders et al. (2012) scanned the brains of people taking part in an 8-week meditation program, before and after the course.

While they were scanned, participants looked at pictures designed to elicit positive, negative and neutral emotional responses.

After the meditation course, activation in the amygdala, the emotional centre of the brain, was reduced to all pictures.

This suggests that meditation can help provide lasting emotional control, even when you are not meditating.

2. Cultivate compassion

Meditation has long been thought to help people be more virtuous and compassionate. Now this has been put to scientific test.

In one study participants who had been meditating were given an undercover test of their compassion (Condon et al., 2013).

They were sat in a staged waiting area with two actors when another actor entered on crutches, pretending to be in great pain. The two actors sat next to the participants both ignored the person who was in pain, sending the unconscious signal not to intervene.

Those who had been meditating, though, were 50% more likely to help the person in pain.

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