Why Daily Meditation?
A daily meditation practice is one of the most impactful things you can do for your health and wellbeing. The following studies show how meditation changes the brain, reduces stress and anxiety, improves sleep and focus, increases compassion, and more.
Harvard neuroscientist: Meditation not only reduces stress, here’s how it changes your brain
“It’s well-documented that our cortex shrinks as we get older – it’s harder to figure things out and remember things. But in this one region of the prefrontal cortex, 50-year-old meditators had the same amount of gray matter as 25-year-olds.”
“The amygdala, the fight or flight part of the brain which is important for anxiety, fear and stress in general. That area got smaller in the group that went through the mindfulness-based stress reduction program.”
Mindfulness meditation helps fight insomnia, improves sleep — “Compared with the people in the sleep education group, those in the mindfulness group had less insomnia, fatigue, and depression at the end of the six sessions.”
The Effects of Mindfulness Meditation Training on Multitasking in a High-Stress Information Environment — Those trained in meditation were able to stay on task longer, switch between tasks less frequently, and enjoy their tasks more.
Mindfulness on-the-go: Effects of a mindfulness meditation app on work stress and well-being — Participants reported a 46% reduction in depression and a 31% reduction in anxiety. “The intervention group reported significant improvement in well-being, distress, job strain, and perceptions of workplace social support compared to the control group.”
Improvements in Stress, Affect, and Irritability Following Brief Use of a Mindfulness-based Smartphone App: A Randomized Controlled Trial — Thirty days of mindfulness meditation with a smartphone app reduced stress by one-third.
Can Meditation Make You a More Compassionate Person? — “The truly surprising aspect of this finding is that meditation made people willing to act virtuous – to help another who was suffering – even in the face of a norm not to do .”
Meditation Inhibits Aggressive Responses to Provocations — “Results showed that 3 weeks of daily meditation practice substantially reduced aggressive behavior even in the absence of any enhanced executive control capabilities”
A small 2016 study funded in part by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) found that mindfulness meditation does help to control pain and doesn’t use the brain’s naturally occurring opiates to do so.
In another 2016 NCCIH-funded study, adults aged 20 to 70 who had chronic low-back pain received either mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) training, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), or usual care. The researchers found that participants in the MBSR and CBT groups had greater improvement in functional limitation and back pain at 26 and 52 weeks compared with those who had usual care.
Results of a 2009 NCCIH-funded trial involving 298 university students suggest that practicing Transcendental Meditation may lower the blood pressure of people at increased risk of developing high blood pressure. The findings also suggested that practicing meditation can help with psychological distress, anxiety, depression, anger/hostility, and coping ability.
Results of a 2011 NCCIH-funded trial that enrolled 75 women suggest that practicing mindfulness meditation for 8 weeks reduces the severity of IBS symptoms.
In a 2012 study, researchers compared brain images from 50 adults who meditate and 50 adults who don’t meditate. Results suggested that people who practiced meditation for many years have more folds in the outer layer of the brain. This process (called gyrification) may increase the brain’s ability to process information.
A 2013 review of three studies suggests that meditation may slow, stall, or even reverse changes that take place in the brain due to normal aging.
Results from a 2012 NCCIH-funded study suggest that meditation can affect activity in the amygdala (a part of the brain involved in processing emotions), and that different types of meditation can affect the amygdala differently even when the person is not meditating.