Quick Facts
Meditation is a practice involving the mind and body. It has been practiced since approximately 5000 to 3500 BCE (Puff, 2013). Although the origins are heavily associated with Eastern religious and spiritual purposes, the expansive physical, psychological, and emotional benefits discovered has drawn the attention of many. Through an extensive study, The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health concluded that 18 million U.S. adults reported to meditate in 2012 ("Use of complementary," 2017).
There are many different types of meditation but all follow the same general guidelines (Greeson, Wahbe, Glowa, Killen & Shurtleff, 2017):
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in a location without distractions
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in a comfortable position
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with your attention focused (on your breathe, object, words, or imagery)
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with an open attitude
Meditation and the Brain
Several studies have reported that meditation may help in lowering blood pressure, anxiety and depression, pain, and may help with various psychological disorders (Greeson et al., 2017). More recently, studies have found that there is a relationship between meditation and changes in brain structures associated with several areas that decline with age.
Memory, attention, and general cognition are known to be two evident characteristics of decline with age. This decline may be due to the fact that, as Luders (2014) states, “after the age of 40, the human brain decreases in volume and weight by approximately 5% every decade."
Luders (2014), in his review of three studies, discovered that meditation is correlated with promoting mechanisms that protect the brain and stimulate physical growth. Luders (2014) explains that the thickness of the brain in a 40-50 year old meditation practitioner was found to be similar to that of a 20-30 year old non-practitioner. Meditation had seemed to preserve and/or grow several areas of the brain!
Correlated Benefits
According to Fox et al. (2014), in result of an extensive analysis review, 8 brain regions were identified to change consistently after a comparison of approximately 300 long-term meditating practitioners to control groups across several studies.
The brain regions that changed with meditation were associated with several functions, such as:
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Meta-cognition: when one aware of his thinking processes
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Attention (Lazar et al., 2005), with the structure having a strong association with ADHD symptoms (Pagnoni & Cekic, 2007)
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Problem-solving
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Awareness of both inside and outside of the body sensations
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Memory
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Emotional regulation and self regulation
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Communication between brain structures