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Benefits of Meditation

There is scientific and anecdotal evidence on the benefits of meditation. Here are just two that I found were profound:

Scientific evidence:

Maybe meditation isn't so mysterious after all. Neuroscientists have found that meditators shift their brain activity to different areas of the cortex - brain waves in the stress-prone right frontal cortex move to the calmer left frontal cortex. This mental shift decreases the negative effects of stress, mild depression and anxiety. There is also less activity in the amygdala, where the brain processes fear.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, recorded the brain waves of stressed-out employees of a high-tech firm in Madison, Wisconsin. The subjects were split randomly into two groups, 25 people were asked to learn meditation over eight weeks, and the remaining 16 were left alone as a control group.

All participants had their brain waves scanned three times during the study: at the beginning of the experiment, when meditation lessons were completed eight weeks later and four months after that. The researchers found that the meditators showed a pronounced shift in activity to the left frontal lobe. In other words, they were calmer and happier than before. The study was published in an issue of Psychosomatic Medicine .

Anectotal evidence on benefits of meditation from the Abhidhyan Yoga Institute:

1. It will show you the way to true wisdom. You will get to know the difference between reality and mirage.

2. It will teach you to remain calm in any situation.

3. It encourages deeper understanding of yourself and others. Thus you will follow your chosen path with more precision. It will be easier for you to stand up for yourself and, therefore, your relationships with others will improve.

4. Meditation develops intuition—a capacity to understand and foresee.

5. It will teach you what is true enjoyment and how to really enjoy. As a result you will gradually stop injuring yourself with work, relationships, gluttony. You will stop imagining that pain is pleasure and/or responsibility.

6. Meditation is the only way to become friends with stress, enjoy it, and use it for your benefit—all without overexertion.

7. Most diseases stem from the discord between mind and body. Meditation will bring your body, mind, emotions and spirit, etc., i.e., all of the many facets of human existence, into harmony like a symphony orchestra.

8. The most important lesson meditation teaches us is that our home—our beautiful universe—is changeable (impermanent) by its very nature. You will begin to understand, appreciate and make peace with the passing show of this world.