Make Your Brain Work Faster – in just 80 mins!
Courtesy PsyBlog, here is how cognition can be accelerated by just 4 x 20 minutes Meditation:
…In a new study reported in the journal Consciousness and Cognition…researchers found significant benefits for novice meditators from only 80 minutes of meditation over 4 days (Zeidan et al., 2010).
Despite their very brief period of practice — and compared with a control group who listened to an audiobook of Tolkein’s The Hobbit— meditators improved on measures of working memory, executive functioning and visuo-spatial processing.
An ascetic, in the Yogasana pose. dated from 8th century.
Image Source: Museum of Trivandrum, Kerala; Courtesy: HinduWisdom.info
The authors conclude that even as little as “...four days of meditation training can enhance the ability to sustain attention; benefits that have previously been reported with long-term meditators.“
The article goes on to talk about something called “Mindfulness Meditation”. I am keen to hear from those of you who are familiar with Yoga and ancient Hindu meditation techniques, if there is anything equivalent in the practice of traditional Yoga. Thanks.
Related Posts:
Benefits of Yoga – reconfirmed
Super Brain Yoga – I want to trademark this!*
Somewhat Related: W’end Links: Nehru, Yoga, Israel and Caste Census and “Use your Mind to Change your Brain“
Oh yeh . works wonders. totally turned around my grades and my efficiency increased exponentially . my folks were shocked at how i could finish studying for a semester exams in a few hours while my friends used to call at 2AM for doubts 🙂
meditation works
Ofcourse Yoga works and so does meditation. The fact that these two are very popular is precicely because they work. It has been my personal experience that with Yoga one’s health and concentration improves.
Meditation certainly calms one down and reduces the stress level. I found it very helpful in stress ful situations. However the benefits of mediation are not just material after a while there is definitely some spiritual transformation too!
Shantanu,
Midful mediation is nothing but bowlderization/plagiarization of Vipasana meditation.
Here’s an excerpt from Rajiv Malhotra’s article “Panch (Five) Asymmetries in the Dialog of Civilizations: A Hindu View”
http://www.barnard.edu/religion/defamation/malhotra.htm
“some Indic theoretical models are at the center of the philosophy of quantum physics based emerging worldviews. But many ancient Hindu-Buddhist inner science discoveries are being mis-appropriated and/or plagiarized:
‘Lucid Dreaming’ is the western name for Indo-Tibetan nidra yoga, and Stanford’s Stephen LaBerge is nowadays the acknowledged discoverer.
‘Mindfulness Meditation’ is Jon-Kabat Zinn’s trademarked repackaging of vipassna.
Herb Benson repackaged TM into his ‘Relaxation Response’ and now runs a multimillion dollar business based at Harvard, claiming these as his discoveries. Numerous spin-offs in mainstream stress management and management consulting theories came from this source.
Rupert Sheldrake recently ‘came out’ in an interview acknowledging that his famous theory known as ‘Morphogenic Resonance’ was developed while researching in India’s ashrams.
Ken Wilbur started out very explicitly as an interpreter of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy for the benefit of psychologists, but now places himself as the discoverer on a higher pedestal.
Esalen Institute appropriated J. Krishnamurti and numerous other Indic thinkers into what its contemporary followers regard as it own ‘New Worldview’.
Thomas Berry, Brother Keating (successor to Bede Griffiths), and others have constructed the New Liberal Christianity, using Indic appropriations. Jewish scholars have likewise constructed the ‘non-dualistic Kabala’ based on Vedanta.
This is only part of a long list: the core of the emerging ‘western’ worldview and cosmology involving physics, cognitive science, and biology is being rapidly built upon repackaged Indic knowledge, but too frequently the source is being erased and over time. Yogis and meditators, who should be regarded as co-discoverers, usually remain anonymous ‘laboratory subjects’ and native informants.”
These ones are nothing but poor copies of the ancient techniques..
The people who copy have imperfect knowledge of the science and copy partially thinking, and ‘optimize’ the technique..
And yes, DEFINITELY the benefits of equal and great magnitude ARE obtained through traditional yoga and meditation too.. absolutely no doubt about it..
Pl read Ancient Moves for Orthopedic Problems by Jane Brody
Placing these links here for the record:
Breast Cancer Patients See Improved QoL With Yoga, March 06, 2014 by Anna Azvolinsky, PhD
and Short Yoga Session Stimulates Brain Function Immediately Afterwards…A single 20-minute session of yoga sharpens the mind more than a comparable amount of walking or jogging, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Gothe et al., 2013).
From “Feeling good: impressive results in study which tested yoga against a ‘metabolically matched’ amount of walking“:
Yoga increases the brain’s levels of GABA, a chemical that helps regulate nerve activity, research finds.
The study, lead by researchers at Boston University School of Medicine, compared yoga with a ‘metabolically matched’ walking condition (Streeter et al., 2010).
Yoga for an hour-and-a-half for each of twelve weeks was enough to increase GABA levels and boost mood.
In the control condition, the boost in GABA levels was not as great for those who did a similar amount of walking.
More on Yoga etc..
4 Wonderful Ways Meditation Relieves Pain:
One of the many remarkable ways psychological studies have shown that meditation benefits the mind is by reducing pain.
A recent review of 47 clinical trials found it was the effects of meditation on pain that were the largest, compared with other advantages such as reducing depression and anxiety.
Interesting: Making a Big (or Small) Decision? How Meditation Can Help
Harvard Unveils MRI Study Proving Meditation Literally Rebuilds The Brain’s Gray Matter In 8 Weeks, NOVEMBER 19, 2014. Excerpts:
…The study was led by a Harvard-affiliated team of researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the team’s MRI scans documented for the very first time in medical history how meditation produced massive changes inside the brain’s gray matter. “Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,†says study senior author Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology. “This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.â€
Sue McGreevey of MGH writes: “Previous studies from Lazar’s group and others found structural differences between the brains of experienced meditation practitioners and individuals with no history of meditation, observing thickening of the cerebral cortex in areas associated with attention and emotional integration. But those investigations could not document that those differences were actually produced by meditation.†Until now, that is. The participants spent an average of 27 minutes per day practicing mindfulness exercises, and this is all it took to stimulate a major increase in gray matter density in the hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection.
More on Yoga:
Yogis with arthritis had better physical health, less joint pain and less depression by Mandy Oaklander @mandyoaklander Sept. 17, 2015 in TIME
From Yoga And Meditation Beat Crosswords And Memory Training For Preventing Memory Loss:
…Meditation and yoga are more effective than memory games or crosswords for fighting memory problems linked to Alzheimer’s, new research finds.
Researchers compared two groups of people aged over 55 who reported memory problems like losing things, forgetting names and appointments.
One group were given crosswords and memory training to do over 12 weeks.
The other group did both yoga and meditation for an equivalent amount of time.
Professor Helen Lavretsky, one of the study’s authors, explained the results:
Both groups did one hour per week of their respective tasks.
Kundalini yoga was the type practiced in classes.
It involves focusing on breathing, chanting as well as the visualisation of light.
At home, people in the yoga group practiced 20 minutes of Kirtan Kriya meditation, which is a part of Kundalini yoga.
This type of yoga and meditation has been used in India for hundreds of years.
The researchers found that…people who did yoga and meditation had better visuo-spatial memory: the type used for navigating and recalling locations.
Yoga and meditation also had better results in reducing depression and anxiety.
It helped people develop higher levels of resilience and increased their ability to cope.
Mr Harris Eyre, the study’s first author, said:
Professor Lavretsky concluded:
The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (Harris et al., 2016).