STOP THINKING ABOUT IT AND MEDITATE

You can lower your stress levels, improve brain function andeven spark creativity by simply taking a few minutes out of your day tomeditate. How you do it is less important than just doing it. There are manyways a person can focus on mind and body so that they meet, but the two mostprevalent are mindful meditation, by simply focusing on one specific thing,your breathing, a sensation in your body or a particular object outside of you.This method focuses strongly on one point that continually brings you back tothat focal point when your mind wanders. The other method that’s often used isopen-monitoring meditation. This is where you pay attention to everythingaround you without reacting.

The overall difference in our brains when we meditate isthat we stop processing information as actively as we normally would, with adecrease in beta waves that indicates our brains are processing lessinformation. Here’s what happens to our brains during the meditation process:

· During meditation, the frontal cortex tends toshut down. It is the most highly evolved part of the brain, responsible forreasoning, planning, emotions and self-conscious awareness.

· The parietal lobe slows down the sensoryinformation about the surrounding world, orienting you in time and space.

· The Thalamus organ focuses attention byfunneling sensory data deeper into the brain and stopping other signals intheir tracks. Meditation reduces this flow of incoming information.

· Reticular formationis. This is the brain’ssentry. Meditating dials back the arousal signal of incoming stimuli that putsthe brain on alert, ready to respond.

Meditating will still your racing mind and bring you back into focus, decreasing anxiety, improving your creative process, improve memory,help with pain management and actually grow more brain cells. Studies haveshown meditating has been linked to larger amounts of gray matter in thehippocampus and frontal areas of the brain. Meditation has also been shown to slowage-related brain degeneration and reduce the decline of our cognitivefunctioning.

What more is there to think about?