Universal Ramblings

Yesterday I read that meditation can increase your brain size. At first I thought that was amazing, and that if you meditated every day, your brain might get thicker and heavier, causing you to become brilliant. But when I read the full article, it turns out that meditation only enhances a small portion of the brain.

It’s like doing an exercise and focusing on one particular muscle. In the brain, the location where meditation mainly occurs will over time accumulate more cells, and become thicker (barely, but that is still significant). However, the benefit is pretty much contained therein.

The results aren’t to be written off entirely. I was pleased to read that the simple form of meditation that was practiced by monks could be used by anyone to enhance a certain aspect of their lives, as well as the brains.

It’s called insight meditation. Apparently, you lie down and close your eyes, and think of nothing, while focusing your attention on sensory input -- “whatever’s there.” So if you feel some tension in your neck, you focus on that. If you feel an odd tingling in your side, you focus on that. If you don’t experience any sensory input, you simply focus on your breathing.

This technique relies on areas in the brain responsible for focus, attention, and memory. Monks that been doing this for years have a great deal of skill built up in that area. An average person who has been doing this for a little while typically seems to report greater ease handling complicated situations that might have seemed overwhelming before. So maybe if you practice insight meditation, you’ll be able to keep focused on an urgent task, even when all hell breaks loose around you. Pretty cool.

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