Meditation and the Brain

Although this blog is mostly about sleep issues, many of our readers find that meditation is a wonderful way to clear the mind before going to sleep.

If I’m in one of those thinking-all-the-time states when I go to bed, I use my own meditation type of process, gazing at a single candle, to help me “get out of the way” so I can sleep.

Of course, using our Headphones in a Pillow is a great help, if you are using meditation CDs in your process.

Meditation and Science

Which brings me to meditation: one of our wonderful affiliates writes a blog on meditation and hypnosis. One of her posts talks about scientific studies done on meditating brains and the very beneficial effects it can have. Here is a portion of that post:

Massachusetts General Hospital researchers scanned the brains of 20 people who meditated regularly.

These people had four regions of cortex — the rind of the brain, associated with higher functions like memory and decision making — that were thicker than in 15 subjects who didn’t meditate.

In addition, the researchers found signs that one area of the cortex seemed to have aged less quickly than it did in non-meditators. The study did not look at whether those brain differences had a noticeable impact on behavior, but researchers are now doing follow-up work to assess that.

The post goes on to say this: “In other Harvard-affiliated work, researchers reported that by using a device that can analyze every breath a person exhales, they could objectively measure the depth of relaxation a person had achieved. People who reached deeper states of relaxation exhaled more nitric oxide, a gas known to relax the smooth muscles in arteries, and aid blood flow.”

Not to mention the effects that this can have on your ability to relax and fall asleep!

The whole post is worth reading. Check back with Mind Control with Hypnosis for lots more information on meditation.

And check out some great meditation CDs like Emergence to guide you on your way.