Interesting and unusual facts about meditation

The influence of mediation practice on a person, his consciousness, mental and physical condition by many people, unfortunately, is underestimated. Meanwhile, even scientists today confirm the fact that meditation has a tremendous effect on all this (by the way, we wrote about this in our article " Scientific evidence of the benefits of meditation ").

But meditation research continues, with the latest in meditation, MD, neuropsychiatrist, professor at the University of California's David Geffen School of Medicine, director of the Center for Interpersonal Neuroscience Education and author of several best-selling brain development books, Daniel Siegel.

In his wonderful book The Attentive Brain, the scientist talks about how meditation affects the human brain, and gives some very curious and interesting facts. We also want to introduce you to some of them in this article.

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You probably know that the most popular meditation is concentration on the breath. There is also concentration on chakras, thoughts, objects. But there is also a very unusual type of meditation - concentration on taste. For example, you can put a zest in your mouth and focus on the flavor for five minutes.

Daniel Siegel tried this meditation himself. He writes that in the process of doing it, some changes took place in his brain. When he later went to lunch, his senses - nose, ears, palate - began to make real discoveries. The author began to eat salad, and this salad consumed all his attention.

Siegel recalls that he could neither participate in the general conversation, nor even utter words to explain to people from his company what the oddities in his behavior are connected with. His consciousness was completely immersed in the smell, taste and even the texture and sound of the salad, and with each new portion of the dish, these experiences became stronger and brighter.

It is already known for certain that in the process of meditation, certain areas of the brain begin to really grow. With the help of brain scans of meditating people, it was possible to record how the middle prefrontal regions thicken. And just two weeks of regular meditation leads to changes in the volume and structure of the brain.

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The area responsible for memory, learning and emotional perception becomes larger, but the areas responsible for anxiety, stress and fear, on the contrary, become smaller. This also explains the effect of meditation - people who practice it become calmer and more balanced, demonstrate better intellectual performance.

The cerebral cortex becomes denser due to the fact that there is an increased branching of neurons, the number of connections between nerve cells increases, there are more auxiliary cells, local blood flow increases, and the vascular system is strengthened. All this, both individually and together, helps to improve the functioning of the brain and its general condition.

The human nervous system evaluates everything that happens from the standpoint of the presence or absence of danger, producing appropriate reactions. Reactions can be of two main types:

the response of flight or struggle (i.e., the response of readiness for action), in which the sympathetic part of the human vegetative system is activated and the body switches to more active functioning;

the reaction of "freezing", due to the fact that the parasympathetic system is activated, making all processes in the body less intense and leading to the so-called state of collapse.

When a person is engaged in meditation, his brain is immersed in a state of security and calmness. Those areas of the brain are involved that are responsible for relaxing the muscles, including mimic and sound-producing ones. There is a two-way process: physical relaxation leads to mental relaxation, and vice versa.

In addition, by reducing reactions associated with fear and anxiety, a person becomes more confident and determined. This is one of the reasons why people who practice meditation often report changes in their behavior, readiness for actions and decisions that previously scared them.

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In his research, Siegel noted that meditation allows a person to interpret and express their emotional states, expectations and opinions much better and easier. And this is of great importance in maintaining a sincere and close relationship with the people around you.

Meditation also leads to the fact that a person begins to be more attentively aware of everything that is happening around him, learns to be present in the current moment, which also plays a significant role in the formation of harmonious relationships. A person ceases to be distracted by both external stimuli and his internal dialogue. Thanks to this, people can better understand each other, develop the ability to empathy .

When we tune in with another person, we come to understand that we are in a kind of resonating state that is created in the relationship between two people. It is about such moments that they say that people feel each other. In addition, developing mindfulness is what prevents us from overreacting emotionally to a variety of communication situations.

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