WHY MEDITATION IS GREAT BRAIN FOOD
Your brain is the most vital organ in your body because everything you do depends on it. Everything including your mood, your decisions, and your bodily functions. It tells you what to do and how to feel. So, it makes sense that a healthy brain will make healthy decisions. Daily meditation can be an excellent tool to be added on top of diet and exercise for a healthy brain.
The brain is a very needy organ when it comes to nourishment. Keep it healthy and sharp you need to provide it with “food” it needs to function well. However, the right nourishment doesn’t not only come from a healthy diet. Lack of mental stimulation is believed to be one of the leading causes of neurological deterioration. Your brain is a muscle, and like all muscles, it needs stimulation, exercise, and rest. So, how do you support healthy brain development?
3 ways to maintain a fit brain
1) Brain-supporting foods
Brains are amazing machines but, to function well, they require constant maintenance. There are many so-called superfoods which provide exceptional nourishment due to extra-large doses of vitamins, minerals, Omega 3 fats, and antioxidants. These nutrients not only help prevent many of the life-threatening diseases, but they also promote healthy brain development.
Among those that are particularly good for boosting your brainpower are blueberries and pumpkin seeds which enhance memory and boost mood. Also, there are tomatoes which can prevent free radical damage, blackcurrants which help reduce anxiety and stress, as well as broccoli, nuts, and eggs which in one way or another ensure a healthy brain function.
2) Brain-supporting practices
Many studies show that the brain needs constant training, and the easiest way to do this is by challenging it. In other words, keep it stimulated and active. How you go about this is entirely up to you. Some great activities which offer mental stimulation are doing quizzes, games, or crosswords. Being passionately involved in a hobby or joining a book club is another one. If your circumstances allow it, you can do some traveling or learn new skills. You slow down aging by cultivating curiosity about life.
Brain stimulation exercises can be as simple as getting yourself out of your comfort zone from time to time. Try taking a new route to work, or using your less dominant hand more. You can get more intense and learn a new language or volunteer overseas!
In other words, it’s easy to keep your brain young and prevent dementia if you don’t allow yourself to become too set in your ways.
3) Brain-supporting lifestyles
We live in a fast, stressful, and continually changing world. To cope, we have to be fast, learn to manage stress, and adapt to almost non-stop changes. All this affects our brain in a big way. However, as the world is becoming more stressful, people are becoming better informed on how to maintain a healthy and fit brain.
Unfortunately, one of the consequences of a hectic lifestyle is the increase in autoimmune and neurological disorders. When you realize that one new case of dementia is detected every four seconds globally, you realize how important it is to do everything in your power to prevent conditions like Alzheimer’s.
Along with a healthy diet, physical activity, and mental stimulation being essential for the health of your brain, daily meditation can also protect your brain from decline. Now that you know this, why not make daily meditation your routine?
Nurture your brain by making daily meditation your lifestyle
Very few of us have made daily meditation our routine. People tend to come up with different excuses to not do so. What makes meditation challenging to stick to, is that it’s basic principles clash with those of the Western culture.
Everyone agrees that in the west, life is FAST. In the often aggressively competitive environment, we have to be fast. We eat fast food, drive fast cars, are always in a rush, move fast, talk fast, expect fast decisions or reactions from others, etc. When you spend most of your life living like that, you usually really ARE too exhausted to sit still and focus on your breath.
Fortunately, not everyone lives like this, but the point is that as the result of the modern lifestyle, the western mind is often too anxious and scattered to be able to slow down and focus.
Overload
Another problem is information overload. Our senses are bombarded by noise, pollution, SMS messages, emails, and other useless information to such a degree, that merely deciding to sit down and switch off is very difficult. So, before you start your daily meditation, you need to take a few minutes to unwind and stop the inner chatter. By doing this, you can gradually shift your focus from the outside world to your breath.
Dr. Eileen Luders and her team from the University of California found that the brain doesn’t stop developing and changing even in late adulthood. She also managed to prove beyond any doubt that meditation improves the physical structure of the brain.
The particularly fascinating discovery was that the brains of those who incorporated daily meditation had more grey matter in the brain. This grey matter was in parts of the brain that are important for attention, emotion regulation, and mental flexibility.
What this means is that by meditating regularly for at least 20 minutes a day, you train your brain to become more efficient at processing information, at concentrating, and at managing emotions – yours and others.
So, in a way, meditation is a training program for the brain, just like exercising in a gym is for the body.
7 ways meditation helps your brain:
1) Reduces stress
Whatever type of meditation you do, you are encouraged to focus on the “here and now, ”e.g., your breath, a particular feeling, image, etc. When you do that, you calm your busy brain and shift the focus from external to internal experiences.
2) Improves your focus
Daily meditation can improve your concentration by helping you ignore distractions, such as noise, light, fleeting thoughts, in your environment. At the same time, it also makes you very sharp when it comes to noticing what’s going on around you.
3) Enhances your memory
There is a proven link between regular meditation and a good memory. When you meditate, you are involved in mental exercise. This, in turn, helps you prolong your brain’s life and prevent memory loss. The scientific explanation for this is that regular meditation increases blood flow to the brain, which reinforces memory capacity.
4) Helps you develop empathy
Meditation can help you become more emphatic by making you feel more connected to others. When you meditate regularly, you gradually increase your self-awareness. This happens because meditation calms you down, so you become more aware of your own emotions. This awareness, in turn, makes you more receptive to those of others.
5) Improves your decision making
Daily meditation affects different parts of our brain, and it’s believed that different types of meditation help you achieve different results like increasing resilience to stress and improved concentration.
A recent study showed that mindfulness practice could help you improve your decision-making. When you are calm, you think clearly, and you easily focus on what’s essential. What this study proved is that those who meditate regularly have better control over their reactions. Which means that when a push comes to shove, they will make a rational, rather than an emotional decision, regardless of what is at stake.
6) Helps you become more resilient
Meditation enables you to deal with pain, both physical and mental. Regular practice of focused attention builds your resilience by encouraging you to focus on other things rather than your physical discomfort or emotional hurt.
7) Helps you find your “center”
As we often find ourselves stuck in the fast lane, out of need, not out of choice. It’s hardly surprising many feel constantly exhausted, scattered, and out of sync. Through meditation, you learn to cultivate thoughts which promote self-acceptance and which help you feel “whole” on all levels – physical, mental, and spiritual.
Quite simply, meditation is about providing your brain with holistic nurture and nourishment. As the Zen Master Hsing Yun said, “Meditation will not carry you to another world, but it will reveal the most profound and awesome dimensions of the world in which you already live.”
