Into Motivation

Over a third of Americans use complementary and alternative medicine to treat their ailments. Collectively, patients will spend $33.9 billion in out-of-pocket expenses on fish oil, glucosamine, Echinacea, acupuncture, chiropractic medicine, massage therapy and meditation classes. The most common uses were for back pain, neck pain, joint pain and other musculoskeletal conditions. At one time, people wondered, “Why learn to meditate if I’m not a Buddhist?” The statistics confirm that was once viewed as a “weird New Age thing” has now gone mainstream in the U.S., perhaps due to all the positive press meditation exercises has received in the news.

If you’re an insomniac, then you needn’t ask “why learn to meditate” at all — for the secret lies in deep relaxation meditation. At the June 2009 Associated Professional Sleep Societies meeting, researchers from Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Evanston, Illinois reported their findings that daytime meditation improved the quality of sleep in patients with insomnia. Patients noted marked improvement in their sleep latency, total sleep time, total wake time, sleep efficiency, sleep quality and depression symptoms after two months of practicing Kriya Yoga meditation methods. “Results of the study show that teaching deep relaxation techniques during the daytime can help improve sleep at night,” said study leader Ramadevi Gourineni MD.

Zen meditation, one of the types of meditation, can lower pain sensitivity both in and out of a meditative state. The study conducted by the Universit? de Montr?al found that those who meditate breathed at an average of 12 breaths per minutes, compared to 15 breaths per minute in those who don’t meditate. The ultimate result for practitioners was an 18% reduction

in pain sensitivity. “If meditation can change the way someone feels pain, thereby reducing the amount of pain medication required for an ailment, that would be clearly beneficial,” explains co-author Joshua A. Grant. The question of “why learn to meditate” becomes less and less significant in the wake of discoveries like this one.

Personal trainers will be the first people to tell you why you should do push ups, lift weights and exercise, which of course strengthens and build muscles! Yet, they hesitate to inform you on “why learn to meditate.” The obvious answer should be to increase your brain mass! Just as physical exercise strengthens our physical bodies, so does concentrative meditation strengthen our minds! Using brain scans, UCLA researchers discovered that 10 to 90 minutes of daily meditation actually increases the amount of gray matter in the brain. Those who meditate showed significantly larger volumes in the hippocampus, orbito-frontal cortex, the thelamus and inferior temporal gyrus. These regions are responsible for regulating emotions, the study authors said. “We know that people who consistently meditate have a singular ability to cultivate positive emotions, retain emotional stability and engage in mindful behavior,” said Eileen Luders, lead author. “The observed differences in brain anatomy might give us a clue why those who meditate have these exceptional abilities.”

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