For those of us wondering whether we should attend that Thursday night yoga class, let’s take note from Sara Lazar, neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who would suggest that we do. According to Lazar, meditation does more than just reduce stress—it actually changes your brain.
While training for the Boston Marathon, Lazar began to practice yoga as a form of physical therapy. Although initially doubtful, she started seeing benefits: She felt calmer, better able to handle difficult situations, more compassionate and better able to understand other perspectives.
As a result of the experience, she set out to conduct two studies on the subject, which ultimately concluded that people who meditate undergo physical changes to several regions of the brain. The physical thickening of gray matter in these areas is what brings about the advantages of meditation—including enhanced senses, better memory and executive decision making, less mind wandering, improved learning and emotional regulation, greater empathetic capabilities, increased production of neurotransmitters and fewer anxieties.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Lazar provided these tips for attaining the benefits of meditation and changing your brain.
- Practice mindfulness meditation for at least eight weeks. “We found differences in brain volume in eight weeks in five different regions of the brain,” Lazar said.
- Spend 30 minutes on average meditating. “Some people practiced 40 minutes pretty much every day. Some people practiced less. Some only a couple times a week…10 minutes a day could have some subjective benefit.”
- Use meditation with other therapies. “Just like exercise, it can’t cure everything. So the idea is, it’s useful as an adjunct therapy. It’s not a standalone.”
- Find a good teacher. “The most important thing, if you’re going to try it, is to find a good teacher. Because it’s simple, but it’s also complex. You have to understand what’s going on in your mind. A good teacher is priceless.”
