Deeper Level of Consciousness
Many of my blogs have referred to mindfulness-meditation as one of the things I guide clients in to achieve less stress and anxiety. I have defined Meditation as: strength training for your brain. It is you in a state of reflection that helps you to build equanimity — or clear and balanced seeing — so that you can choose how to respond, rather than react to all that life throws you. But why is that?
Many know about three common states of consciousness: waking state, dreaming state, and dreamless deep sleep. However, Neuroscience has been talking about a fourth state since the 70’s and has allowed us to better understand the benefits of meditation.
In scans of the brain – the left (logical, sequential, rational, etc.) and right (random, intuitive, subjective, etc.), they found that the two sides for the most part did not share with one another. Yet, while in a state of deep meditation activity slows down and hypes up your awareness while reducing other signals and information to a trickle.
In meditation your brain operates across both sides and allows more holistic thinking. Your brain slows down yet is in a heightened state of awareness thereby enabling better focus and decision making. A person who experiences a higher level of awareness tends to be more in control of their thoughts. They have a greater ability to pay attention to detail, focus and analyze the activity around them.
Only 8 weeks of daily meditation can decrease negativity and anxiety and improve attention, working memory, and recognition memory in non-experienced meditators.
The practice of mindfulness is one example of how a heightened awareness of a person's thoughts can be achieved by focusing on the present moment. In deep Meditation a person will often appear as if they are asleep, although they are processing their thoughts through a deep, focused hyper-awareness or restful alertness.
A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 14.2% of American adults surveyed in 2017 said they had practiced meditation at least once in the last year. That means it rivals yoga as the most popular type of complementary health practice in the United States.
Is it time you found out more about and experienced the benefits of meditation?
