Can Meditation Be the Ultimate Brain Training Practice?

Even your brain needs to work out to stay healthy. It’s no secret that meditation is touted as the ultimate brain training practice by those who use it. Meditation, when done correctly, has countless health benefits, and our brain takes most of the gains.

Here are some benefits meditation has on our brains, just to prove my point:

• Helps preserve the aging brain.
• Reduces activity on the brain’s default mode network.
• Fights depression and anxiety as well as antidepressants.
• Helps with addiction and self-control.

Using Meditation as Brain Training Improves Concentration

Concentration issues are not children-only. Adults are also diagnosed and struggle with ADD. Not surprisingly, using meditation can help improve meditation and reduce symptoms of ADD or ADHD. One study found that meditation helped the participant’s focus and memory. Based on the review, one could say that meditation improves people’s cognitive skills. However, more research is needed to prove that one.

Keeps Anxiety Under Control

Most people start meditation to control their stress levels, and just considering the breathing aspect of meditation, we can see how this might be true. However, some studies believe using meditation for anxiety can be successful. The study noted that people reaped the benefits years after starting a meditation practice.

In particular, studies mention mindful meditation has unique effects on reducing anxiety. More studies are linking mindful meditation with social anxiety disorders, proving effective at controlling symptoms.

Meditation Unlocks Your Learning Power

If meditation helps improve concentration, it should come as no surprise that it can boost our ability to learn. When we meditate, our brain enters a state of “super learning,” which results from an increase in Alpha brainwaves, the state our brain goes to when studying or learning something new. Not to mention, meditation also triggers our left and right brain to work in harmony, which means you can tap into more brainpower altogether.

The Verdict

The benefits attributed to meditation are more than what your pushy meditator friend raves about. Companies everywhere are bringing meditation practices into the workplace. Plus, there are no side effects of meditating, which means there is virtually no harm in trying it.

If you’re ready to give meditation a try, consider subscribing to our meditation section for advice on how to become a GR8 meditator.