A recent study by Le Nguyen et al. published in Psychoneuroendocrinology has looked at the effect of loving-kindness meditation on telomore length. Loving-Kindness is a Buddhist meditation that focuses on sending good wishes and kindness to ourselves and others by silently repeating a series of mantras. Telomeres sit at the end of chromosomes and protect…
Meditation can be defined as “a family of mental training practices aimed at monitoring and regulating attention, perception, emotion and physiology” (Fox and Cahn, 2019). As with other forms of learning, meditation has the potential to change the brain (neuroplasticity). Fox and Cahn (2019) reviewed decades of meditation research in a paper entitled “Meditation and…
A group of German researchers recently published the results of a study looking into the benefits of meditation on people with chronic neck pain. The article was published in The Journal of Pain. They studied about 90 people who had neck pain for an average of 11 years. The average age of the participants was…
There is now evidence that mindfulness meditation can alter gene expression. Research carried out jointly by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona, Spain revealed that participating in a day of mindfulness meditation activities reduces levels of pro-inflammatory genes. Perhaps meditation could be used to treat chronic inflammatory conditions.
Yet another great BBC Horizon production presented by Michael Moseley. This time Dr Moseley is on a quest to find out more about personality. In part fueled by a desire to cure 20 years of chronic insomnia and to find out whether he can change his self-confessed pessimistic outlook on life. As a qualified doctor and…
It has been known for ages that meditation can decrease anxiety but until now the brain regions involved in the process have remained a mystery. Fadel Zeidan from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center has recently shed some light on the process. They selected 15 healthy volunteers with no history of meditation or anxiety disorders….
A team of researchers led by Professor Neha Gothe from the University of Illinois recently studied the effects of yoga on mental function. Their subjects performed 3 different sessions: A 20-minute Hatha yoga session with progressions from sitting to standing and then lying in a meditative position whilst focussing on breathing A 20-minute aerobic…
Recent research has shown that mantra-based meditation increases cerebral blood flow. An improvement in attention, emotional state and memory was also noted. Therefore, it’s likely that people with cognitive impairments or memory loss will benefit from meditation.