ABC online quoted DeLosAngeles saying “There are a lot of subjective reports of meditation benefiting subjects on a personal level. I wanted to try and quantify some of that and look at how that was changing the brain on a neurophysiological level’, who will present his findings at the IBRO World Congress of Neuroscience in Melbourne later this month.
Thirteen participants in a meditation group were asked to express their experiences of five different states, both before and after the study as the study was focused on a type of Buddhist mediation that teaches people to achieve several distinct states.
DeLosAngeles said “We found common experiences in each person” with which he measured brain activity in each state using an electroencephalograph. The common findings in the five states were found to be, the participants in the first and second state were focusing their thoughts on breathing and slowly as they neared the second state, they stopped thinking and just breathed in. In the third state they felt a loss of body boundaries and spatial orientation and at the fourth level felt their mind and breath became one. In the fifth state, the meditators felt their mind expanding into space.
The electroencephalograph, says the researcher showed that “We were able to correlate the changes in certain brainwaves against the changes is subjective experience.’
He also found that the brains of people in the first state showed an increase in the amplitude of alpha brainwaves, which are linked with alertness, focus, attention, and concentration coupling with decrease in delta brainwaves, the ones associated with drowsiness or sleep.
As the mind was already then quite alert and focused, he found that the participants alpha brainwaves slowly decreased in a linear fashion.
He thus quoted that “Meditation is a finely held state of attentiveness and alertness that differs from eyes-closed resting or sleep.’ Thus he came to the conclusion that meditation is a distinctive state and that it can be used to assist people improvise their capacity to focus and give attention to.
So to speak, meditation is not just a form of relaxation but a great way to enhance, improvise one’s quality of living and in the process grow and gain immensely.
Via: News
Image Via: Emotionalyoga