Meditation increases brain gray matter

I have on occasion dabbled in meditation, and found it to be enormously beneficial in clarifying thought, and calming my mind. And while it may seem like a cop out to use the standard “I just don’t have the time” response as to why I’m not a regular practitioner, it seems to be true in my case.

It’s also true that if you deem something important enough in your life, you will simply find the time. This is something that I have struggled with for the past two or three years, as juggling my time is an ongoing challenge.

It now seems that researchers have discovered that meditation not only benefits the practitioner in emotional and mindful ways, but it also increases the physical size of the brain.

Push-ups, crunches, gyms, personal trainers — people have many strategies for building bigger muscles and stronger bones. But what can one do to build a bigger brain? Meditate.

That’s the finding from a group of researchers at UCLA who used high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of people who meditate. In a study published in the journal NeuroImage and currently available online (by subscription), the researchers report that certain regions in the brains of long-term meditators were larger than in a similar control group.

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