By Bird Cooley
Arriving at my first semester of college, one of the first things I noticed about my new roommate was that she meditated. At night she would often do yoga, and then settling into bed I could hear her deep methodical breaths, placing her into a deep slumber. It’s not that I thought this was weird, I had just never had an interest in the practice myself. Throughout the year though, I started participating in these nighttime rituals with my roommate and I quickly learned that it actually helped to relieve me of stress and to sleep better at night – two things that I found myself really needing as a first-year college student.
Upon researching meditation, I found that it can actually have some pretty radical effects on the brain. For example, during mantra-based meditation, the frontal lobes, which are responsible for directing attention, modulating behavior, and expressing language, are activated due to pattern repetition and intense concentration (collective-evolution.com).
Perhaps even more extraordinary is the fact that long term meditative practices can increase the volume in areas of our brain that tend to decrease in volume as we age, so in other words, consistent meditation can essentially reverse aging of the brain (Lazar 2011). Cool, right?!
I feel like most people have a slightly negative connotation associated with meditation, such as that it’s for hippies or that it requires a lot of time. However, it doesn’t have to. I’ve found that just doing a few deep breaths and focusing on my body at night significantly helps my sleep. And knowing the positive effect it has on our brains, there’s no reason we all shouldn’t be taking a few minutes out of our day to meditate. To make it a little bit easier though, here are some free apps that make meditation both easy and short:
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Insight Timer (my personal favorite!)
Happy meditating!