larger-hippocampus

(Editor’s Note: We are pleased to bring you this arti­cle by Jason Marsh, thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Greater Good Mag­a­zine.)

.

I con­sid­er myself some­thing of a prospec­tive meditator—meaning that a seri­ous med­i­ta­tion prac­tice is always some­thing I’m about to start… next week. So for years, I’ve been mak­ing a men­tal note of new stud­ies show­ing that med­i­ta­tion can lit­er­al­ly change our brain struc­ture in ways that might boost con­cen­tra­tion, mem­o­ry, and pos­i­tive emotions.

The results seem entic­ing enough to make any­one drop into the full lotus position—until you read the fine print: Much of this research involves peo­ple who have med­i­tat­ed for thou­sands of hours over many years; some of it zeroes in on Olympic-lev­el med­i­ta­tors who have clocked 10,000 hours or more. Pret­ty daunting.

Well, a new study offers some hope—and makes the ben­e­fits of med­i­ta­tion seem with­in reach even for a novice like me. The study, pub­lished in Jan­u­ary in the jour­nal Psy­chi­a­try Research: Neu­roimag­ing, sug­gests that med­i­tat­ing for just 30 min­utes a day for eight weeks can increase the den­si­ty of gray mat­ter in brain regions asso­ci­at­ed with mem­o­ry, stress, and empa­thy. [Read more…] about Med­i­ta­tion can Change the Struc­ture of the Brain