How Meditation Helps Learning
Studies now show that meditation has a significant impact on how your brain processes and responds to feedback. This in turn helps you learn from your actions, making you a better, more productive person in the long run.
Meditation can actually reset and rewire your brain’s programming, in a good way. Let’s dive deeper into how you can benefit from adding meditation to your daily routine.
How Meditation Impacts Learning
A study was done at the University of Surrey where researchers trained the participants to select images associated with a reward. The participants’ brain waves were measured using EEG sensors. Among the participants were experienced meditations, novice meditators, and non-meditators.
The study found that the people who meditated more frequently were more likely to select pairings that resulted in greater rewards. The EEG results also showed that those who meditated were less affected by negative feedback. However, those who did not meditate at all seemed to struggle the most. The results also showed that the people who meditated were able to adapt to feedback and bounce back faster in order to make better-informed decisions moving forward.
Researchers believe that the dopamine—happy hormone— levels in the brains of the people who meditated lead to these results. Other studies have shown how meditation increases dopamine. According to this study’s findings, meditation actually rewires your brain making you better equipped to deal with both positive and negative feedback.
Other Benefits Of Meditation
Meditation has been known to change the parts of your brain that are associated with bodily awareness, concentration, complex thought, and problem-solving. This makes meditation one of the best investments you can make in yourself on a daily basis.
Meditation has all been shown to reduce your stress and anxiety by downregulating stress hormones, improve cardiovascular health by reducing blood pressure, increase focus by decreasing mind-wandering thoughts, and improve sleep quality by increasing relaxation. These are just a few of its benefits, but they are enough for you to start today.
Hack Your Meditation Practice
Many people find meditation to be “hard” because it does not always come naturally to everyone. You can try using a meditation app such as Calm or Headstrong to have someone take you through a guided meditation. You can also lookup free resources on YouTube to get started without any price commitment.
As always, consistency is the most important part of integrating your meditation practice into your life. You can start with just 5 minutes a day. Even just deep breathing and focusing on your breath and body can help you hone your skills. As it becomes easier you can increase the duration and the types of meditations that you do. Try to work yourself up to 20 minutes a day.
You can even try to go to your local gym and take a yoga class. Having an instructor in person to help you move through a flow and guide you when your mind starts to wander can be very helpful. Yoga routines can also help you sleep better at night.
If you are not ready to go to the gym you can always find free resources online. The most important thing is that you start today and do your best to stick to a consistent schedule. It can even be helpful to put your meditation time on your daily calendar. Think of it as a daily appointment with yourself that you can’t miss. So don’t cancel it for anything unless it is an emergency.
If you start meditating today it will become an automatic part of your daily routine in no time. And don’t forget, if you miss one day you can always jump back on track the very next day. Your brain deserves it.