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People meditate for all sorts of reasons. Some do it for spiritual purposes, others do it to reduce stress, and still others do it to manage their mental health. Meditation is a broad practice with many disparate effects, so it makes sense that people’s motivations would be correspondingly varied. But there’s more reasons to meditate than to simply feel relaxed or attain spiritual goals — one such reason is to become a better learner.
First, let’s define meditation. “At base, in essence,” said psychologist Daniel Goleman in a Big Think interview, “every kind of meditation retrains attention.” It can take many forms, but the majority of Western empirical research focuses on mindfulness meditation, in which the meditator focuses their attention on an experience in the present moment in an accepting, non-judgemental way. Commonly, this focus is placed upon the breath. There are other forms of meditation, such as the lovingkindness meditation common in Buddhist practices, where the meditator focuses on cultivating compassion for all beings. The bulk of scientific research, however, has been conducted on mindfulness meditation.
One of the best-known benefits of mindfulness meditation is in its ability to reduce stress. Robust research has shown that meditation is a powerful tool against stress, even for those suffering from anxiety or other mental disorders. In turn, stress plays a powerful role in learning. On the one hand, high levels of stress can leave us with an excessively strong memory, as is the case in PTSD. On the other, chronic stress inhibits the growth of neurons in the hippocampus, making it more difficult to form new memories. Acute stress, too, makes it more difficult for us to retrieve memories that we’ve already formed. By practicing mindfulness meditation, we can reduce the impact of stress on our ability to form and retrieve memories.
Available at: https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/meditationlearning/. Accessed on: Feb 28, 2022.
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