Media Reports Meditation Improvesthe Brain’s Structureand Function |
By God’s child, Budapest, Hungary (Originally in Hungarian)
God is not a useless, obsolete concept but the ultimate object of contemplation!
The human brain is one of the greatest unexplained mysteries in science, and a long-standing belief among researchers has been that the average person uses only about ten percent of his or her brain capacity. Moreover, the roles of certain brain regions remain unknown. Thus, scientists hope to gain a better understanding of this crucial organ in order to enhance human functioning and well-being, and so it is no wonder that brain research is currently one of the most exciting and important areas in biology and medicine.
Master has often stated that Quan Yin meditation is a “cure-all” that not only grants us access to Heavenly domains but also improves our lives here on Earth. In addition to its many spiritual benefits, regular meditation practice provides one with better health and superior intelligence. And recent scientific research on the brain has begun to support Her assertions.
For example, studies have shown that meditation alters brain wave patterns and induces genuine feelings of happiness (i). Furthermore, recent research by Australian scientists provides even further insights into how meditation affects brain function (ii). The Australian study found that Buddhist monks were able to concentrate much better than were laypeople. This increased focusing capacity was found to be mainly a result of the monks’ ability to control brain behavior by excluding external information, which was once thought to occur involuntarily.
Other studies suggest that one does not have to be a monk to enjoy the benefits of meditation. For instance, one experiment tested the reaction time of non-meditating volunteers while they performed various activities and concluded that among all the behaviors examined only meditation resulted in an immediate improvement in the participants’ performance (iii).
The results of another experiment were even more surprising; average working people meditating in a certain manner for as little as forty minutes a day increased the size of their cortex, also referred to as the brain’s “gray matter.” The cortex is involved in attention processing and sensory perception and these areas of the brain normally get thinner with age so the experimenters speculated that their findings might explain how meditation can contribute to a longer lifespan. They also postulated that different methods of meditation may result in varying types of changes to the brain’s structure and function.
Meditation techniques were also the subject of a study in which non-meditating subjects were asked to (a) simply relax, (b) meditate reciting a phrase similar to “I am happy” or (c) meditate reciting a phrase such as “God is love.” The researchers then tested the participants’ ability to withstand pain and found that the subjects who meditated on God scored the best (iv). While this finding is probably no surprise to practitioners of the Quan Yin Method, it sends a profound message to atheists, who believe only in the reality of the material world.
Some of the above-mentioned experiments were performed at well-respected academic and medical institutions such as the University of Wisconsin and Massachusetts General Hospital, and as our planet continues to progress toward greater spiritual awareness during the Golden Age, we might expect that more such research will be conducted and even more impressive results will be obtained. ♥