Meditation: it relaxes you and that's bound to be good for your health. But can it be proven? Scientists at the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston mapped exactly what happens in the brain during meditation. As people meditated, they were given an MRI brain scan.
There was a "striking quietude across the entire brain that was documented through MRI," says Dr. Herbert Benson, president of the Mind/Body Institute. He told WebMD that the areas of the brain that became active from that quietude were those that control metabolism and heart rate. "We knew that if you thought in a certain way, with repetition, that physiologic changes would occur in the body. Here now is proof that mind, in the form of repetition, is affecting the brain, which affects the body."
There's nothing unique about meditation, Benson says. "Physiologically, it is called the relaxation response and its opposite is the stress response. With the relaxation response there is decreased metabolism, heart rate, blood pressure, rate of breathing, slower brain waves." Any condition that is caused or exacerbated by stress can be alleviated by this relaxation response, says Benson. "Anxiety, mild and moderate depression, anger and hostility, hypertension, cardiac irregularities -- all forms of pain are made worse by stress. And that's why the relaxation response is useful."
