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Jan 20, 2005

"Most people don't know how to listen because the major part of their attention is taken up by thinking." --Eckhart Tolle

Meditation and the Brain

Meditation can modify the brain. That's what Richard Davidson's new study shows, further disproving the old notion that our brains don't change in adulthood. With the help of Dalai Lama's eight most accomplished meditators, with 10,000 to 50,000 hours over a period of 15 to 40 years, Davidson's study unambiguously showed that meditation on "unconditional compassion" activated the trained minds of the monks in significantly different ways from those who didn't meditate. "What we found is that the longtime practitioners showed brain activation on a scale we have never seen before," Davidson added. It demonstrates, he said, that the brain is capable of being trained and physically modified in ways few people can imagine.