A group of participants who underwent mindfulness meditation had increased gray matter in the hippocampus, which is where your learning and memory takes place, when compared to a control group. They also had reduced gray matter in the amygdala, or the area where stress and anxiety occur.
The meditation was called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and has origins in Buddhism, where one is supposed to focus on the here and now, being conscious of their breathing, body, and the here and now. Basically, it involves getting to a place where you are not thinking of the past or the future (e.g. to-do list etc), but being completely focused on yourself in the present. The lead author of the paper, Britta Holzel, discusses it in the NYTimes article on the topic.
This meditation has also been shown to reduce blood pressure and improve your attention span. Although more research is needed to understand the mechanisms by which meditation impacts the brain (and larger studies, as this study only had 16 participants and 17 controls), it certainly is promising to improve one's health.
Have you ever tried it? It certainly takes practice. But it might be more practice I decide to do. Will you?
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