How Meditation Can Change Your Body

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In meditation, the part of your brain responsible for feeling your own internal body sensations is the insula. It gets bigger very quickly after only eight weeks of meditation. Your insula is measurably larger and that the longer you've been meditating, the thicker your insula gets. And this is what so tantalizing to me because, you know, if you work out, you lift weights or whatever, you are changing your muscle tissue. You're altering the actual structure of your meaty parts and literally changing your body at the atomic level.

You have the power to wield neuroplasticity to your advantage.

Just as you can change your body at the atomic level by lifting weights, you can willfully alter your brain by...thinking in a certain way. In this episode we explore using your brain to change your brain at the level of neurons and synapses beyond what is possible through other methods like learning a new language or earning a degree in chemistry. With mindfulness meditation, the evidence seems to suggest that one can achieve a level of change that would be impossible otherwise. The more you attempt to focus, the better you get at focusing on command, and so a real change begins taking place - you slowly become able to think differently, to hold thoughts differently and to dismiss thoughts that before led to attention difficulties or what feels like unwanted thoughts or clutter - and that’s not magical or the result of shaking hands with a deity, it’s biological. Listen as author and meditation teacher Michael Taft explains the benefits of secular, scientific practice of modern mindfulness meditation

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