Inner Compass – Shalini Sareen – Life & Executive Coach

The neuroplastic nature of the brain means that our potential is not set at birth- we can actually strengthen and improve our brain. Our brain can be strengthened like a muscle and that’s where the power of neuroplasticity lies. The purpose of meditation is to slow down brain waves and get beyond the analytical mind. Am citing below some of the effects of meditation on the 8 regions of the brain.

1. Parietal Lobe: When we feel isolated and separated, the parietal lobe in the brain becomes overheated. To prevent your car engine from burning up, you need a good radiator. To ensure loneliness doesn’t roast your brain, you need to keep your parietal lobe cool. calm, collected and deactivate it through meditation. Dr. Andrew Newberg, took brain images of the Tibetan monks during meditation that showed a cooled off parietal lobe. This is so because meditation helps in dissolving the sense of self and increasing the sense of oneness.

2. The balanced Corpus Callosum: There is this great ongoing debate on left brain versus right brain. Most of us are wired to favor one side of our brain. Each hemisphere is a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, reasoning, willing and emoting. The left brained people are more logical, practical and analytical, often better at Law, math and science. The right brained people are generally more imaginative, intuitive and sensual, often excelling at philosophy, yogic sciences, coaching and arts. However, neuroscientists have recently learned that highly creative people are whole brain thinkers. For this to happen, you need to learn to balance and connect the two halves of the brain, so that they work in-sync with each other. Meditation helps to activate the Corpus Callosum by enhancing it so that it becomes hyper connected and ultra efficient.

3. The Hippocampus: A landmark Washington University School of Medicine study in 1999 has shown a clear link between the number of years of depression and degree of shrinkage of the hippocampi. Hippocampus is also the memory center of the brain and responsible for serotonin. Let me remind you that memory loss is not an inevitable part of the aging process and that it’s a proven fact that meditation strengthens the hippocampi. A 2008 study published in the Neuroimage Journal found that after 8 weeks of meditation, the left and right hippocampi of participants had significantly grown in density, thickness and overall size. So, next time, if you want to lift yourself out of the depression, better still prevent it, don’t hit the gym, instead take time out to meditate.

4. Anterior Insula : A highly cited UCLA School of Medicine study found that the right anterior dorsal insula of meditators is highly active while in session. This is the same area that lights up like a Christmas tree when we are brimming with kindness and compassion. An activated anterior insula in turn cultivates, kindness, compassion, empathy, self awareness and gets rid of anxiety, fear and anger. This is manifested further by meditators choosing to pick up thoughts that align with these feelings and thereby able to change their mindset, so forth and so on.

5. Temporoparietal Junction (TPJ) : In 2013, the University of Illinois study on mapping the EQ regions of the brain found out that the TPJ is the brain’s EQ command and control center. Please don’t forget that while IQ gets you hired, it’s EQ that gets you promoted. People high on EQ tend to be masters of both work and play. For those of us who would love to be popular and successful and lack EQ, may have their TPJ weak but the good news is that meditation can help you strengthen your TPJ. It has been further proven in 2016 by Spanish and German researchers how meditators in six short weeks have significantly increased the internal consistency of their TPJ, thus increasing their altruism, emotional balance, self awareness, empathy as well as conscientiousness, while reducing their social anxiety.

6. Amygdala : It appears that we can take the caveman out of the cave but not the cave out of the caveman. Amygdala is one such highly evolved primitive fear center of the brain that triggers our fight or flight syndrome. In 2011, Massachusetts General Hospital researchers found that that meditation helped effectively silence the electrical activity within their primitive amygdala, which meant fewer anxiety, worry and fear signals. They further prove that the meditators succeeded in dramatically reducing the size and volume of the amygdala, in about two months. Infact, it’s the shrinking of our amygdala and growing of our prefrontal cortex, that is the secret behind human evolution. A deactivated amygdala reduces worry, cortisol, fight or flight and increases good health, relaxation response and immunity. The right balance needs to be found and maintained.

7. Prefrontal Cortex : is the brain’s complex planner, deep thinker and high level decision maker. Einstein’s prefrontal cortex dropped jaws the world over as it had vast surface coverage and tightly packed gray matter, which made him way ahead of his times. A landmark study by Harvard neuroscientist, Dr Sara Lazar, in 2005, found that the experienced meditators had much more neural density, thickness, folds and electrical activity within their prefrontal cortex. The more experienced the meditator, the more developed their prefrontal cortex is. Upgrading this region opens a whole new dimension of powerful benefits: less anxiety, more processing power, better decision making, stronger will power and higher IQ.

8. The Pons : are also referred to as the sleep gateway. Its not being in bed for X hours. Its the sleep depth that counts. It is the deeper REM sleep where we detoxify blood, heal wounds, repair organs renew cells, build muscle tissues and so forth. We need about 2 hours of this every night. Serving a sour REM’s on/off switch, the pons regulate the dreamtime chemical melatonin. Weakness within this 2.5 cm wide region of the brain throws sleep on a curveball. Thankfully meditation owns this region. In 2014, the team from Harvard and Stanford, showed that meditation builds big and strong Pons. So if you want to deep sleep every night, then close your eyes to meditation, or better still, yoga nidra, Yogic sleep or NSDR (Non Sleep Deep Rest).