Most of us are in a state of constant tension and expectation. And so we rush through the day: from bed to breakfast table (if at all), from meeting to meeting, from person to person, from hobby to hobby, and at the end of the day even from TV show to TV show.
Get bored and come to rest
Where’s the boredom in that, you might ask? Which means nothing other than time that is not scheduled and in which you may not know what to do with yourself at the beginning. You just sit there, look out of the window, do nothing, just allow the thoughts and feelings and perceive them consciously.
If you’re not used to it, it can be at least as frightening as a day that is full of appointments and can hardly be managed. But if you allow yourself to be idle – not for hours, but for a few minutes each day – the reward can be relaxation and a clear head. Because the mind also needs a break now and then, in which it can draw new strength.
And the challenge of our time is not to use our mental powers ever more effectively, quickly and pragmatically, but to find ways to regenerate depleted energies and release creativity.
Mental training through meditation
Nothing seems harder than keeping your mind clear of thoughts. Definitely for people who have not yet gained experience with meditative forms of relaxation. However, meditating according to Buddhist ideas is not about not thinking at all. Rather, the focus is on directing one’s concentrated attention to a selected object for a certain period of time and not allowing oneself to be distracted by other thoughts.
This is not an easy mental exercise to calm the mind and achieve peace and tranquility. But also a means to train the mental abilities. Because, according to the Dalai Lama, one can assume that through meditative exercises the mind learns to improve skills such as attention, logical thinking and imagination more and more.
A team of researchers from Yale University, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has now found proof that meditation is even a mental training that acts on the brain. Using magnetic resonance imaging, they were able to show that people who meditate regularly have more gray matter in some regions of the cerebral cortex.
The structural changes were found in brain areas important for sensory, cognitive and emotional processes. The researchers studied 20 adults who practiced Buddhist meditation intensively, for an average of about 40 minutes a day.
