Meditation, A Hard Sell

Someone: I feel tired all the time, I’ve too many things in my head, I forget so much stuff. I don’t even know how I cope, I am stressing about stressing too.

Me: I can help you with the stress, we can calm your fight or flight response, manage your nervous system?

Someone: Yeah, I’m so irritable these days, my patience is thin, always reacting and regretting it. What can I do?

Me: We can shrink the size of your amygdala, which is the fight or flight centre and create better connections between your emotional and rational brain so you can get a handle on your reactions.

Someone: Okay…

Me: For the forgetfulness and fatigue, we can increase your working memory.

Someone: Yeah, I have had brain fog for years now, very distracted too, how do we do it?

Me: Well stress decreases your hippocampal volume which is the area for learning and working memory. We can increase this volume again by creating states of deep relaxation.

You: Incredible, let’s do it!

Me: Many of the other issues will be linked to different parts of the brain so in general we can stave off your brains ageing process.

Someone: Yeah totally, I am worried about dementia. How would I do that?

Me: We can create stronger connections between brain regions that often breakdown with age.

Someone: Wonderful, what do we do?

Me: A 6 week meditation course.

Someone: mmmmmmmm, no thanks, I’ll leave it

The Published Research
Meditation Shrinks the Amygdala
Effects of stress on the Hippocampus
Mindfulness and Grey Matter Density
Younger brains in long term meditators

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