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