Benefits of Meditation - Happiness

For many people, meditation represents some sort of spiritual experience, or that to meditate you are engaging in some sort of dark art.

It's true, there is a tradition of ancient texts and beliefs that have been passed down the generations which do indeed involve a spiritual path, but during the course of the twentieth century, teachers and researchers in the West have separated meditation from its spiritual origins, to a practical method of assisting with many twenty first century ills, for example, happiness.

Mystics, monks and yogis living simple lives have claimed for thousands of years that meditation makes you happier. This is endorsed by the many thousands of people who practice meditation in the West, and was recently proved in 2003.

MRI technology and brain mapping was used by researchers who found that meditation does, in fact make the practitioner happy. This is because the left prefrontal cortex of the brain was activated with regular meditation. The left prefrontal cortex is the area of the brain associated with positive emotions. The results of the research where published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

In addition, a biotech company took a group of their employees and trained them in meditation over an eight week period, after which it was found that the group had greatly increased left pre frontal activity than a control group who had not had the training - four months after the training was completed, suggested that the effects of meditation are long term.

It was also found that by measuring the amount of antibodies produced in response to an injection of the flu virus. It was found that the greater the activation of the left prefrontal (in other words, the happier they felt), the greater the response from the immune system to the flu injection. So, meditation helps both with your sense of happiness, and also strengthens the immune system.

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