Do you ever feel like you can’t quiet your mind? Sometimes it’s tough to stop all that chatter inside your head. If you’ve ever done yoga, then you know that each routine typically ends in corpse pose where you lie sprawled on the floor and you basically meditate. Some people have told me that this part of yoga makes them uncomfortable because they can’t stop thinking about things. These are the folks that should probably be doing Meditation. Training your mind can be difficult. Meditation enables you to clear your head. It has a lot of benefits such as lowering your heart rate and stress hormone levels. So, what is it about meditation that provides these benefits?

Andrew Newberg, a neurologist, has conducted brain scan studies of people practice long-term meditation such as Buddhist monks. The brain scans show increased blood flow to the front part of the brain. This makes sense since meditation takes a fair amount of concentration. There is also markedly decreased activity in the Parietal Lobes.

The Parietal lobes, in part, are responsible for keeping track of where we are in time and space. All our peripheral nerves are wired into the parietal lobes. When you are sitting at a computer typing (like I am right now), the parietal lobes sense that my legs and butt are sitting on the chair and that my back is leaning against the seat back. The parietal lobes are registering all these things even if we are not aware of it. Our sense of touch is also connected to the parietal lobes. If I grab a glass of water with my left hand, the sensory cortex in my right parietal lobe becomes activated (remember the brain is cross-wired). So, what does it mean that there is decreased activity in the parietal lobes during meditation?

People who meditate for long periods of time often report that they feel no sense of time and space. This is probably due to lowered blood flow in the parietal lobes. Without the normal activity in this part of the brain, we feel like we are drifting in an ethereal cosmos. Meditation also produces a feeling of relaxation. I think this is a good example of how all our experiences originate in the brain.

Another thing that happens during meditation is that our language areas become less active in the brain. This is difficult initially because our thoughts are always with us. However, if you quiet your mind and reduce the activity in your parietal lobes, you start to experience things as just here and now. The only thing that exists is the moment. It’s been suggested that animals, such as dogs, live in a constant present because they lack all the language capabilities that humans have. They only experience the now. When you meditate, you are changing your brain’s acitivity so that you lessen the constant influence of thoughts in your head. It’s for this reason, that meditation makes you think like a dog.