Healing and Hypnotherapy Volume 3 , Issue - 3, September 2018 | Page 21

Monday, 13 August 2018
MEDITATION AND ITS EFFECT ON BRAIN
In early July this year the world's attention was drawn to an incident which
is now known as Thai cave rescue operation. On 23rd June these young
boys were reported missing. They were found on 2nd July and by 10th July
all the boys were finally rescued. Almost entire world was surprised how
these young boys survived in such adverse circumstances without food and
drinking water.
The key of the survival was meditation. This incident put world’s attention
back on the usefulness of meditation. The question is; Was it meditation
that made survival of these boys possible, without food water and proper
ventilation?
Let us try to understand how meditation effects our body through its affect
on the brain.
Earlier it was thought that new neurones or Nerve cells in the brain cannot
be generated or re-generated. But in last few years researchers working on
the brain have identified two different phenomena occurring in a brain one
which is called as neurogenesis (generations of new nerve cells) and
second which is called as neuroplasticity (is the ability of the brain to
change throughout an individual's life by to forming and reorganizing
synaptic connections, especially in response to learning or experience or
following injury).
Whenever we learn something new either at the level of Mind or at the level
of body it leads to changes in the brain. When we are learning something
for short term goal there is an increased interaction between brain cells by
increased secretions of different chemical mediators.
And whenever we are trying to learn something for long term there are
changes taking place in the brain by formation of new pathways new
connections between the brain cells.
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