Can meditation help you lose weight, cope more effectively with difficult emotions, improve your concentration, and even boost your motor skills?
Dr. Paula Watkins is here to tell you that the answer is a resounding yes!
Dr. Watkins is a clinical psychologist, meditation coach, and registered yoga teacher. She’s the author of Meditation Made Simple: Weekly Practices for Relieving Stress, Finding Balance, and Cultivating Joy.
She first discovered meditation while in university.
She learned about meditation through yoga classes and courses in Eastern religions, and became fascinated by its amazing potential benefits after taking classes on neuropsychology and learning more about the frontal lobe.
When she was training to become a clinical psychologist, meditation as a practice was seen as fringe and unimportant.
Now, the incredible health benefits of meditation are finally being demonstrated by clinical studies — and the mainstream is starting to take notice!
“A really helpful approach to understanding the benefits of meditation is to break them up into four key areas,” Dr. Watkins explains. “The physical benefits of meditation, the cognitive (mental performance) benefits, the emotional and psychological benefits, and the social.”
On the physical side, activating the parasympathetic nervous system:
Lowers blood pressure
Slows the heart rate
Improves immune functioning
These results can be achieved through a number of calming practices, including meditating, spending time in nature, or getting a massage.
But meditation offers some very unique benefits in the other three categories!
Cognitively, meditation can actually increase blood flow and tissue density in the frontal lobe — this helps improve memory, concentration, and fine motor coordination!
Meditation is also a valuable tool for dealing with psychological disorders. Research consistently shows that when meditation is paired with traditional treatments for depression and anxiety, relapse rates fall.
But HOW does meditation provide all of these amazing benefits?
In this video, Dr. Watkins explains what goes on in your brain when you practice mindfulness — and how you can better harness its amazing powers on the path to a healthier and more peaceful lifestyle!
