Can Meditation Make It Bigger?

by Michael Jura
16 Comments

Before you get any ideas, let me tell you what this is about:

A group of researches at UCLA have shown that med­i­ta­tion increases brain gray mat­ter!

Here’s an excerpt of the report on the research:

*   *   *   *

In a study pub­lished in the jour­nal Neu­roIm­age and cur­rently avail­able online (by sub­scrip­tion), the researchers report that cer­tain regions in the brains of long-term med­i­ta­tors were larger than in a sim­i­lar con­trol group.

Specif­i­cally, med­i­ta­tors showed sig­nif­i­cantly larger vol­umes of the hip­pocam­pus and areas within the orbito-frontal cor­tex, the thal­a­mus and the infe­rior tem­po­ral gyrus — all regions known for reg­u­lat­ing emotions.

We know that peo­ple who con­sis­tently med­i­tate have a sin­gu­lar abil­ity to cul­ti­vate pos­i­tive emo­tions, retain emo­tional sta­bil­ity and engage in mind­ful behav­ior,” said Eileen Lud­ers, lead author and a post­doc­toral research fel­low at the UCLA Lab­o­ra­tory of Neuro Imag­ing. “The observed dif­fer­ences in brain anatomy might give us a clue why med­i­ta­tors have these excep­tional abilities.

*   *   *   *

More and more, sci­ence is show­ing the excep­tional ben­e­fits of med­i­ta­tion. But what intrigues me more is how med­i­ta­tion helps you expand your con­scious­ness.

Mind-consciousness researcher Stephan Schwartz explains this bet­ter than I do, so if you haven’t checked him out yet, be sure you find out from him why med­i­ta­tion can not just increase you brain size, but also expand your con­scious­ness, and the qual­ity of your life.

If you want to learn more Click Here »

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16 Responses to Can Meditation Make It Bigger?
  1. informer
    May 15, 2009 | 7:18 am

    Where can this full report be seen/purchased ?

    Reply
  2. shudip
    May 15, 2009 | 9:01 am

    13-Science-09

    INT

    US-Brain-meditation / Nuero-imaging

    Med­i­tat­ing your way to a big­ger brain

    From Indo-Asian News Service

    New York, May 13 (IANS) Push-ups, crunches and gyms are fine for build­ing big­ger mus­cles and stronger bones. But can you medi­ate your way into a big­ger brain?

    The answer is a yes, as a study has estab­lished that cer­tain regions in the brains of those med­i­tat­ing long-term were larger than in a sim­i­lar con­trol group.

    A group of researchers at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Los Ange­les (UCLA), used high-resolution mag­netic res­o­nance imag­ing (MRI) to scan the brains of peo­ple who meditate.

    Specif­i­cally, such peo­ple showed sig­nif­i­cantly larger vol­umes of the hip­pocam­pus and areas within the orbito-frontal cor­tex, the thal­a­mus and the infe­rior tem­po­ral gyrus—regions known for reg­u­lat­ing emotions.

    “We know that peo­ple who con­sis­tently med­i­tate have a sin­gu­lar abil­ity to cul­ti­vate pos­i­tive emo­tions, retain emo­tional sta­bil­ity and engage in mind­ful behav­ior,” said Eileen Lud­ers, study co-author and post­doc­toral fel­low at the UCLA Lab of Neuro Imaging.

    Lud­ers and col­leagues exam­ined 44 peo­ple, 22 con­trol sub­jects and 22 who had prac­ticed Zazen, Samatha and Vipas­sana med­i­ta­tion, among oth­ers. They had devoted an aver­age of 24 years to the practice.

    More than half of all the med­i­ta­tors said that deep con­cen­tra­tion was an essen­tial part of their prac­tice, and most med­i­tated between 10 and 90 min­utes daily, said an UCLA release.

    The researchers used a high-resolution, three-dimensional form of MRI and two dif­fer­ent approaches to mea­sure dif­fer­ences in brain structure.

    These find­ings were pub­lished in NeuroImage.

    –Indo-Asian News Service

    St

    Reply
  3. Shosh
    May 15, 2009 | 10:13 am

    Dear Michael,

    I agree with every word that had been said about med­i­ta­tion and what it can achieve in my life. I med­i­tate every day (using the Silva Mind Con­trol). If I miss a day I regret it later.

    I love all the inter­views with Ger­ald O’donnel and the inter­view with Stephan Shwartz, and I thank you so much for bring­ing them to me. They are both amaz­ing. I’m look­ing for­ward to the next ones.

    Reply
  4. Mary Huivenaar
    May 15, 2009 | 10:59 am

    I recieved the DVD on Remote View­ing com­plete mp3 Audio Files & Ebooks WHICH CONTAIN A LOT OF MEDITATION AND CHAKRA BALANCING.During the med­i­ta­tions I have a lot of images com­ing to me. Espe­cialy peo­ple and some are very vivid.So I can see where this is a big pluse when it comes to remote viewing.

    Reply
  5. Michael "Maui Mike" J
    May 15, 2009 | 11:14 am

    I did “med­i­tat­ing” in Dia­net­ics and had great results in clean­ing past lives issues then took Silva and had totally new expe­ri­ences (WOW!). Plan to take Ed Dames’s stuff next (next spe­cial) and took Swartz’s stuff. Got good results from ‘Begin­ning and ‘Future.

    Swartz’s inter­view was irri­tat­ing because it was all about him. If there is a hardware/software com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lem then fix it or work it out between you and speaker. If it’s interviewee/speaker the agree ahead of time that you get to talk too. He was so bor­ing and irri­tat­ing I had to stop at times and almost never con­tin­ued!
    FYI.
    PS: I know and under­stand why you inter­view and offer prod­ucts but if the per­son is rude then you don’t need it as you’ll lose customers…permanently.

    Reply
  6. karen freiburger
    May 15, 2009 | 11:33 am

    Hi as a healer , reiki mas­ter teacher, yoga
    instruc­tor for 19yrs, group facil­i­ta­tor, lover of life
    and med­i­ta­tion and human behav­iour spe­cial­ist( on get­ting
    the greif out of your life!)I found your work right on!!
    (I stud­ied with John James many years ago)
    It is a plea­sure to see other like minds get­ting the proof
    to all the peo­ple. Some of the non believ­ers are going to
    shift and your work and oth­ers that you are work­ing with
    are a part of that won­der­ful shift.
    Give me a email some­time on when we can chat, after this sun­day. I am avail­able here and there bet­ter in morn­ings dur­ing the week, off to teach yoga,
    thankyou thankyou thankyou,
    Karen

    Reply
  7. shiva
    May 15, 2009 | 1:29 pm

    Med­i­ta­tion def­i­nitely helps in increas­ing the brain usage.

    nor­mally we use 10% of the brain and rest is remained unused.
    this unused part of brain only comes to use when we start mak­ing use of 3rd eye or ajna chakra.

    With med­i­ta­tion a new dimen­sion opens and it slowly grows as our med­i­ta­tive energy starts increasing.

    but for this to hap­pen, we should prac­tice med­i­ta­tion in a right way as many peo­ple take con­cen­tra­tion, con­tem­pla­tion or prayer as meditation.

    to know more about Med­i­ta­tion Dis­courses and Tech­niques of Enlight­ened mas­ters Osho, Jiddu Krish­na­murti, Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramakr­ishna and Swami Rama visit

    http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Meditation/Meditation.htm

    Reply
  8. M.X. Palidan
    May 15, 2009 | 2:12 pm

    I didn’t think Stephan Schwartz was rude or ego­tis­ti­cal at all. If any­thing, he was rather “low key” in mak­ing too many exag­ger­ated claims about Remote Viewing.

    Ed Dames, on the other hand, made a few “out there” pre­dic­tions and we’ll see if they come true. He also seemed con­fused about the dif­fer­ence between intu­ition and emo­tions, equat­ing the two.

    In the end, all the inter­views with the gen­tle­men were infor­mas­tive at some level. I don’t have the money to buy each one’s sys­tem, but I’d like to see someone’s informed opin­ion of all four who does give each sys­tem a fair trial.

    Reply
  9. Pat
    May 15, 2009 | 3:05 pm

    Hello M. J.

    Your posts and links are most inter­est­ing. Thanks. I’ve med­i­tated since I was a child. As I recall at that time it was called ‘day dream­ing’ but it pro­duced info unat­tain­able by other meth­ods such as past life expe­ri­ences and karmic rela­tion­ships. Even accom­plish­ing things sim­i­lar to what is now known as’Remote View­ing’. See­ing and know­ing things at a distance.

    It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing and yet greatly uncharted area of the brain/mind’s abil­i­ties. I’ve always felt God did great job with us in most respects…but if telepa­thy had been a built in fea­ture rather than speech there would be a lot less war, stress, crime and heart­break than exists now.

    Hooray for the pio­neers in this field!

    Reply
  10. Lea
    May 15, 2009 | 5:04 pm

    I absolutely agree, Michael. The med­i­ta­tion process of relax­ation is impor­tant to me to see what is ahead. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing sub­ject and one that needs more inves­ti­ga­tion as well as trials.

    I loved your inter­view with Stephan Schwartz. It held my com­plete atten­tion, and I gleaned so much from it. It truly made me stop and think about why I some­times don’t take the time to med­i­tate more. I know many answers are within me.

    I’ve done remote view­ing in the past, with 100% suc­cess; how­ever, when I got pic­tures, I knew exactly what I was look­ing at, with­out sym­bols; I was ‘just there.’ I’ve joined a new group as well, which embell­ishes on all of the ‘beyond’ con­scious­ness abil­i­ties, and indigo chil­dren. I will send you an invi­ta­tion, because it is an ‘invi­ta­tion only’ site. I believe you would find it extremely inter­est­ing to inter­act with peo­ple who’s abil­i­ties have been proven time and time again, in actual practice.

    One thing I would love to find out is that ‘is con­scious­ness time travel and change pos­si­ble’? I’ve been seri­ously won­der­ing IF, dur­ing med­i­ta­tion, what inter­ac­tion of the con­scious mind would make any changes of cur­rent episodes going on in our lives, and how it would affect our cur­rent lives, if at all. Basi­cally, I believe this would be a form of ‘time travel’ from ‘cur­rent con­scious­ness to the past con­scious­ness.’ Would that be awe­some? I feel it would be of great advan­tage to be able to instill in our minds as ‘youths’ the cur­rent beliefs and knowl­edge’ we’ve obtained from years of fum­bling though life with the ‘old’ and out­moded ideas that ‘we could go no fur­ther’ in our knowl­edge or beliefs of what is real or possible.

    For exam­ple, say I took my cur­rent knowl­edge of my abil­ity back to my child­hood and instilled this ‘know­ing what I know now’ into my for­mer con­scious­ness. How would I use the gifts I was born with now, in com­par­i­son to what I was told ‘not to know or believe then.’ It would make for a very inter­est­ing experiment.

    KUDOS, Mike!! Hugs :>)

    Reply
  11. Vicki
    May 15, 2009 | 7:17 pm

    I lis­tened to the inter­view by Stephen on his 4 cd’s — med­i­tat­ing being one of them. Vishen highly rec­om­mended buy­ing them and Stephen said he thought it would rapidly change the world for the bet­ter if lots more peo­ple med­i­tated. So I sug­gest this and ask you to pass it along — ask Stephen to give his med­i­ta­tion mp3 file away to lis­ten­ers for 2 rea­sons: to make it free for humans to do the thing he believes will make the most pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence, and so we can sam­ple his cd and see if we want to buy the 3 other intrigu­ing ones.
    Please pass along the sug­ges­tion. Thanks!

    Reply
  12. moralde
    May 16, 2009 | 1:57 am

    Glad to get con­fir­ma­tion for some of my assump­tions. Con­firms the sym­bol­ogy used to depict the mas­ters. They are usu­ally sculpted or drawn with sym­bol­i­cally larger crown por­tions of their heads, etc.

    Again, thanks.

    Reply
  13. M.X. Palidan
    May 17, 2009 | 6:39 pm

    I didn’t think Stephen Schwartz’s was rude in his inter­view. In fact, I enjoyed it.

    As for med­i­ta­tion, sci­en­tific stud­ies around the world have proven the ben­e­fits of med­i­ta­tion in many areas. There are numer­ous books and eas­ily found arti­cles on this sub­ject. These reports have been around for decades and the pos­i­tive evi­dence just keeps mounting.

    I rec­om­mend some form of meditation,20 to 30 min­utes a day, for about everyone.

    Reply
  14. christel
    May 17, 2009 | 8:14 pm

    Hello
    Have been med­i­tat­ing for a long time with some results.Discovered sylva ultra mind sys­tem and loved it. Then I found Ger­ard o Donnell’s remote influ­enc­ing and view­ing and had immense schift hap­pen­ing in just a few months. Med­i­tat­ing with his tech­niques are just won­der­ful. You can feel the expan­sion of your con­scious­ness and how it reflects on your every­day life… If every­one was prac­tic­ing med­i­ta­tion, the world would be happier.

    Reply
  15. jane grundy
    May 22, 2009 | 8:56 am

    I have been dis­abled for 30 years suf­fer­ing from Nar­colepsy and Cat­a­plexy, 20 attacks of sleep per day, depres­sion, anx­i­ety want­ing so much to live a nor­mal life. i had always expe­ri­ence very visual dream­ing and astral travel, from an early age, how­ever 15 years ago i decided to learn heal­ing, med­i­ta­tion, astral travel in depth and com­ple­men­tary med­i­cine, sim­ply to help myself as med­ica­tion for my ill­ness where not the answer. unbe­liev­ably now i am a very dif­fer­ent per­son and have been for 9 years, doc­tors said i would have the ill­ness all my life i would never be able to improve it, well i have. i achieved a degree in com­ple­men­tary med­i­cine and now have my own Clinic. Med­i­ta­tion saved my life with­out a doubt!

    Reply
  16. M.X. Palidan
    May 24, 2009 | 7:35 pm

    Lea’s com­ments are most inter­est­ing. Her ques­tion of whether using con­scious­ness to time travel to the past to lit­er­ally effect changes in the present is pos­si­ble seems right along the lines I’m inves­ti­gat­ing. There have been lim­ited sci­en­tific lab­o­ra­tory stud­ies show­ing the future effect­ing the past in both the remote view­ing area and in ESP phe­nom­ena. But, how to apply this in prac­ti­cal terms to one’s life through med­i­ta­tion and trance tech­niques is another mat­ter entirely.

    I’m exper­i­ment­ing on my on now and get­ting some guid­ance from sites like http://www.ourultimatereality.com and one other source. I’ve read where Ger­ald O’Donnell’s course goes into this, but don’t have the finances right now to pur­chase his course to find out.

    If Lea or any­one else has any point­ers or sug­ges­tions, please post them here or email me at: mind_zone@hotmail.com.

    Thanks.

    Reply
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