Meditation change your brain

Eight Weeks of Meditation Doesn't Change the Brain, Study Finds

Can meditation restructure our brains? Several recent studies have claimed that, with daily practice, meditation can boost grey matter volume and density in some brain areas in just eight short weeks. But a study published today (May 20) in Science Advances—one with the largest sample size yet—was not able to replicate these findings.

“There was frankly a lot of hype . . . saying that if you meditated for eight weeks you could change the volume of your prefrontal cortex. That is false,” study coauthor Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tells The Scientist. He adds that beneficial functional and behavioral changes due to meditation are likely to occur much faster, however.

“From a methodological standpoint, [the study] really addressed some of the concerns that are common in a lot of imaging research,” says Matthew Jerram, a psychology researcher at Suffolk University in Boston who was not involved in the study. “I think a lot of the people who’ve done research on . . . mindfulness based treatments will probably be disappointed. . . . But if they’re really honest with each other, I don’t think they’ll be surprised.”

Amishi Jha, a psychologist at the University of Miami who also was not involved in the work, agrees that the study “astutely addressed” flaws of the studies it replicated. “This is a stellar study,” she writes in an email to The Scientist.

Based on their own and other groups’ previous studies on long-term meditators, the study’s authors say that meditation can eventually boost brain volume and neuron density in some key areas—but, they add, it’s likely these changes take much longer than eight weeks to occur.

Investigating meditation’s effects on the brain

The study focused on a meditation program called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a popular mindfulness intervention that clinicians developed to help patients cope with pain. The authors and other experts are quick to point out that MBSR is very effective—studies have found that it helps reduce stress and lessen symptoms of anxiety, depression, and chronic pain.

Previous studies have reported that MBSR, which involves 24-30 hours of meditation practice over two months, led to an increase in gray matter density—a measure of the amount of cortical grey matter in a given area — and gray matter volume—the total size of the grey matter— in several brain areas including the hippocampus, posterior cingulate cortex, and the temporoparietal junction. These regions are involved in learning and memory and emotional regulation, and the study authors interpreted the findings as evidence that meditation might, in a short time span, improve both.

But those same studies also used small sample sizes, typically one to two dozen participants. And many didn’t use controls that also received positive interventions, instead of looking at the effect of a treatment on individuals versus a lack of intervention. Thus, in previous studies, the fact that there was a positive intervention at all may have caused a change, rather than meditation specifically. The authors and experts tell The Scientist that to be certain that MBSR was responsible for neurological changes, researchers needed to compare its effects to other positive interventions, such as those focused on diet and exercise.

So over seven years, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison conducted two randomized controlled trials with more than 70 subjects each in the experimental and control groups. In both, patients were placed in one of three groups: a group that attended an MBSR session each week and practiced mindfulness-based relaxation techniques daily, a control group that received a different positive wellbeing intervention training called HEP—which focuses on music therapy, healthy eating, and exercise—and a third group that was told they would get one of these interventions later. The patients received structural MRI brain scans before and after eight weeks of these interventions (or in the control group’s case, eight weeks of waiting).

Drawing a blank

I think a lot of the people who’ve done research on . . . mindfulness based treatments will probably be disappointed. . . . But if they’re really honest with each other, I don’t think they’ll be surprised.
—Matthew Jerram, University of Suffolk

Davidson says that based on previous studies, he expected MBSR to lead to structural changes within the brain. The researchers compared gray matter density, gray matter volume, and cortical thickness before and after the intervention in various regions of interest, including the hippocampus, the posterior cingulate cortex, and the temporoparietal junction. The team chose regions other researchers had found to have MBSR-linked changes in size or density, plus other regions that are involved in emotional processing. But in the brain regions they analyzed, the researchers didn’t find any differences when comparing changes in gray matter density, gray matter volume, or cortical thickness among the groups. The researchers also found no differences among the groups when they looked at changes in volume and density across the whole brain over the course of the experiment.

Within the MBSR group, the researchers did find that people who practiced the mindfulness meditation-based techniques they’d learned in the course for more than 22 minutes each day had significantly smaller amygdalas—a region associated with stress and fear—after eight weeks.

Davidson says that this connection is to be expected. Brain structure changes occur when people practice other skills, like exercise or learning a new instrument, so it’s likely that changes also come about when practicing meditation—eventually. “It’s not just 24 or 30 hours of practice, it’s going to take more. And it’s kind of not surprising, because in order to develop a skill, we need thousands of hours of practice, not 25 hours of practice,” says Davidson.

The contrast between the results of earlier studies with fewer subjects and the current work aligns with a study earlier this year that found small sample sizes in MRI-based research can generate misleading results, and that data drawn from typical study sample sizes is insufficient to be reliable.

Davidson says he hopes that the new meditation study will serve as a “useful corrective in the field and help to tone down some of the hype that has been associated with these kinds of practices.”

“We’re big fans of meditation,” he says, “but we’re big fans of truth, too. ”

7 Ways Meditation Can Actually Change The Brain

The meditation-and-the-brain research has been rolling in steadily for a number of years now, with new studies coming out just about every week to illustrate some new benefit of meditation. Or, rather, some ancient benefit that is just now being confirmed with fMRI or EEG. The practice appears to have an amazing variety of neurological benefits – from changes in grey matter volume to reduced activity in the “me” centers of the brain to enhanced connectivity between brain regions. Below are some of the most exciting studies to come out in the last few years and show that meditation really does produce measurable changes in our most important organ. Skeptics, of course, may ask what good are a few brain changes if the psychological effects aren’t simultaneously being illustrated? Luckily, there’s good evidence for those as well, with studies reporting that meditation helps relieve our subjective levels of anxiety and depression, and improve attention, concentration, and overall psychological well-being.

Meditation Helps Preserve the Aging Brain

Last week, a study from UCLA found that long-term meditators had better-preserved brains than non-meditators as they aged. Participants who’d been meditating for an average of 20 years had more grey matter volume throughout the brain — although older meditators still had some volume loss compared to younger meditators, it wasn’t as pronounced as the non-meditators. "We expected rather small and distinct effects located in some of the regions that had previously been associated with meditating," said study author Florian Kurth. "Instead, what we actually observed was a widespread effect of meditation that encompassed regions throughout the entire brain."

Meditation Reduces Activity in the Brain’s “Me Center"

One of the most interesting studies in the last few years, carried out at Yale University, found that mindfulness meditation decreases activity in the default mode network (DMN), the brain network responsible for mind-wandering and self-referential thoughts – a. k.a., “monkey mind.” The DMN is “on” or active when we’re not thinking about anything in particular, when our minds are just wandering from thought to thought. Since mind-wandering is typically associated with being less happy, ruminating, and worrying about the past and future, it’s the goal for many people to dial it down. Several studies have shown that meditation, through its quieting effect on the DMN, appears to do just this. And even when the mind does start to wander, because of the new connections that form, meditators are better at snapping back out of it.

Its Effects Rival Antidepressants for Depression, Anxiety

A review study last year at Johns Hopkins looked at the relationship between mindfulness meditation and its ability to reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety, and pain. Researcher Madhav Goyal and his team found that the effect size of meditation was moderate, at 0.3. If this sounds low, keep in mind that the effect size for antidepressants is also 0. 3, which makes the effect of meditation sound pretty good. Meditation is, after all an active form of brain training. “A lot of people have this idea that meditation means sitting down and doing nothing,” says Goyal. “But that’s not true. Meditation is an active training of the mind to increase awareness, and different meditation programs approach this in different ways.” Meditation isn’t a magic bullet for depression, as no treatment is, but it’s one of the tools that may help manage symptoms.

Meditation May Lead to Volume Changes in Key Areas of the Brain

In 2011, Sara Lazar and her team at Harvard found that mindfulness meditation can actually change the structure of the brain: Eight weeks of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) was found to increase cortical thickness in the hippocampus, which governs learning and memory, and in certain areas of the brain that play roles in emotion regulation and self-referential processing. There were also decreases in brain cell volume in the amygdala, which is responsible for fear, anxiety, and stress – and these changes matched the participants’ self-reports of their stress levels, indicating that meditation not only changes the brain, but it changes our subjective perception and feelings as well. In fact, a follow-up study by Lazar’s team found that after meditation training, changes in brain areas linked to mood and arousal were also linked to improvements in how participants said they felt — i.e., their psychological well-being. So for anyone who says that activated blobs in the brain don’t necessarily mean anything, our subjective experience – improved mood and well-being – does indeed seem to be shifted through meditation as well.

Just a Few Days of Training Improves Concentration and Attention

Having problems concentrating isn’t just a kid thing – it affects millions of grown-ups as well, with an ADD diagnosis or not. Interestingly but not surprisingly, one of the central benefits of meditation is that it improves attention and concentration: One recent study found that just a couple of weeks of meditation training helped people’s focus and memory during the verbal reasoning section of the GRE. In fact, the increase in score was equivalent to 16 percentile points, which is nothing to sneeze at. Since the strong focus of attention (on an object, idea, or activity) is one of the central aims of meditation, it’s not so surprising that meditation should help people’s cognitive skills on the job, too – but it’s nice to have science confirm it. And everyone can use a little extra assistance on standardized tests.

Meditation Reduces Anxiety — and Social Anxiety

A lot of people start meditating for its benefits in stress reduction, and there’s lots of good evidence to support this rationale. There’s a whole newer sub-genre of meditation, mentioned earlier, called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts’ Center for Mindfulness (now available all over the country), that aims to reduce a person’s stress level, physically and mentally. Studies have shown its benefits in reducing anxiety, even years after the initial 8-week course. Research has also shown that mindfulness meditation, in contrast to attending to the breath only, can reduce anxiety – and that these changes seem to be mediated through the brain regions associated with those self-referential (“me-centered”) thoughts. Mindfulness meditation has also been shown to help people with social anxiety disorder: a Stanford University team found that MBSR brought about changes in brain regions involved in attention, as well as relief from symptoms of social anxiety.

Meditation Can Help with Addiction

A growing number of studies has shown that, given its effects on the self-control regions of the brain, meditation can be very effective in helping people recover from various types of addiction. One study, for example, pitted mindfulness training against the American Lung Association's freedom from smoking (FFS) program, and found that people who learned mindfulness were many times more likely to have quit smoking by the end of the training, and at 17 weeks follow-up, than those in the conventional treatment. This may be because meditation helps people “decouple” the state of craving from the act of smoking, so the one doesn’t always have to lead to the other, but rather you fully experience and ride out the “wave” of craving, until it passes. Other research has found that mindfulness training, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), and mindfulness-based relapse prevention (MBRP) can be helpful in treating other forms of addiction.

Short Meditation Breaks Can Help Kids in School

For developing brains, meditation has as much as or perhaps even more promise than it has for adults. There’s been increasing interest from educators and researchers in bringing meditation and yoga to school kids, who are dealing with the usual stressors inside school, and oftentimes additional stress and trauma outside school. Some schools have starting implementing meditation into their daily schedules, and with good effect: One district in San Francisco started a twice daily meditation program in some of its high-risk schools – and saw suspensions decrease, and GPAs and attendance increase. Studies have confirmed the cognitive and emotional benefits of meditation for schoolchildren, but more work will probably need to be done before it gains more widespread acceptance.

Worth a Try?

Meditation is not a panacea, but there’s certainly a lot of evidence that it may do some good for those who practice it regularly. Everyone from Anderson Cooper and congressman Tim Ryan to companies like Google and Apple and Target are integrating meditation into their schedules. And its benefits seem to be felt after a relatively short amount of practice. Some researchers have cautioned that meditation can lead to ill effects under certain circumstances (known as the “dark night” phenomenon), but for most people – especially if you have a good teacher – meditation is beneficial, rather than harmful. It’s certainly worth a shot: If you have a few minutes in the morning or evening (or both), rather than turning on your phone or going online, see what happens if you try quieting down your mind, or at least paying attention to your thoughts and letting them go without reacting to them. If the research is right, just a few minutes of meditation may make a big difference.

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In Scientific American, cognitive scientist Jim Davis explains what neuroscience knows about the impact of mindfulness meditation on attention, emotions, and self-awareness, whether meditation can produce quick results, why it is important to study the mechanisms underlying the effects of meditation, and whether it is realistic to cause the brain changes brought about by regular meditation practice in a different way. We read the translation.

It may seem that meditation is a good way to deal with unsolvable situations. Among other things, she develops patience. But, alas, meditation itself requires considerable effort. At least this is the case for the popular "mindfulness meditation" (there are many ways to meditate; this practice is not monolithic). When I started getting into it a few years ago—because of the obvious health benefits that science has proven—I found myself hating Mindfulness. In the 2015 Nature Neuroscience article "The Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation," Yi-Yuan Tan and colleagues write that mindfulness meditation is often described as "nonjudgmental attention to the present moment." I agree. That is why it is so disappointing.

But I wasn't ready to give up. My Facebook friend ( A social network owned by Meta Platforms Inc., a recognized extremist organization in the Russian Federation. - Approx. ed.) , a professor of perceptual psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology, recommended that I read Eknt Iswaran's book "The passage of meditation." I liked her. The author focuses not on awareness, like the Tang, but on the mantra. Instead of trying passively, without judgment, to follow the thoughts that arise in the mind, or to concentrate on experiencing the moment, Iswaran recommends consciously focusing on one phrase, excluding other thoughts that are trying to draw attention to themselves. For 30 minutes after my morning shower, I sat and repeated over and over, “As long as there is suffering, I am here to serve with joy. As long as there is happiness, I am here to rejoice. Calm, peaceful, Rama.

To be honest, this practice was more like going to the gym than relaxing in a hot tub, and I found my mind searching for excuses not to. Usually, when meditation is being researched, participants are asked to meditate for half an hour every day for a whole month. If you have ever tried to meditate, even for five minutes, you know how difficult it is. And the impressive effects of meditation that many religious traditions speak of come only after years of practice. People easily come to the conclusion, as is the case with many other exercises, that this activity is simply not worth the effort. I meditated regularly for about a year and a half before I stopped, in part because I couldn't help but think of other things I could be doing at that moment. Why does it take so long to get any result?

"Even the Dalai Lama finds it burdensome to meditate for four hours a day!"

As Tan and colleagues conclude in their 2015 paper, “knowledge of the mechanisms underlying the effects of meditation is still in its infancy.” However, based on the results of more than two decades of research, it is safe to say that mindfulness meditation, as the researchers note, “can induce neuroplastic changes in the structure and function” of brain regions responsible for “attention, emotions and self-awareness.” For example, meditation appears to increase connections between part of the forebrain and the emotional systems of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the limbic system, thus allowing us more control over our emotions, just not immediately. These complex physical changes take time. It is impossible to fundamentally change the brain overnight.

Material on the topic The influence of meditation on the brain: myth or reality?

But what if we could do it - if not overnight, but quickly enough and with less effort? Will it still work? Although meditation lovers might react negatively to any easy way, the Dalai Lama urged neuroscientists to look for ways to get brain stimulation without meditation (Even he finds it burdensome to meditate for four hours a day!).

A recent study suggests that we are at the first step on the path to inducing meditative states without meditation—at least that's what the mouse studies suggest. Aldis Wible, a neuroscientist at the University of Oregon, and colleagues seem to have been able to give mice the benefits of meditation by simply shining a laser through their eyes. The researchers started by breeding mice with unusual properties: the mice's frontal brain regions were supposed to become more active when the researchers illuminated their eyes with a special kind of laser. The experiment was based on the principles of optogenetics, a technique by which exposure to light in the eye influences neural processing. In the first group of mice, the laser light made their anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) more rhythmic and active. Another group of mice was bred so that light optically led to a decrease in frontal activation in the presence of light, and the third, the control group, did not react to light at all.

These mice were shone with lasers for half an hour a day for 20 days - as long as it takes to get the effect of meditation in humans - so that the small AUCs of the mice were rhythmic. Not only did the anterior cingulate cortex become more active, it was important that it became more active in a certain rhythm, which is what happens to the brain when it is in a meditative state. These mice showed lower levels of anxiety, which can be inferred from how much time the mice spent in the dark (mice naturally explore lighted areas when they feel safe and hide in the dark when stressed. Unlike humans, mice feel safer in the dark).

Although this study was inspired by the results of learning to meditate, its purpose was not to show that we could look at a laser instead of meditating: its purpose was to provide additional evidence for how the connection between the ACC and the limbic system governs emotions. And for this method to work on humans, they would have to be bred in such a way that light would affect them in a similar way. In other words, it's too late for those who are alive today (to get crystal clear, please don't start shining a laser pointer in your eyes).

But this study shows how some of the effects of meditation are, in fact, biological changes, and makes us understand that these changes do not have to be caused by meditation alone. Maybe someday we'll find an easier way. But now we are left to focus on our breath for half an hour, on a mantra or nothing at all. Good luck.

Source: This Could Be a Way to Get the Benefits of Meditation Without Meditating / Nautil. us

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How to force the brain to change your life stroke - OFTOP on VC.ru

or what kind of opening I made thanks to the well -known neurobiolog .

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This is a translation of an article from Medium, especially for vc and my telegram channel . It seemed to me interesting and worthy of your attention. Enjoy reading!

The blog that changed everything

A few years ago, I started a slightly stupid self-improvement blog. I wrote all sorts of nonsense for the sake of likes.

The friend who gave me this opportunity started the same way. He wrote about habits, about startups that first went public. Gradually he became a completely different person.

I started writing later than he did, and I was years behind in thinking. He has changed beyond recognition. It all started after a podcast interview with neuroscientist Joe Dispenza. Joe taught him to comprehend the highest levels of consciousness, showed how a person can brainwash himself - this could be done before, but on other people.

Since then, his life has taken a new course.

Illustration by Michael Marsicano

He first outsourced blogging to other people and then replaced it with interview podcasts. He met people like Joe. He did not ask them to share life-changing insights for free: instead, he began offering them thousands of dollars for a joint dinner. They all agreed.

He and Joe are still in contact. Their newly formed friendship prompted me to look for other works by Joe. Although I do not always agree with his thoughts, I see that he is very wise. You don't have to agree with Joe; one must use his advice to force oneself to reflect.

Here's how to take your thinking to the next level, change your life, and do things you previously thought were impossible.

To get things moving, you need to see what program your brain is working on

Understanding your brain is the first thing Joe advises. He himself starts with habits.

Habits are not what is written in the headlines of a bunch of self-improvement articles. A habit is an action repeated so many times that the body remembers the process and can dictate instructions to the brain.

At the beginning of the day you wake up and the first thing you think about is problems. Joe says these problems are like patterns in the brain, like memories. Memories are associated with people and things, which in turn are associated with a specific time and place.

The brain records the past as if on tape. It turns out that people start the day by thinking in the past.

Every memory has its own emotion

All life situations we experience are eventually remembered thanks to emotions.

When we remember problems, we feel negative emotions - sadness, pain, or simply dissatisfaction. And so you wake up in the morning, remember the problem and immediately begin to feel bad. According to Joe, from thinking and feeling oneself is born the state of a person at a particular moment - therefore, he says, you start your day in the past.

A familiar past will sooner or later become a predictable future. Therefore, if you think that your thoughts are somehow connected with your future, if you cannot mentally get out of the current moral state, if you have begun to think with sensations, you are thinking in the past. You will continue to create the same life for yourself.

Everyday life is a program

When people say that you are stuck in the Matrix, they mean that you are living in a program that you created yourself. When I look at the program that runs my life, one aspect always stands out - social media. I just need to be there to feel connected to someone. Joe says social media makes us feel connected to something familiar.

When your day goes according to the program, you kind of lose the free will you need to control your mind. You yourself become a program with a set of carefully learned actions, emotional reactions (some of which are highly addictive), fixed attitudes, unconscious habits; program with a set of attitudes and beliefs.

Joe explains that this is how your brain becomes a battlefield. 5% of your consciousness is fighting with 95% of the unconscious.

How to take control of the operating system of the brain

When I hear about meditation, a picture pops into my head: an overgrown, long-haired dude in a rainbow T-shirt and with a selfie stick in his hands tells me how to live. Infuriates.

Meditation has become a dull trick.

Joe helped me look at meditation from a different perspective. The conscious and unconscious in our head are separated by the analytical. Just imagine that the analytical is another part of your brain.

To cross the threshold of the "server" brain, the most important thing is to go beyond the analytical. It is like a fortress. Entering her front door on the drawbridge and not running into security is possible only with the help of meditation.

Meditation is the ultimate brain hack.

All these stupid meditation apps have distracted us from this important fact. They turned this practice into something completely different - with beautiful backgrounds, sound effects and the voices of famous winners of any awards.

Joe says that meditation can slow down the brain impulses. You have probably heard that meditation seems to slow a person down, but if you delve into this practice, eventually it will be possible to slow down impulses as well. Meditation instructor Ashley Turner explains it in simple terms.

Meditation can significantly reduce the frequency of brain impulses and calm the mind.

Greater distance between waves increases the time between thoughts, so that a person can skillfully choose which thoughts to pay more attention to.

We have looked at meditation from the wrong side. It's not just sitting under oak trees or staying calm after being pissed off by an unbearable boss - it's also a way to get into your own brain through the back door.

Image by aytuguluturk from Pixabay

One reason to change outweighs another

For your life to take a new course, you need to change something. Joe says there are two ways to do this:

in pain and suffering;
in joy and inspiration.

The first way requires a tragedy to happen that forces you to change. The second allows you to bring changes into your life now. Forget about waiting for something.

If you are waiting for change to fall on you, you have probably already missed the best periods of your life - and if the tragic events do not help, you will be stuck in this circle and continue to perform the same program.

Something to know about the changes. When you have any emotion, you involuntarily wonder what caused it. Your long-term memories come from strong emotional experiences. Negative experiences can block the path to change, but positive ones can remind you that life's difficulties must be overcome.

Joe says that memories of bad events lead to problems. If you remember them often, it can even become a personality trait.

If past experiences have been negative, you may begin to think about worse outcomes. This experience can take control of your personality. Some people return to it so often in their thoughts that they cut off their path to change after what happened. Their minds are stuck in a kind of time warp. People around do not understand what is happening to a person, they begin to consider him broken, toxic, or think that he needs the help of a psychologist.

Joe says, “Emotions from specific experiences tend to energize the body and brain. People get used to it a lot. " Have you ever felt addicted to emotions? I am yes. That's why limits help you feel something.

Changing the direction of life

It is very easy to get caught up in the past. The past is your default program. To beat this program, you have to change. You lose the chance for this if you make the same decisions as yesterday.

Therefore, you can change your life if you make a cunning, quiet, brilliant decision to make other choices. Yesterday's decisions won't help to crack the program that prevents you from changing the course of your life. The catch is that following the "choose new" mindset will take you out of your comfort zone because it will disrupt your routine.

In the end, you will prefer the discomfort of making new decisions to the comfort of making yesterday's ones.

Find your leverage

I don't like discomfort, so I adjust everything so that the brain has nowhere to run. If I want to go to the gym, I don't sign up; instead, I leave my number on a whole bunch of different gym websites. So there is no way to escape from this small decision. You can do that too.

Give up emotions

Emotions can be highly addictive. Setting boundaries helps you feel something. You develop an addiction to this sensation because it brings you back to something familiar and gives you comfort.

The best way to predict the future is to create it. Not from the known, but from the unknown.

To overcome the emotions that keep you from escaping from your shell, you need to make new decisions. Here are the ones Joe recommends:

What thoughts do you want to plant in your brain? This question encourages people to recite mantras, repeat sayings, hang pictures of quotes on the wall. You can choose thoughts that will help you escape from the Matrix.
What behaviors do you want to manifest in one day? New patterns of behavior form new patterns in the brain.

Your brain can be a record store of the past or a map of the future

Joe Dispenza

You can wait until the world changes, or start with yourself

What do most people do? They wait all their lives for the world around them to change somehow.

But we have no control over the outside world. It's like trusting your future to a maniac like Hannibal Lecter. What will he throw out? Who knows. Will hunt down people and most likely kill them. Do you want him to destroy your life? Of course not.

The term "cause and effect" in English describes the entrusting of one's life into the hands of the outside world. What I learned from Joe is that the way you think and feel about yourself changes the way your life turns out.

You can imagine a bright future and let that thought determine your path in life. Or you can let the memories from the past reset your thinking to the default program and make you do and say the same things that you always do - that is, return you to the reality from which you want to escape.

Don't rely on the outside world to try and feel something.

Let your thoughts define you

Sometimes your body will want to return to familiar sensations in the past. The solution is to notice when it happens; see when your body seeks to return to the past.

That is why it has become so fashionable now to say that the main thing in meditation is awareness. But why it is so important is not often said.

To focus on the present means to focus your energy here. Instead of giving emotions to the past, you give them to the present. This is how you take back control - tell the body to sit still and obey you.

You tell your body that it no longer rules over the mind. You are the mind. You will transcend the old program.

This is how you should meditate in order to free yourself from the emotions of the past, overcome obstacles and change something in life.

And finally

Now you know how to brainwash yourself and force your mind to move to a higher level - the level that changes the course of your life.

You need to understand that your “default program” is controlled by the past.
You need to know how negative emotions create "bookmarks" in the past and make you return to them.
We need to rethink meditation so that it can help you hack your brain's operating system.
We must firmly resolve every day to make new decisions and imperceptibly for the brain to make at least one uncomfortable choice for him.
We need to stop relying on memories from the past and start looking to the future.
One must practice meditation to develop a sense of awareness in the present. When your brain wants to escape into the past with the help of emotions, thanks to awareness, it will be possible to regain control over thoughts. Do this enough times and you will stop dwelling on the past that prevents you from changing your future.

Your past is a program. Emotions bind you tightly to him. If you want to finally change something, become obsessed with thoughts not about the past, but about the future.

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