The Research
Scientific Validations of Meditation
Here’s some excerpts you can read to tune into research from renowned and reliable institutions, validating the many benefits of practicing meditation:
Mayo Clinic
Meditation is a type of mind-body complementary medicine. Meditation can help you relax deeply and calm your mind. During meditation, you focus on one thing. You get rid of the stream of thoughts that may be crowding your mind and causing stress. This process can lead to better physical and emotional well-being.
Harvard Health Publishing · Harvard Medical School
One of the easiest ways to reduce stress is to simply focus your attention on your breath. It’s a form of “entry level” meditation that anyone can do. You’ll notice an immediate sense of relaxation that could help protect your health over time.
“Learning to focus attention and relax is a skill,” Dr. Siegel says. “As with any skill, your ability to focus and relax will improve with practice.”
The Harvard Gazette · Harvard University
Desbordes’ research uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which not only takes pictures of the brain, as a regular MRI does, but also records brain activity occurring during the scan. In 2012, she demonstrated that changes in brain activity in subjects who have learned to meditate hold steady even when they’re not meditating. Desbordes took before-and-after scans of subjects who learned to meditate over the course of two months. She scanned them not while they were meditating, but while they were performing everyday tasks. The scans still detected changes in the subjects’ brain activation patterns from the beginning to the end of the study, the first time such a change — in a part of the brain called the amygdala — had been detected.
American Psychological Association
People have been meditating for thousands of years, often as part of a spiritual practice. But in more recent years, mindfulness has become a popular way to help people manage their stress and improve their overall well-being—and a wealth of research shows it’s effective. Psychologists have found that mindfulness meditation changes our brain and biology in positive ways, improving mental and physical health.
What’s more, mindfulness-based interventions can improve physical health, too. For example, mindfulness may reduce pain, fatigue, and stress in people with chronic pain. Other studies have found preliminary evidence that mindfulness might boost the immune system and help people recover more quickly from cold or flu.
Cureus · peer-reviewed medical journal
When studied about meditation in the light of neuroscience, our brain indeed has a system through which we can get rid of maladaptive thoughts and restructure our brain [1]. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans have pointed out that meditation leads to widespread changes in the brain along with the activation of emotional and cognitive centers of the brain [2]. Meditation has shown promising results with age-related brain aging in younger and middle-aged individuals and improved various brain functions, including cognition and other executive functions [3].
Jamil A, Gutlapalli SD, Ali M, et al. “Meditation and Its Mental and Physical Health Benefits in 2023.” Cureus 15(6): e40650, 19 June 2023. Archived by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
“Kriya Yoga is universal in its benefits: it doesn’t depend on anything outside itself.”
Paramhansa Yogananda: A Biography by Swami Kriyananda
Kriya Yoga works — you can read, by clicking the link below, the experiences of Ananda Sangha Kriyabans (those who have been initiated into Kriya Yoga through Ananda Sangha).
