Ever since my dad tried to convince me to meditate when I was about 12, Ive been fairly skeptical of this practice. It always seemed to be so vague and hard to understand that I just decided it wasnt for me.

More recently, Ive actually found how simple (not easy, but simple) meditation can be and what huge benefit it can have for my day to day happiness. As an adult, I first started my meditation practice with just two minute per day. Two minutes! I got that idea from Leo Babautas Zen Habits blog, where he points out how starting with a tiny habit is the first step to consistently achieving it. So even thought two minutes wont make much difference, thats where I started.

Whether youre as skeptical as I used to be, or youre well ahead of me with a meditation habit of several hours, I think its always interesting to find out how new habits affect our brains. I had a look into meditation to see whats going on inside our brains when we do this, and what I found is pretty interesting.

There are different ways to meditate, and since its such a personal practice there are probably more than any of us know about. There are a couple that are usually focused on heavily in scientific research, though. These are focused-attention, or mindful meditation, which is where you focus on one specific thingit could be your breathing, a sensation in your body or a particular object outside of you. The point of this type of meditation is to focus strongly on one point and continually bring your attention back to that focal point when it wanders.

The other type of meditation thats often used in research is open-monitoring meditation. This is where you pay attention to all of the things happening around youyou simply notice everything without reacting.

This is where things get really interesting. Using modern technology like fMRI scans, scientists have developed a more thorough understanding of whats taking place in our brains when we meditate, kind of similar to how scientists have previously looked at measuring creativity in our brains.

The overall difference is that our brains stop processing information as actively as they normally would. We start to show a decrease in beta waves, which indicate that our brains are processing information, even after a single 20-minute meditation session if weve never tried it before.

In the image below you can see how the beta waves (shown in bright colors on the left) are dramatically reduced during meditation (on the right).

Below is the best explanation I found of what happens in each part of the brain during meditation:

Excerpt from:
The Power of Meditation and How It Affects Our Brains ...