10 Benefits of Meditation for Students
When I was in the final year of high school, I had goals that were way out of my reach! But I wanted to achieve those at any cost. Read more here. And that was the time when I started meditating. I was completely unaware how meditation was going to change my entire life!
Meditation is the best exercise to train your brain for anyone at any age. It can not only make a person healthy but also more powerful in so many ways. Meditation is especially great for students and learners. Here are the 10 reasons why!
- Better Focus
- Increase in creativity
- Better grasping power and memory retention
- Increase in Logical reasoning
- Stronger will power or self control
- Positive mindset
- Decreasing distractions
- Increase in self confidence
- Removal of stage fear
- Removal of ego
Let's take each one of them in a little detail, mixed with experience and scientific studies.
- Better Focus:
The most important part of meditation is to be in the present. And to do that, you need an anchor, for example breath. When you practice meditation at start getting used to focusing on the anchor, your power to focus increase.
There is absolutely no rocket science here!
"The way to improve at anything is to practice it over and over"
While you meditate, you practice to concentrate on one thing for 15 or 20 minutes daily. And that is obviously going to increase your ability to focus.
It is also proven in studies that meditation increases the ability to retain focus. Or in other words, sustained attention.
But is is as important to develop in an ability. For that, you need to focus for more time, which means you need to meditate for longer durations in a session. However, it is difficult to constantly keep on increasing your meditation duration. You can apply the trick which i have mentioned in the article, 'How to meditate longer without getting bored.'
2. Increase in Creativity:
Creativity and a focused mind seem to oppose each other. But that is absolutely wrong! Studies have shown that one gets ideas and solutions to creative problems, not while fussing about that problem, but while doing some mundane task and dreaming about something else at the same time.
It means that you need to give space to your mind in order to get so creative ideas. And what better way to get space than meditation!
This does not mean that you need to start meditating if you want a creative idea, and you will instantly get one. Meditation helps to decrease the amount of thoughts that lead to a wandering mind.
"Your mind wonders about 47% of the time, in your entire life! This means that you are either deep into the past, or the future for half of your life."
This statistics was found by a recent study done in Howard University.
3. Better Grasping Power and Memory Retention:
This benefit of meditation is directly related to the ability to be in the present and focus.
When you focus on something harder, it automatically stays in your brain for a longer time. Meditation improves the ability to focus, and hence the ability to grasp more and retain the grasped for longer periods of time.
There was a study done on people who had never meditated before. After meditating for 20 minutes for 50 days, the shape of their brains changed! The surface area of the brain increased. And increase in prefrontal cortex was also seen! And not only that, the amount of alpha waves coming out of brains also increased. This is a sign of deeply relaxed mind.
I was inspired by this study to meditate for at least 50 days when I started meditating, but then I just got hooked to this wonderful exercise!
4. Increase in Logical Reasoning.
In the above mentioned study, the size of the prefrontal cortex was seen to increase. And the prefrontal cortex of the brain is responsible for problem solving, logical reasoning, social behaviours, decision making, and much more.
So, increase in the size of prefrontal cortex directly suggests the increase in logical reasoning and problem solving.
What I have experienced in these years meditating is that the reason for better logical reasoning is the approach to a problem. I have started looking at problems or situations from many different perspectives. And this often results in better solutions and reasoning.
5. Stronger Willpower or Self Control:
It takes willpower to meditate daily and continuing the practice, which after a point, starts to become boring and monotonous. (If you feel the same, I have written an article on how to make this practice interesting and meditate longer.)
As it is with focus and attention, same is with the will power. Once you develop the will power to meditate daily, though it gets boring and monotonous sometimes, you will definitely increase the over all willpower and self control.
However, this is not the only reason which suggests meditation that helps to increase the will power. Meditation changes the functionality and the structure of the brain in order to increase self control.
I have observed this increase in self control in my life after meditating daily. I had a disease, for which to be cured, I had to stop eating all foods with bread! Not only bread, but butter cheese and so many other things. I had an allergy of this food items in a way, which had led to the disease. It has been a year since the disease is cured, and I have not eaten a single piece of bread till now! And for the amount of love that I have towards bread, I would not have been able to do this for a month straight! I think all the credit goes to meditation! And this is just one of the many ways by which meditation has changed my life!
6. Positive Mindset:
Several studies have shown that medical students, and high school students especially in India, fall into depression because of the pressure of the college, and the family!
"Meditation is all about acceptance!"
Meditation helps students to accept their abilities, and not get stressed about it. This results into happier self. And depression runs away from happy people to embrace stressed ones!
And bundled up with the above mentioned benefits, a student can actually increase hsi abilities to perform better in school, which eliminates the reason to become stressed!
When I had goals larger than my potential, I was starting to get a little stressed sometimes. Not because i had set such high goals, but because of the 'Fear of Failure'. And once I started meditating, the fear seemed to have gone, and what remained was the motivation to do as much as I can!
"Dream for the stars, and you will at least land on the Moon!"
Instead of depressing thoughts, my mind started feeding on thoughts like these! And believe me, the mind has the power to do all the things in life! Books like 'The Secret' and 'The Power of your Subconscious Mind' have delved into this and they are 'Read once in a Lifetime' books for me.
7. Decreasing Distractions:
Meditation improves the self control, is what we saw earlier. But what that increased self control can do might be a deciding factor for making or breaking your life!
This increase in will power can make you attract less towards distractions that can be harmful while your main focus should be studies. Habits like smoking, drinking, and even addiction to pornography and smartphones are disasterous distractions for a student. Meditating daily can improve your self control and decrease the chances for falling into such distractions.
It is not about getting distracted once, it is about developing the habit of getting distracted to things that matter least for now.
8. Increase in self confidence:
A student needs self confidence in so many ways. Students need to make choices that will shape their career and entire life. If a student is not confident enough, he might make poor choices which might ruin his career.
Meditation is the best way to increase self confidence, along with all the other benefits, it proves to be the best exercise for students.
9. Removal of Stage Fear:
Increase in self confidence had many benefits, but a major one is removal of stage fear.
Stage fear is not only the fear to speak on stage, it is a fear to speak to a group or a larger audience. It also means speaking in front of a class or voicing your vote in group activities.
Meditation removes the stage fear by increasing your self confidence and makes you confident enough to influence people!
10. Removal of EGO:
Meditation increase your self confidence, but does not let it convert into an ego. Ego leads to so many mistakes that people regret at a later stage of life.
Meditation shows oneself that he is not what he thinks. Meditation shows oneself the mirror. Which does not make a person feel less of what he is, it makes him feel the real him.
So these are the "10 Reasons why Students should Meditate"
Share this article to at least one friend and motivate him to meditate. He will be thanking you after a few months! Keep meditating, keep promoting meditation!
-A Mere Meditator
