Meditation, in the context of wellness and mindfulness, is something a lot of us are familiar with in terms of its advantages. It can help us to achieve inner peace, relax, and take a moment to pause and breathe in the midst of the craziness of life.
While many of us are familiar with these particular benefits of meditating, there is another positive that can come from this practice that I imagine most of us are not overly aware of. According to an article by Good News Network, engaging in meditation can actually be a means to prevent us from making mistakes. Check it out.
“If you are forgetful or make mistakes when in a hurry, a new study from Michigan State University—the largest of its kind to-date—found that meditation could help you to become less error prone.
“The research tested how open monitoring meditation—or, meditation that focuses awareness on feelings, thoughts or sensations as they unfold in one’s mind and body—altered brain activity in a way that suggests increased error recognition.
“Lin (MSU psychology doctoral candidate and co-author of the study) and his MSU co-authors—William Eckerle, Ling Peng and Jason Moser—recruited more than 200 participants to test how open monitoring meditation affected how people detect and respond to errors.
“The participants, who had never meditated before, were taken through a 20-minute open monitoring meditation exercise while the researchers measured brain activity through electroencephalography, or EEG. Then, they completed a computerized distraction test.
“While the meditators didn’t have immediate improvements to actual task performance, the researchers’ findings offer a promising window into the potential of sustained meditation.
“While meditation and mindfulness have gained mainstream interest in recent years, Lin is among a relatively small group of researchers that take a neuroscientific approach to assessing their psychological and performance effects,” the article says.
In case anyone needed further incentive to give meditation a try, I think this information may serve as reason to consider trying it.
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