Yoga: This relaxation exercise makes you more efficient in everyday life

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Some swear by it, others dismiss it as esoteric nonsense: we're talking about meditation.

It is an essential part of yoga, but also some religions.

Mindfulness or concentration exercises, for example through deeper breathing, should calm and concentrate the mind - and even expand it.

Sounds like exactly the kind of relaxation many people need after a busy day at work between family life, household chores and work, doesn't it?

But let's first dedicate ourselves to your very personal stress level:

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A survey by the Pronova BKK health insurance company in 2018 showed that around 87 percent of all German employees feel stressed - every second even believes that they are at risk of burnout.

So it is hardly surprising that more and more people are looking for techniques and rituals to better relax.

Meditation, i.e. the mindful focus on one's thoughts, is very popular.

Even if for many the term is somewhat spiritual, there is something to the calming effect of meditation exercises.

This can even be proven scientifically.

Researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology in Magdeburg took a closer look at what happens in our brain when we meditate.

They published their results on the science platform Europe PMC.

What happens in the brain when you start meditating?

Source: Unsplash.com/Bret Kavanaugh

It's like this: In our body, billions of neurons process important information and ignore unimportant information.

Basically, meditation is nothing more than a form of self-regulation: You focus and bundle your thoughts and don't think about anything else.

The research team around Stefan Dürschmid and Matthias Deliano has found that this can lead to better information processing.

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Meditation not only relaxes in this moment, but also has a long-term effect because you can absorb and process information better - ergo: You are more productive.

To find out, the researchers examined in their study whether mindfulness training increases the activity of neural networks.

To do this, they measured brain activity using magnetic encephalography (MEG) while selected test subjects were in a meditative state.

The brain can process information better from the first time

Source: Unsplash.com/Isabell Winter

It turned out that when people who have never meditated before only concentrate on their breathing, the neural activity is optimally coordinated across large parts of the cerebral cortex - in other words, perfect information processing.

According to the researchers, this is the neural key to mindfulness.

In contrast to the state of rest, mindful, focused attention requires that one notices and suppresses the wandering of thoughts and that one concentrates again and again on the breath.

Stefan Dürschmid, Leibnitz Institute for Neurobiology 

So it's about constant monitoring and control - especially for beginners.

At the same time, this means that the information processing of your brain is better trained from the very first meditation exercise.

The researchers conclude that mindfulness training through meditation could also be helpful in other situations.

For example when we try to organize information in a chaotic or stressful situation.

People who meditate regularly have been shown to be able to focus their thoughts better.

Breathing exercises are an important part of meditation

Source: Unsplash.com/Tim Goedhart

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The fact that conscious breathing affects our brain activity is not an entirely new finding.

In 2016, US scientists researched what happens to our memories and emotions.

They found that test subjects remembered objects much better when they inhaled through their noses and were even able to interpret emotions on other people's faces more quickly.

Both speak in favor of faster information processing.

The scientists at the Leibniz Institute have re-established this connection.

When evaluating the measured brain activities, they found that completely different areas of the brain are active in the meditative resting state than usual. It is precisely this functional change in the brain that enables you to process information that is beating down on you better during meditation.

Would you like to meditate for a while?

This article was first published in July 2020.