Meditation Can Reshape Our Brains

From the Web

Neuroscientist and meditator Sara Lazar displays brain scans that show meditation can actually change the size of key regions of our brain, improving our memory and making us more empathetic, compassionate, and resilient under stress.

Sara LazarSara W. Lazar, PhD is an Associate Researcher in the Psychiatry Department at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Instructor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School. She is a Board member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy and contributing author to Meditation and Psychotherapy.

Sara’s life changed course when she discovered yoga and meditation while recovering from a running injury. That was 12 years ago and now she is a cutting edge researcher in the field of neuroscience. She’s focusing on the effects of meditation on the brain. “While in grad school I started practicing yoga and meditation, and found it to be incredibly helpful. I was less stressed, more focused and it really changed my perspective on a lot of things. I decided I would rather do research on meditation than on bacteria, so after I got my PhD, I found a lab that was willing to train me in neuroscience and let me do a small meditation study.”

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