#358 – Why meditate?

Is your brain your most valuable asset? Then, you need to keep it "well-oiled" and reliable. How? Meditating.

I took the Transcendental Meditation course in October of 2023, after listening to Christine McKenna's and David Lynch's Room To Dream, and watching Rick Rubin's documentary, McCartney 3, 2, 1.

I thought, if two of the most creative artists I admire do TM, I want to try it too––talk about FOMO!

Robert Sapolsky's Determined shows why your brain may benefit from meditation*.

Do you feel unable to stick to a diet, show up at the gym after a week or two, or keep up with your morning pages? Your "lack of discipline," the author says, has nothing to do with you––or with "discipline" for that matter.

As it turns out, your brain's most important piece for executive function, the Pre-Frontal Cortex (PFC), is the last part to be fully formed––well into your mid 20's.

The PFC is crucial in decision-making: a strong, well-functioning PFC will help you "choose the hard thing" when something else is easier but wrong––for example, to pay the $1 to refill your two bottles of filtered water at the supermarket even though no one's looking.

It also mediates with your amygdala––down-regulating your response to fear––and with your gut––giving you access to your intuition.

Because it plays such a crucial role in human life it makes sense that culture, experience, and learning weigh more than genetics.

But, as research shows, the genetic cards you're dealt influence how easy or hard it'll be for your PFC to become reliable, stable, and resilient. And those genetic cards don't only come from your parents' chromosomes.

Take a look at other factors that may influence your PFC's strength:

• Your mother's stress levels when you were in the womb. Did she live in a crime-ridden neighborhood? Did she lose her spouse while pregnant?
• Did you often feel scared growing up? Did your parents?
• What was the general atmosphere they lived in, growing up––fear, poverty, and oppression, or abundance, happiness, carefreeness? And you?

As you see, many things may be playing into your "inability" to make "good decisions" that you can do nothing about.

But there's something you can take now to strengthen your PFC: meditate.

What is your reason to want a stronger, more resilient PFC?

Love,

Carolina

*How meditation improves brain function has been well documented elsewhere. For a science-backed approach to meditation, check out Dr. Jud Brewer's website.