A recent study shows that people are not thinking about what they are doing, on average 30% of the time.

The Wandering Mind

The researcher says he will study meditation to see if it helps. Of course, a lot of brain research has already been done on meditation, but this would be an interesting twist. So far, research shows that long term meditators use more of the parts of the brain that have to do with contentment, and less of the parts that deal with conflict.

Finding out that we can really do what we think we are doing in meditation practice (increasing our ability to pay attention) would be an interesting result indeed.

Meditation, through the method of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) has been shown to improve patient outcomes in a wide variety of illnesses and reduce anxiety. Helping people learn to focus on what is really happening right now, instead of the story their brain is telling them, seems to help them put pain, distress, and life changing illnesses in perspective.

    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 20 Mar 2007
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.