Mindfulness meditation benefits

A matter of sensory cortical alpha rhythms
Repeated local sensory focus — on a hand, say — develops control over underlying neurophysiological mechanisms that may help manage chronic pain or other problems.

I have been writing lately about the benefits of mindful hypnosis. Mindfulness meditation training in awareness of present moment experience, such as body and breath sensations, prevents depression and reduces distress in chronic pain. You can learn to control specific body sensations and how to regulate that attention. Here at Seattle hypnosis and Bainbridge Island hypnosis I teach mindful hypnosis so that you can maximize your health and wellness.

A neural basis for benefits of meditation

Brown University, February 13, 2013: In effect, what the researchers propose in their paper in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, is that by learning to control their focus on the present somatic moment, mindfulness meditators develop a more sensitive “volume knob” for controlling spatially specific, localized sensory cortical alpha rhythms. Efficient modulation of cortical alpha rhythms in turn enables optimal filtering of sensory information. Meditators learn not only to control what specific body sensations they pay attention to, but also how to regulate attention so that it does not become biased toward negative physical sensations such as chronic pain. The localized attentional control of somatosensory alpha rhythms becomes generalized to better regulate bias toward internally focused negative thoughts, as in depression.

“By this process of repeatedly engaging and disengaging alpha dynamics across the body map, according to our alpha theory, subjects are re-learning the process of directly modulating localized alpha rhythms,” they wrote. “We hypothesize that chronic pain patients trained in mindfulness will show increased ability to modulate alpha in an anticipatory tactile attention paradigm similar to that used in [the 2011 study].”

Read A neural basis for benefits of meditation

Mindfulness meditation can help you overcome depressive thoughts and chronic pain signals. Mindful hypnosis can help you to modulate your body for your health and wellness.

Check out Seattle hypnosis and Bainbridge Island hypnosis.
Call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!