Meditation Works Wonders on College Students

It seems the benefits of meditation – and studies on the practice – continue to increase with time. And we are always happy to report them! This newest one may be on college students, but it reinforces the benefits meditation can have on anyone at any age.

This study involved a group of 50 college students, broken into two groups (meditating and non-meditating), and compared the effects on the brain and reactions to stress over a 10-week period. Tests were done on the students before the 10-week period and after, and meditating students practiced Transcendental Meditation (TM) for 20 minutes, twice a day.

The encouraging results were as follows (as published this week in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Psychophysiology):

• Meditating students had higher “Brain Integration Scale” scores, meaning greater frontal coherence, more alpha activity, and better match of brain activation and task demands. In other words, these students had more optimal brain functioning, and the higher scores correlate with higher emotional stability, higher moral reasoning, more openness to experience and decreased anxiety, according to the research.
• Meditating students had a faster habituation to loud tones as measured by skin conductance response. According to the study, the sympathetic nervous system responds to loud new tones, but a person who is “more balanced” stops responding quickly, whereas one who is more anxious or worried will continue to respond. The latter was the effect on non-meditating students.
• Students practicing TM reported less sleepiness – even the week before final exams when the posttest was given.

“From pretest to posttest, Brain Integration Scale scores increased significantly, indicating greater breadth of planning, thinking and perception of the environment,” Fred Travis, lead author and director of the MUM brain research center said about the meditating students.

In comparison, the control group (non-meditating) had lower Brain Integration Scale scores, “indicating their brain functioning was more fragmented – which can lead to more scattered and disorganized thinking and planning,” said Travis. These students also showed an increase in sympathetic reactivity and sleepiness.

“For me the greatest benefit was being able to have these two 20-minute periods of meditation,” said Patricia Spurio, one of the meditating students, who was carrying a full credit load with a part-time internship, not to mention helping to organize a large rally on campus during the study. “I could feel my whole body releasing the stress of the day. When done, I felt rested and ready for more activity. TM helped me get through it all in a more healthy and balanced way.”

Once again, we can’t hear enough about the benefits of meditation. It just encourages us more and more to stop what we are doing at least 20 minutes a day, and quiet our minds! And we can wait for the day when meditation becomes a required class in all schools – from first grade to college!