The Power of Meditation: Unveiling How It Boosts Performance. The three essential areas for peak-performance are neuro-regulation, clearing the negative self-talk and the beliefs that create them and creating new success habits.
Meditation as a peak-Performance Power Tool
Back in 80s meditation was firmly in the realm of the weird, hippy or cultish in most parts of the world.
These days meditation has moved on, and it has become a powerful tool for peak performance used by CEOs and executives throughout the world.
There are many meditation courses, teachers everywhere, and of course, there are mobile apps for it.
What happened to convince people that meditating is actually good idea?
Research.
- Thousands of studies on the effects of meditation on the physical body looked at heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, relaxation.
- More studies about its impact on the brain using EEG or MEG scans.
- Long term studies of meditators vs non-meditators.
- And even more studies on the effects of chronic stress on the body.
Results published and popularized in many books, all telling us that meditation is good for us.
In 2012 the ESADE Business School in Spain published a study on ‘neuro-regulation’ the ability to regulate your sympathetic nervous system so that you stay calm under stress.
ESADE determined that the most effective, transformational leaders are those who can regulate their sympathetic nervous.
Why is meditation effective?
Meditation is effective in three areas simultaneously – your body, your mind and your nervous system.
Simply sitting quietly in a calm space starts to relax your body. The quiet space reduces the amount of information that your brain needs to monitor – noises, people talking, your own movement and changes in the environment.
When such external stimulus is high, then your brain works hard to filter from all this input what is important and what is potentially dangerous. Sitting still in an unchanging place reduces the input and the unconscious reactions to it and allows your brain to relax a little.
Deliberately not thinking about anything is calming too
There are no thoughts to act upon, no urgency, no demands.
Your thoughts are also an input for your brain’s information processing. So again, less input, less possibility of a thought triggering fear and needing a response.
Both calming the body and calming the mind work to calm the nervous system.
Your Nervous System.
In your brain, your amygdala filters all information coming into the brain from your external senses, internal sensing and your thoughts.
The amygdala looks out for dangers, just like a virus checker scans your email for potential threats.
When the amygdala detects a threat it triggers your sympathetic nervous system into ‘emergency mode’ and your sympathetic nervous system can trip into a fight, flight or freeze state.
This emergency mode prepares your body to respond to life-threatening dangers by taking over your nervous system.
When this happens, the blood flow in your muscles, digestive system and brain change to give you the ability to respond to the threat and survive.
It’s an automatic, ancient, primal reaction to a perceived threat. It’s the body doing exactly the right thing in response to a perceived threat.
When your nervous system is triggered, the blood flow in the brain changes and is reduced in the pre-frontal cortex – the strategic thinking and planning area of the brain. This change in blood flow reduces your capacity for good decision making, and your IQ temporarily drops.
This means that you need to stay calm and think clearly if you want to perform at your best. And this explains why control of the sympathetic nervous system is such an essential skill for top business leaders.
The problem for us modern humans is that the amygdala determines what a threat is, automatically and without your awareness or agreement.
Your Amygdala.
Your amygdala learns through a combination of experience and emotion. If you have an experience that creates pain (physical or emotional) it flags that situation as a potential threat to your survival.
When it encounters a similar situation another time, your amygdala will trigger your nervous system into the fight or flight
This ’emotion-memory’ combination forms part of your brain’s model of the world. That is, it is the beliefs that we act upon without necessarily being aware of them.
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For example, the belief in your conditional worth is stored in the amygdala as an identified threat. In ancient, tribal society to be found unworthy of care and unacceptable in a society could lead to rejection and expulsion from the tribe. Almost certainly a death sentence, according to your amygdala.
This means that when you feel that you are not good enough your amygdala can see that as a threat to your survival and trip your sympathetic nervous system into fight or flight response.
Chronic Stress.
Over time, the repetitive triggering of your sympathetic nervous system creates chronic worry, stress, anxiety and overwhelm.
Stress is cumulative, as we know from many more research.
So meditation can bleed off the stress by bringing your nervous system back to a calm state. Regular meditation gives you the means to de-stress and reset the accumulation of stress.
It can help, which is why it’s so popular with people in high-pressure positions. Especially as being calm means that you have access to your full mental capabilities.
Meditation is also healthier than other coping mechanisms used to relax, such as alcohol and smoking.
You can meditate daily, and a typical recommendation is to meditate for at-least 20 minutes twice a day.
Although meditation makes your nervous system less reactive through regular soothing, it does not change the beliefs that trigger the amygdala in the first place.
Happily, modern science research has pointed the way for an effective process to change beliefs.
Cultivating Abundance: The Extraordinary Power of Giving
Have you ever considered that giving could be your key to unlocking abundance in your life? It’s a remarkable concept – what you give has the potential to return to you, often multiplied. It doesn’t matter whether you offer kindness, support, or resources; the universe has a way of ensuring that your generosity comes back to you in one form or another. It’s a cosmic exchange where good begets good and vice versa.
If this idea resonates with you, we invite you to share this article with your loved ones. You might be surprised by the transformative impact it can have on your life. Remember, we all possess something to give, and sometimes, the simplest act, like sharing this blog post, can create a ripple effect of positive change. Embrace the power of giving, and watch how it can enrich your life in unexpected ways.
