May 05, 2020 12:00:00

All you need to do is 'focus on breathing for 10 minutes' to reduce stress and increase concentration

When switching to remote work due to the effect of a new type of coronavirus infection (COVID-19), the border between work and private may become ambiguous instead of reducing commuting time, which may increase stress for some people. Focusing on breathing with 'meditation' not only reduces stress but also increases concentration, the scientific effect is explained by

Inverse of scientific media.

Mindfulness and mind wandering: The protective effects of brief meditation in anxious individuals-ScienceDirect
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810016303142

Meditation: Researchers find 3 cognitive benefits while working remotely
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/how-meditation-can-help-you-focus-on-work-at-home

◆ Increase concentration

In a

study conducted by researchers at the University of Waterloo, 82 subjects in two groups were tasked with performing computer tasks and measuring their concentration. At this time, one group had 10 minutes of meditation before the task, and another group had an audio story. Experiments have shown that meditation has a protective effect on subjects who are anxious and whose attention moves back and forth between the outside world and their own concerns. Experiments have shown that meditation eliminates confusion and allows you to focus on the task at hand.

◆ Sharpen your thoughts

The point of meditation lies in 'focusing on breathing,' but Trinity College's research has

shown that breathing during meditation affects a brain substance called noradrenaline .

Noradrenaline is a neurotransmitter that is released when you challenge something, get excited, concentrate, or get emotionally excited, and when released in the right amount, it acts like a fertilizer and creates new connections in the brain. Something to encourage. In other words, the increase in noradrenaline due to breathing can be paraphrased as 'it is possible to increase alertness and promote brain health by the way of breathing'.

Researchers also found that during the experiment, subjects in the meditation and high concentration group were synchronized with their breathing patterns. From this, it is believed that breathing exercises produce a stable concentration and are useful for brain health.

`` Our attention is affected by breathing and rises and falls with the breathing cycle, '' says lead author of the study, Michael Melnituk. Optimizing concentration by focusing on breathing and controlling breathing Is possible. ”

◆ Reduce mistakes

Humans make mistakes, but it is natural to want to reduce mistakes as much as possible. In a study at Michigan State University, we asked 200 people who had no meditation experience: 'We asked them to do 20 minutes of meditation, measure the brain waves at that time, and then perform a test to check the degree of distraction. I did an experiment to get it.

According to co-author Jeff Lin, the meditating group did not immediately improve the performance of the test, but the neural signals that occur after false positives led to the non-meditation group. It turned out to be bigger than that.

About this phenomenon, Lin said, '20 minutes of meditation has been shown to'increase the ability to detect human error ', which improves meditation at this moment in its everyday functions and performance. We are convinced that it has been shown to be useful. '

You can read how to do meditation from the following articles.

QuietKit, a tool and guide for making meditation a habit and freeing you from daily stress-GIGAZINE

by Pietro Bellini