Meditating for a happy body and mind

activity of telomerase, an enzyme that protects against celluar ageing and can be suppressed in response to psychological stress. The good news is that you don’t need to spend hours a day in meditation to feel the benefits – just 20 minutes practice a day for 3 days resulted in decreased sensitivity to pain in one study and improved cognitive performance in another (Fadel Zeidan, University of North Carolina, Charlotte).

Visit the Happiness & Its Causes website to hear more on the science of meditation from Dr Sara Lazar, neuroscientist and leading meditation researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, USA. You can also visit the Mind & Its Potential website for B. Alan Wallace’s presentation on developing focussed attention.