I know meditation is meant to be good for you but I don’t meditate every day. I go through cycles of meditating 20 minutes a day and then slowly ‘forget’ and slide into not meditating until I feel I need to — until I feel like crap. For the last 30 days I’ve meditated for 25 minutes in the morning, 25 minutes in the evening and taken multiple 5 minute mindfulness breaks throughout the day. I’ve written posts on the myths of motivation in the past going into the science of what makes people tick, but what I didn’t mention is what I believe the ultimate motivator is: reasons to act. Simple I know, but when you have enough reasons to do something, motivating yourself to do it becomes a non-issue — this is why I tell everyone to read a book on a habit they want to change. Bombarding your brain with reasons to act makes motivation easy. I didn’t eat any vegetables until I was 20. I read a book on the benefits of healthy eating and I’ve eaten them every day since. “Vegetables are good for you” is not a good reason to eat them. But after I read that book I had so many compelling reasons to eat nutritionally dense food it was harder not to. The same goes for any habit. Want to give up smoking? How many books on anti-smoking have you read? I decided to take this ‘bombard your brain’ approach with meditation. For the last few months I’ve researched countless books, studies, and lectures to find out the benefits of meditation and now I’m going to share these 26 Scientifically Proven Superhuman Benefits of Meditation with you! In Social Psychologist Daniel Goleman’s book Destructive Emotions, he recounts his experience of performing the first scientific studies on the mind of a mediator. Among the scientists present were Richie Davidson, a neuroscientist, and Paul Ekman – one of the worlds leading researchers on emotions. The Dalai Lama himself, who helped this meeting of the minds between East and West, said of it, “I want to put everything under scrutiny, what doesn’t work, even if it was there for thousands of years we’ll take out.” He gave the scientists his right hand man Lama Oser to study — a European monk with over 30 years of meditative experience. This is where our story of the superhuman benefits of meditation begins. The first thing they looked at was Lama Oser’s left-to-right prefrontal cortex activity ratio. People who are happier tend to have a higher left-to-right ratio in terms of brain activity, more neural pathways on the left side of the prefrontal cortex than on the right side. The happier you are the larger that ratio is. Also, left-to-right ratios predicts how quickly you will recover from stresses both psychologically and physically. Lama Oser’s ratio was measured and compared to a sample of 175 people. He was quite literally off the chart. This off the chart prefrontal cortex activity ratio asymmetry suggests insane levels of equanimity, well-being and resilience to setbacks. Paul Ekman has revolutionised the way we understand emotions and facial expressions. The lead character in the TV show ‘Lie To Me‘ was based on him and his research. Ekman was the first person to discover what he coined micro expressions — fleeting millisecond expressions that reveal our true emotions. Ekman has tested hundreds of people on their ability to detect these subtle expressions from FBI agents to clinical psychologists and college students. When they tested Lama Oser nobody could have predicted the results. Lama Oser was the best at detecting these subtle expressions Ekman had ever recorded. Along with body language expertise this tells us two further superhuman traits Lama Oser had. The ability to recognise emotions in other people is associated with levels of empathy. If Lama Oser was the best at detecting these micro expressions they’ve ever tested, by default, he also had more empathy than any other person they’ve ever tested. Empathy alone wouldn’t have helped him notice these super fast micro expressions. They last sometimes hundredths of a second. Lama Oser’s mind must have been sharp, focused and fast to catch them and process them. Faster that anyone else’s they tested. Paul Ekman has been studying the startle response in people for decades.  The startle response is what happens if something loud or surprising happens to us suddenly. I’m sure you’ve experienced it. We blink for a millisecond; it’s an innate reaction. They find it in every single person. Even in policemen and women. They practice their shooting all the time, constantly, yet every time the gun goes off they blink slightly – they startle. Everyone has a startle response. Lama Oser was the first person in recorded history to suppress his startle response. When he is meditating, he is so relaxed, so focused on whatever he’s meditating on that nothing startles him. Because there is a strong correlation between levels of anxiety and how easily somebody startles, the implications for this are huge. Practicing meditation didn’t just affect Lama Oser, it also influenced everyone he interacted with. They did this experiment where they had him sit down with Western scientists and talk about controversial issues such as why scientists should give up science and become monks and reincarnation. He interacted with two people. The first was a chilled out scientist. They both had a good chat and remained calm. Then they brought in the second scientist and they picked this scientist because he was extremely contentious, harsh and intolerant. I guess they were just curious what would happen. Here is what that argumentative scientist had to say after the discussion: “I couldn’t be confrontational. I was always met with reason and smiles. It’s overwhelming. I felt something like a shadow or aura and I couldn’t be aggressive.” The scientist was calm and friendly, something totally unexpected. Lama Oser’s levels of equanimity rubbed off on him. Emotions are contagious. But what does this prove? It’s fantastic and shocking but do we also have to meditate for 30 years to reap similar benefits?