We have all heard stories about yoga masters from Tibet or India, mysterious hermits who live their lives isolated on mountain tops and spend days, weeks, even months in deep meditation. These wise men may seem to have supernatural powers, slowing their breathing and heartbeat to a crawl, and some even claim to have achieved enlightenment. But what is meditation, really, and what does it do? What benefits can you get from it?

The truth is, you do not have to be a swami or the reincarnation of an ancient master to meditate, and it can create real improvements in every area of your health and well-being. All you need is a quiet, dark room, twenty minutes a day to yourself, and this article.

What Meditation Is

To understand meditation, one should know a little bit about the brain. Think of your brain as a machine capable of adjusting to a wide spectrum of activities. Throughout the course of your day, electrical pulses in the brain change to meet your needs. This happens naturally, and you are usually not aware of it.

From full mental engagement at one end of the spectrum to daydreaming near the middle and REM sleep at the other end, different activities have different brain wave patterns associated with them. Simply, meditation is a state of altered consciousness where your brain slows down from its normal, beta brain wave activity to more relaxed alpha activity.

Alpha activity does not disrupt your awareness like sleep does, and you remain alert to yourself, your surroundings and your thoughts. However, the alpha state is much closer to sleep than the beta state. This causes deep physical relaxation, a sense of peacefulness induced by neurochemical changes, and heightened mental clarity in a fraction of the time it would take for you to interrupt your daily routine and take a nap. Also, you can finish your meditation session within minutes and return to full beta, unlike waking from a nap, which often leaves you feeling groggy.

What Meditation Is Not