Meditation helps to focus

Meditation, whose ultimate goal is to take you beyond all sensory experiences has been found to reduce physical ailments like asthma and depression and help even in anger management. Researchers of meditation have also found higher mental activity, a sort that has not been in neuroscience literature, happening in long term meditators.
Now new research done on meditating Tibetan Buddhist monks in India show how the basic responses of the brain can be overridden

However, the monks – who carried out “one-point” meditation, where they focus attention on a single object or thought – were able to focus on one image. Monks who had undergone the longest and most intense meditative training were able to focus their attention on just one of the images for up to 12 minutes. Olivia Carter, of the University of Queensland, said: “The monks showed they were able to block out external information.
“This is an initial step in understanding how their brains work. “It would now be good to carry out further tests using imaging techniques to see exactly what the differences are in the brains of the monks.”
She said that could direct researchers to a broader understanding of how meditation influences what happens in the brain when someone is deciding whether to give something their attention, and what happens when they choose not to dwell on bad news, or to calm down. Ms Carter added: “Buddhist monks often report that if something negative happens they are able to digest it and move on.
“People who use meditation, including the Dalai Lama have said that the ability to control and direct your thoughts can be very beneficial in terms of mental health.” Dr Toby Collins, of the Oxford Centre for the Science of the Mind, told the BBC News website: “Meditation is a way of tapping into a process of manipulating brain activity.” He said the idea that meditation trained the brain to attend to just one thing at a time fitted in with previous research. He added: “How that’s done, we don’t yet know. But studies using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) can show what’s happening in the brain.” [ Meditation ‘brain training’ clues]

Whenever I watch a TV channel, I have this urge to flip through all the channels. Now I know what I need to do to get focus.