Meditate For An Open Heart

Meditation might be your prescription for a happier mind and kinder heart, a new University of Wisconsin-Madison study shows. Scientists worked with 16 Tibetan monks and 16 meditation novices, giving the beginners lessons on compassion meditation two weeks prior to a series of brain-scan experiments. Those brain scans-taken while the participants responded to different emotional cues-revealed that the monks had more activity in certain brain regions involved in processing empathy. The findings, according to study authors, suggest that meditation may train the brain to increase feelings of compassion and happiness.