IQ and Meditation

Meditation has been known since yore, as a technique that helps build focus and keen insight. Modern medicine has discovered that meditation can greatly enhance IQ and overall mental fitness and power. The challenge lies in achieving a deep meditative state.

Your IQ obviously depends on your mental ability. Scientists propose that meditation can hike your IQ up to 20 points. These two mental exercises help increase your potential energy i.e. you'll feel more energetic after meditation.

Why meditation?

Mental fitness is highly lucrative. You'll be able to enjoy accelerated learning. If you're in high school, college or attend a university, you may find your grasping capacities get better by the day, with practice of meditation and your grade point average rising. You'll also think more logically and rationally. Another benefit is that of increased creativity.

In addition, your memory and focus will increase. Training with certain kinds of memory tools such as pegging and linking can help you uncover new ways to store information permanently and have an easier time of recalling things. As a newbie, you could start by investing a minimum of 10 or 15 minutes a day for meditation.

Meditation helps bridge the gap between your conscious to your subconscious mind. The subconscious stores every bit of data of our lives. Nothing is lost to the subconscious.

Make a start

Simply find a quiet place and sit or lay completely still, with eyes closed. Then, as much as possible, calm your mind and focus on your breathing. Initially you might find your mind wandering lose and slipping out of conscious control. It might swim over the events of the previous day, some trifles and problems that surround you. But harness it and attempt to yoke it to one single point of concentration. The more you practice, the easier it will get. As you stick with it, you'll notice some major improvements of being able to retain ideas and imagines in your mind much longer and stronger.

Research speaks

Australian Neuroscientist Dylan DeLosAngeles studied the brainwaves of a meditation practicing group (consisting 13 people) as they progressed through five different meditative states. He expected to find a brain pattern that slowly moved toward sleep, or increased Delta waves. On the contrary, he found that Delta waves actually decreased. The brainwaves of these meditators indicated a calm, attentive mind, as opposed to a sluggish or foggy one. Alpha waves increased during the first states of meditation analyzed, and later decreased as the meditators moved on to other states.

Fluid Intelligence (gF)

gF is a measure of ability to solve new problems on the go, without prior study. It primarily deals with the following:

• Ability to retain sequences in our short-term memory bank.
• Ability to focus on a problem without distraction.

How to boost gF: The reigning champions of focus are Buddhists. Their very practice requires them to meditate on a topic for extended periods of time, controlling wandering thoughts and focusing closely. When Buddhist brains were imaged in a University of Wisconsin study, the outcome was lucid: significant development of the prefrontal cortex which, among other things, controls conflicting thoughts. The anecdotal evidence can be found with Tiger Woods, who religiously practices meditation to improve his focus, and clearly his game.

What to practice?

• Research elicits that Transcendental Meditation increases IQ and academic performance. It is believed to increase your grade-point average, mental and physical health, creativity, and EEG coherence. TM also spontaneously reduces anxiety, stress, ageing, and drug and alcohol abuse.
• Deep breathing is one of the easiest and most efficacious ways to improve the functioning of your brain immediately. Deep breathing promotes relaxation and pumps more oxygen in the blood (hence in the brain. Since most of us are in the habit of breathing lightly, this is a perky way to boost IQ.
  Meditating helps due to the deep breathing aspect. Just close your eyes and breath through your nose, deeply at first, then in whatever way is comfortable. As thoughts arise, dismiss them and return your attention to your breath. Do this for at least a few minutes and I bet you will notice a difference within a few months!