How Meditation Helps Students

Meditation helps students in multiple ways. Given the pressures and distractions of the competitive world, mind-training practices like meditation are essential for students to perform without pain. Here are a couple of good write-ups (there are more) on the web that illustrate how meditation benefits students:

https://tmhome.com/benefits/10-benefits-of-meditation-for-students/

https://www.nalandaschool.org/perks-of-meditation-for-children

However, our New-Age Students today have awesome intellects. Often, they don’t practice when they are told to but only when they understand how it works. Here is an attempt to explain how meditation works to provide all those benefits to students:

Meditation helps students through two mechanisms ‘calming’ and ‘connecting’. Calming is reducing and removing unnecessary and unhelpful thoughts by reducing the ‘number of thoughts per second’. This makes students concentrate more – with fewer/no distractions – which gives them the ability to consciously control where their attention goes. This magnifies their focus on every activity (studies, music, sport..etc) they get involved in and their ability to move from one to another without worrying about the N things they have to do. Calming also enhances storing and retrieving things from memory easily as there aren’t any obstructing thoughts or distractions in between. Less unnecessary thoughts also mean fewer negative emotions. Hence, they start ‘responding’ rather than ‘reacting’ instantly.  As distractions die down and they can see positive feedback on their performance, their anxiety to perform reduces and they start performing more spontaneously without worrying about outcomes.

Connecting is connecting to the innate intelligence that all of us have. When the clouds of thoughts, emotions, and distractions disappear (through calming), the bright stars of inner intelligence, creativity, and spontaneity shine through. This makes students talk, act and perform miraculously well. This increases their confidence so that they are not plagued by peer pressure and an inferiority complex. Ownership and discipline improve. Also, as their minds become less noisy, they will be able to listen to their intuitive voice more effectively. This provides them clarity to choose amongst the numerous choices that plague our youngsters today. When they discover that they always have a reservoir of intelligence available to dip into, they become more confident and resilient to face the ups and downs of life.