There is a great article from Lifext that has a lot of evidence-based material on the benefits of meditation and https://www.julianalucky.com/post/mommy-and-me-yoga-benefits. Let’s look for interesting things in attention studies as well.
So, in meditation, all attention is occupied by the object, and other thoughts without support weaken: stressful thoughts dissolve, and attention gradually collapses into the object.
Why is this happening, and is there a scientific basis?
The effect of reducing attention from monotonous actions is known to science. It’s called the Vigilance Decrement.
It was studied by the classics of psychology S.L. Rubinstein,
G. Helmholtz, and their experiments confirm the appearance of the effect when monotonous tasks are performed for a long time, for example, attention decreased when watching the clock hand for a long time, which sometimes made a double jump, the subjects often did not notice it.
One can notice a similarity between a decrease in the vigilance of attention and a decrease in the sensitivity of other sense organs during monotonous influences. For example, clothes stop being felt after a while, and a piece of sugar loses its sweetness if it is not moved over the tongue. It turns out that the brain also loses sensitivity without new “food” in the form of thoughts and sensations.
The brain, as an object of the “organ” class, inherits the same properties as the rest of the sense organs. Its difference is that it not only “eats” thoughts, like language in the case of sugar, but also produces them itself, creating a semblance of recursion. Because of this, it can be difficult to fall asleep: the stream of thoughts does not subside in any way, and then meditation with counting sheep comes to the rescue.
Meditation allows you to break the cycle of unpleasant thoughts, switch, uses the effect of the vigilance decrement confirmed by science.
