This was in the news last week:
Excerpt:
If You’re Too Busy to Meditate, Read This
By Peter Bregman
Harvard Business Review Blog Network
October 12, 2012
This morning, like every morning, I sat cross-legged on a cushion on the floor, rested my hands on my knees, closed my eyes, and did nothing but breathe for 20 minutes.
People say the hardest part about meditating is finding the time to meditate. This makes sense: who these days has time to do nothing? It’s hard to justify.
Meditation brings many benefits: It refreshes us, helps us settle into what’s happening now, makes us wiser and gentler, helps us cope in a world that overloads us with information and communication, and more. But if you’re still looking for a business case to justify spending time meditating, try this one: Meditation makes you more productive.
How? By increasing your capacity to resist distracting urges.
Research shows http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2009/06/how-to-teach-yourself-restrain.html that an ability to resist urges will improve your relationships, increase your dependability, and raise your performance. If you can resist your urges, you can make better, more thoughtful decisions. You can be more intentional about what you say and how you say it. You can think about the outcome of your actions before following through on them.
Excerpt from:
http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2012/10/if-youre-too-busy-to-meditate.html
On the other hand, there are studies for how meditating, and prayer, affect the brain in positive ways.
I'm in on meditation and prayer. I have heard of saints in meditation to deepen their prayer.
Of course, I can't name them (maybe St. Terese; maybe Julian of Norwich), but I guess this would be as good a time to read "Lives of the Saints".