​​The importance of meditation in reducing anxiety and developing social qualities. I try to post meditative techniques in my Telegram channel. And here's why: I have been familiar with meditative practices since childhood. However, for me, meditation was very close to esotericism and unproven. But at some point I came across a book by Daniel Goleman and R. Davidson, “Changed Character Traits. How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain and Body. After reading it, a new wonderful world opened up for me. This book provides research that confirms the benefits of meditation in developing ✅️resistance to stress factors, ✅️increasing attentiveness, ✅️increasing compassion, which does not destroy a person, but helps to be sincere and active. Despite the fact that in the process of developing compassion, the amygdala in the right hemisphere increases, such compassion is not followed by “depressive thinking and in general people feel happier.” This book dispelled the myth about multitasking for me. It turns out that when a person does several things at the same time, this is not about processes that occur in the head in parallel, but this is a constant switching from one task to another. In such a situation, each subsequent switch affects the stability of attention. “...scanning one’s own body increased its awareness and reduced mind wandering. Observing thoughts increased meta-awareness, a byproduct of mindfulness.” Sometimes we are driven into the abyss of anxiety and depression by our tendency to criticize ourselves. The peculiarity of noticing only one’s mistakes and ignoring achievements in cognitive behavioral psychotherapy is called the cognitive error “Filter” or “Depreciation”. Touching upon CBT, as one of the most evidence-based areas in psychology, it is impossible not to note that here, too, imaginative and relaxation techniques are successfully used. If we go back to D. Goleman's book, he mentions a study by a group of Israeli scientists who "found that teaching loving kindness to people, especially those prone to self-criticism, reduced self-harm and increased self-compassion." (“Loving-kindness” is a type of meditation.) However, different meditative practices affect our brain in different ways: “When practicing compassion, the amygdala increases in volume, while when focusing on, for example, breathing, it shrinks “But, as I understand it, even if the amygdala is enlarged, its role in a person practicing compassion meditation is different from the role of an enlarged amygdala in a person who is not familiar with this practice. “Instead of teaching how to simply share the feelings of anxiety of another person, training compassion activated completely different parts of the brain responsible for heartfelt care. As a result, the participants experienced positive feelings and resistance to stress.” I’ll tell you a little about the neurobiology of stress, very little and very simplified. All information coming from our senses ends up in the amygdala, from there it goes to the prefrontal cortex, from which the signal moves to the hippocampus, where and there is a decision, a “remembering”, whether this situation is dangerous or not. The hippocampus regulates when to stop the stress response. The production of excess cortisol has a neurotoxic effect on the hippocampus, destroying its neurons. Our brain is beautiful and has neuroplasticity and the hippocampus can be restored, but while cortisol is affecting it, this is difficult to do. And now how I understand the effect of meditation. At the moment of meditation, our body goes into a relaxed state and the cortisol bombardment stops, giving our hippocampus a break. But this, friends, is already my fantasy. Perhaps this is not entirely true. What is not my fantasy is the role of meditation in reducing anxiety, increasing the ability to concentrate and the ability to be compassionate, without destroying oneself. In my channel, I publish various meditative, relaxation and imaginative techniques