Allison Ildefonso
Features Reporter

Photo by Mike Wong

It sounds too good to be true. Something that is done for less than 45 minutes a day decreases blood pressure, lowers stress and anxiety levels and even causes your brain to age at a slower rate.

All it requires is breathing.

All of those benefits and more are a result of practicing meditation, the seemingly simple act of spending time in quiet thought.

“It is an extremely difficult accomplishment to be able to meditate,” LaVaun O’Connor said. “Most of us have been conditioned from an early age to do everything but still our minds.”

O’Connor practices meditation every morning and night and has been studying since 2004. She completed two teacher training programs, which allow her to facilitate and teach various levels of meditation. O’Connor is now one of several meditation teachers at Yoga West Collective, a wellness community in Grand Junction that offers a wide variety of yoga classes, meditation classes and other workshops for the promotion of mental, physical and emotional well-being.

She currently teaches an hour-long beginning meditation class on Mondays at 7 p.m.  The class includes a step-by-step method for beginners interested in learning how to meditate as well as those who already have an existing meditation practice. O’Connor goes over the basics of relaxation techniques and guides participants through two periods of five-minute meditation with an invitation in between to join in on light, peaceful singing as well.

“Meditation can be used interchangeably with whatever your religion or spiritual preference,” O’Connor said. “In its basic form, it is practiced in order to experience the inner quiet and for the purpose of receiving the many benefits it has to offer.”

A study in 2005 by researchers at Yale, Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded that meditation practice has the ability to change and increase any person’s gray matter, according to ScienceDaily.com. This increase in the thickness of the cortical walls is what can cause a person’s brain to age slower than one that does not practice meditation.

In one study about the Transcendental Meditation technique, researchers found that university students who meditated regularly for 40 days showed “improved clustering in short term memory, indicating increased organization of the thinking process.” College students who meditated also showed a significant increase in GPA over the next three grading periods after the study was conducted.

Meditation also helps students study easier since “the ability to focus clears the mind,” O’Connor said.

In O’Connor’s beginning meditation class, she quietly asks participants to “bring [their] consciousness from the top of the head to the bridge of the nose,” then stretch the eyes and body gently. Yoga West Collective also offers regular meditation retreats that people of all levels are welcome to attend.

arildefonso@mavs.coloradomesa.edu