The study closed when Rinpoche was 41, and it showed that he had the brain scans of an average 33-year-old, suggesting that meditating daily slowed aging in his brain by eight years as compared to those who didn’t.
Other studies have shown meditation might slow aging and sharpen your mind, and it’s particularly useful when it comes to reducing stress. But let’s consider that carrying stress in your body longterm can impact your overall health. We’re talking heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, not to mention the ways it can aggravate anxiety and depression.
But those are just the core benefits of meditation. There’s even a little bit of research that meditation can help with your period woes (although I will need to try that out tonight and get back to you later). And if you don’t feel that the stereotype of straight-up sitting still and emptying your mind is right for you, there are plenty of different types of meditation to experiment with.
You may not have the discipline of a literal Buddhist monk to be doing meditation day-in-day-out for hours and hours. But what you do have right now is the time. And since adding a meditative practice to your daily ritual might help you have even more time down the line, well, what are you waiting for?