Purpose of meditation?

Meditation serves several purposes based on the type and duration of practice.

1. Enhancing Attention: Meditation, particularly focused attention meditation, involves a high attentional load. It requires a lot of prefrontal cortical activity involved in attention. This can improve your attention ability, especially if you meditate daily.

2. Improving Memory and Learning: Daily meditation of around 13 minutes can enhance your ability to pay attention and learn, thereby enhancing memory. However, it's important to note that these effects start to show up after at least eight weeks of consistent practice.

3. Inducing Calmness: While meditation does require focus, it also tends to put us into a calm, very focused state.

4. Boosting Creativity: Open observer meditation, where you purposefully don't include a target in your mind, can be a method for restoring our ability to engage in focus and for enhancing creativity and creative problem solving.

Remember, the time of day you meditate can also impact its effects. For instance, meditating too late in the day can inhibit your ability to fall asleep due to increased activity in the prefrontal cortex.