This is episode 2013 of your daily guided meditation.

How are you doing today?

And how is your challenge coming along?

Are you releasing distractions?

Today is the next to the last episode of our series.

And you may have noticed at this point as you look back

and reflect on the awareness you've gained from the different distractions in your own life

what may be causing these distractions. You may also have discovered that it could have

to do with some of your lifestyle habits. If you can structure your day to where you're less likely to have some of these distractions I think you will find

that you are able to have more mental focus and distractions fade away and I'll share a little

with you about how this works in your brain.

I'm going to share with you some research from psychology today.

It's from an article titled, Brain Scans show how meditation improves mental focus.

Meditators have stable brains and stable thoughts.

And this is by Dr. Joshua Goen. In this study, he compares groups of meditators.

And what he notices is that compared to non-meditators, meditators have more stability in their ventral

posterioral medial cortex, otherwise known as the VPMC.

This is a region linked to spontaneous thoughts and mind-wandering.

And this lies on the underside of the brain in the middle of your head,

this area called the VPMC.

He says that this area is important for mental focus because in most people it's almost always

active. But in meditators, the research indicates that meditators have some activity in their VPMC but there's increased stability in meditators

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