4 Ways Meditation Can Make You Feel Happier

How meditation can help you strengthen your brain, reduce stress and make you more positive

Elizabeth Marglin

Updated September 28, 2022

A group of people in a park meditating during a yoga class

Meditation can help you strengthen your brain

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Meditation accentuates the positive by curbing our stress response.
Meditation can strengthen the part of the brain linked to positive emotion and engagement.

Can meditating make you feel happier? Yes, in the broadest sense of “happy.” Science is starting to catch up with what monks, meditators and mystics have known for thousands of years: Quieting the mind can significantly increase contentment, expand perspective and improve quality of life. A raft of studies has shown which parts of the brain respond and even change under the influence of meditation. If you are intimidated by the idea of a meditation practice, take a deep breath — that’s how simple meditating can be. The core of just about all contemplative practice, says Rick Hanson, psychologist and author of Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom, is “sustaining attention, calming down, staying present and resting your mind on something beautiful and wholesome. You pull your mind away from the ordinary cares and concerns, resentments and ruminations of a typical day.”

Happiness, on the other hand, is more difficult to define, says Sara Lazar, a meditator and neuroscientist at Harvard. It includes a slew of positive emotions related to our well-being. Most of the quantifiable measures have to do with stress levels, which can indicate the absence of anxiety or depression, she says. “For decades, psychology just focused on negative mood states, so we have really good definitions for anxiety and depression, but the positive mood states are not as well-characterized.” If we expand happiness to include resiliency, positive orientation to others and self-regulation, a compelling body of research suggests meditation plays a significant role in rewiring our brains — for the better. Here’s how.

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1. Improved mental performance

Even just eight weeks of meditation can help you grow a bigger, stronger brain. Lazar and other researchers conducted a landmark 2011 study, published in Psychiatry Research, in which participants who underwent an eight-week mindfulness practice had increased gray matter density in brain regions involved in learning and memory processes. The flood of new connections, synapses and blood flow that the study speculates happens during meditation may beef up the cortex. A thicker cortex is associated with better emotional regulation, attention and memory, says Hanson. An earlier study by Lazar, published in Neuroreport, suggested that older, long-term meditators had thicker cortexes than nonmeditators. This is especially relevant because aging causes cortical thinning. It’s possible, Hanson says, that a thicker cortex can also help reverse the loss of memory and attention that tend to accompany aging.

2. Enhanced empathy

Lazar’s groundbreaking 2011 study showed that meditation also increased activity in the insula, the region of the brain related to our awareness of ourselves and others. “When you tune into your gut feelings, you stimulate the insula and make it stronger,” says Hanson. “It’s the classic idea that neurons that fire together, wire together.” A more robust insula, several studies suggest, corresponds with a greater capacity to understand the emotional states of others. This kind of pro-social orientation is a key contributor to our sense of well-being. “Empathy helps you shift perspective and see things from another point of view,” Lazar says. “A broader perspective happens naturally with age, but meditation amplifies, in a positive way, the wisdom that comes with aging.”

3. Reduced stress

Not only can meditation grow a happier brain, it can also shrink a stressed one. Another study, coauthored by Lazar and published in Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience, suggests that reduced stress is linked to a smaller amygdala size. Sometimes called the “fear hub” of the brain, the amygdala plays a key role in processing emotion and activates the fight-or-flight response to danger or stress. In the study, a group of stressed individuals participated in an eight-week mindfulness intervention. After the intervention, subjects reported feeling less stressed and had less amygdala density. How does less stress make us happier? When the stress response is calmed, says Hanson, we can orient to something more wholesome. “As you get better at regulating, you can stop the vicious cycle of stress, which marinates us in unhappiness, through cortisol,” the stress hormone. Stress changes the brain by sensitizing us to unhappiness — the more stress we have, the more predisposed to it we are, he says.

4. Pumped up positivity

Meditation can also shape the brain by making it asymmetrical, a pattern that’s associated with positive emotion. A 2011 study out of the University of Wisconsin showed that meditation training for right-handed people over a five-week period was linked to increased activity in the left prefrontal cortex. Previous studies have found that stimulation in this area of the brain is linked to optimism and positive emotions. In other words, when we are happy, the left frontal lobe is more active. “Meditation can lessen negative emotional reactions,” says Hanson. “It hard-wires calm well-being into our brains.”

Learn more about the research in this article

• "Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation," Psychosomatic Medicine, July 2003. Researchers measured brain electrical activity in 25 people before and four months after they had completed an eight-week mindfulness meditation training program, and in 16 people who did not participate in the program. After the eight-week period, participants received a flu vaccine. There was increased activation in the left side of the brain, which is linked to positive emotion, and a higher antibody response to the vaccine in those who took part in the meditation program. Read a summary of the study. (A fee is required to access the full study.)

• "Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness," NeuroReport, November 2005. Researchers compared the thickness in areas of the cerebral cortex among 20 experienced meditators and 15 people with no meditation or yoga experience. In the meditators, they found changes in areas of the brain related to sensory, cognitive, and emotional processing. Read a summary of the study. (A fee is required to access the full study.)

• "Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density," Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, January 2011. This study compared MRI scans of 16 people, ages 25 to 55, who completed an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction course, and 17 people who didn't take the course. The scans of the mindfulness course participants showed increased gray matter in the left hippocampus, compared with those of the control group. Read a summary of the study. (A fee is required to access the full study.)

• "Stress reduction correlates with structural changes in the amygdala," Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, March 2010. For this study, 26 adults who reported high levels of stress took an eight-week course in mindfulness-based stress reduction. Brain scans before and after showed a correlation between changes in perceived stress and changes in gray matter density in the right amygdala. Larger decreases in stress were associated with larger decreases in density. Read the full study.