When you get tired  or maybe just bored, you long for a cup of coffee that will make you alert and awake. And slowly you start depending on the rush of adrenalin generated by coffee. Do you know that this popular drink constantly stimulates the production of adrenaline and puts excessive wear and tear on the adrenal glands?

Now you need depend on coffee, for meditation is proved more effective than naps, exercise or caffeine to make people more alert. These are the results of recent research when researchers tested the alertness of some volunteers in Boston. A new study suggests that the benefits of meditation are measurable. The results were presented at a recent conference of the Society for Neuroscience.

Sara Lazar at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and colleagues have used MRI to compare 15 meditators, with experience ranging from 1 to 30 years, and 15 non-meditators. They found that meditating actually increases the thickness of the cortex in areas involved in attention and sensory processing.

"You are exercising it while you meditate, and it gets bigger," she says. The finding is in line with studies showing that accomplished musicians, athletes and linguists all have thickening in relevant areas of the cortex."

That means ancient yogis weren't just sitting there doing nothing!  Meditation is a highly creative and subtle activity that develops the capacity of the brain and nourishes it. Up to now science was not well-equipped to measure these effects and therefore meditators were looked down upon as "good for nothings," but now slowly it is being proved that meditation has a very positive influence on the brain.In fact everybody in these stressed times should devote some time to meditating  to regain their peace.

Meditation has not gone mainstream because it is associated with renunciation, religion or escapism. Actually meditation is the fitness of body-mind-soul which has to be included in your daily fitness regime.

Osho prescribes meditation unequivocally to everybody : "The mind of a meditator is far more brilliant, far more intelligent, far more alive, sensitive, than the mind of a non-meditator, because the mind of a meditator has a few periods of deep rest that rejuvenates it. If you see a meditator and he is not intelligent, that simply means he is not a meditator at all. A meditator cannot be stupid, a meditator cannot be mediocre; that is impossible. If he is a meditator, then he will radiate sharpness, intelligence, brilliance. He will be a genius, he will be creative.

"In fact, if we can create more and more meditators in the world, in every dimension of life there will be more creativity, more intelligence, less stupidity, less lethargy."