If you name your emotions, you can tame them

A new brain imaging study reveals why verbalizing our feelings makes our sadness, anger and pain less intense. Another study, combines modern neuroscience with ancient Buddhist teachings to provide the first neural evidence for why "mindfulness" --- the ability to live in the present moment, without distraction --- seems to produce a variety of health benefits.

Brain scans show that putting negative emotions into words calms the brain's emotion center. That could explain meditation’s purported emotional benefits, because people who meditate often label their negative emotions in an effort to “let them go.”

Meditation and other “mindfulness” techniques are designed to help people pay more attention to their present emotions, thoughts and sensations without reacting strongly to them. Meditators often acknowledge and name their negative emotions in order to “let them go.”

When the team compared brain scans from subjects who had more mindful dispositions to those from subjects who were less mindful, they found a stark difference—the mindful subjects experienced greater activation in the right ventrolateral prefrontral cortex and a greater calming effect in the amygdala after labeling their emotions.

(Read the complete story: Yahoo News)