In preparing for the LSAT, students usually focus on mastering logical reasoning, reading comprehension, and logic games. However, an often-overlooked factor that can significantly impact your performance is your mental state. This brings us to an unconventional, but very effective tool for LSAT prep—meditation.
Just as athletes use mental conditioning to enhance their physical performance, aspiring law students can use meditation techniques to improve the capacities central to the LSAT. Imagine stepping into the test center, your heart rate steady, your mind clear, and your focus razor-sharp – meditation can make this happen.
Meditation can be incredibly helpful for the LSAT.
Get 5 Hours of LSAT Tutoring RISK-FREE!
What is Meditation?
In its essence, meditation is a technique designed to train your mind. At its core, the practice revolves around a few basic principles:
- Mindfulness: This involves being present and fully engaging with the here and now.
- Focus: Concentration is key in meditation. Whether you’re focusing on your breath, a mantra, or an object, the idea is to train your mind to stay put.
- Equanimity: Meditation teaches you to observe your thoughts and feelings without judgment, fostering a balanced emotional state.
Here are some commonly practiced forms:
- Mindfulness Meditation: This popular form involves paying attention to your thoughts and sensations in a non-judgmental manner.
- Transcendental Meditation: This involves repeating a mantra to enter a state of focused calmness.
- Zen Meditation (Zazen): This form hails from Buddhism and involves specific postures and breathing techniques.
- Loving-kindness Meditation: This aims to cultivate feelings of compassion and love, both for oneself and others.
The Relevance of Meditation to the LSAT
Mental sharpness, focus, and emotional balance—qualities developed through meditation—are the ones that you need to have in order to do well on the LSAT. Your mind has to juggle multiple pieces of information, analyze them, and make connections—all under time pressure. And just like a juggler needs impeccable hand-eye coordination, you need focus, mental clarity, and the ability to not let your emotions dictate your performance.
- Increased Focus: The LSAT demands concentration. Whether you are analyzing a complex argument or spotting the missing variable in a logic game, your ability to focus can be the difference between a correct answer and a mistake. One of the first things that you develop with meditation is focus.
- Better Stress Management: The LSAT is emotionally draining; you have the stress from thinking about its importance, you have stress from having to put in hours of studying, you have stress from getting things wrong, etc. Meditation trains you to develop the emotional resilience to handle this, and that allows you to be much more effective.
- Improved Logical Reasoning Skills: Meditation can also improve your logical reasoning capacities. By improving your ability to focus and reducing cognitive noise and distractions, you can more easily understand arguments, recognize the overall structure and connections, and be more clear on the relationships in a logic game.
Several studies have shown that meditation can significantly improve focus, memory, and analytical skills—all crucial for LSAT success. In a recent study individuals who practiced meditation outperformed non-meditators in tests requiring cognitive flexibility.
How exactly does meditation accomplish all this? Meditation has been shown to:
- Alter Brain Waves: Meditation can transition the brain from high-frequency beta waves, associated with stress and anxiety, to lower-frequency alpha and theta waves, linked to relaxation and heightened focus.
- Reduce Cortisol Levels: Cortisol, the ‘stress hormone,’ can disrupt your cognitive functions. Meditation helps in reducing cortisol levels, thereby enhancing your ability to think clearly.
- Enhance Cognitive Function: Research has shown that meditation can increase the density of grey matter in parts of the brain associated with memory and learning.
As you start to prepare for the LSAT, consider meditation as an essential part of your toolbox.
How to Meditate
The best place to start is mindfulness meditation. The practice involves sitting in a comfortable position, closing your eyes, and paying attention to your breath. Simply try and be aware of the different sensations at the tip of your nose without visualizing or analyzing them. Just try and focus on the different sensations and how they feel. As your mind wanders—because it will—you gently bring it back to your breath, training it to stay present. When you catch yourself thinking about something else try and shift your attention to the sensations in your body that are associated with the emotions of what you were thinking about, recognize them, and then shift your focus back to your breath.
What you’ll find, if you do this consistently, is that over time as you sit down to do anything that requires focus you’re going to get much better at recognizing when you’re about to space out because you’ve trained yourself to pay attention to precisely that moment when you’re spacing out. And you’ll also find that it’s much easier to come back to what you were focused on because it turns out that if you focus on the sensations of an emotion you short-circuit the narrative that the emotion is spinning in your mind. So, if you get bored, whereas earlier you would’ve started day-dreaming about something pleasant to distract you from the discomfort of boredom now you’ll shift your attention to the physical sensation of being bored, you’ll focus on that, you’ll come back to your breath, and you’ll notice that the impulse to daydream is no longer there.
- Start Small: Begin with 5-minute sessions and gradually increase the duration as you become more comfortable.
- Consistency is Key: Try to meditate at the same time every day to make it a habit.
- Create a Quiet Space: Choose a quiet and comfortable area where you won’t be disturbed.
- Practice Before Study Sessions: Meditating before diving into LSAT prep can help you study more effectively, making each session more productive.
Tips for Beginners:
- Don’t Chase Perfection: It’s okay if your mind wanders. The goal is not to eliminate thoughts but to manage them better.
- Be Patient: The benefits of meditation accrue over time. You might not notice immediate improvements, but don’t get discouraged.
Meditation is far more than a mere stress-relief tool; it’s a performance enhancer, a focus sharpener, and an emotional stabilizer. So as you start your LSAT prep, keep in mind that a very useful tool could be venturing inwards and training your mind. Whether it’s a simple breath awareness exercise to calm pre-test nerves or a mindfulness routine to sharpen your focus, the right meditation technique can provide significant benefits.
Get 5 Hours of LSAT Tutoring RISK-FREE!
If you found this blog post useful please share!