Aspergers and Meditation

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This might possibly fit better in another sub-forum, but I think I'll post it here.

It has been well documented that meditation has had positive effects on the human psyche in general, I haven't heard anything about the effects of meditation on Aspies and Auties, but I'd imagine that the results would be the same.

Anyways recently, I discovered a huge benefit for myself after a change in my meditative life. A week or two ago, I started praying all 20 decades of the rosary everyday, (As opposed to 5 decades everyday, which is the common practice among most Catholics, although that was actually expected only of children, not adults) and it led to huge boost in my college work, and other aspects my life. As an Apsie, I have a hard time focusing and reading things because my mind tends to wonder due to my big imagination.

When one prays the rosary, he/she needs to focus on the various mysteries as one prays. I discovered that, when I balance out praying the rosary and reading either college work, or other material, I was able to get a lot farther than usual. This I believe, is because praying the rosary, and meditating on the mysteries helps feed my imagination, when I'm done my imagination is full and I can employ the rational part of my intellect to reading, thus throughout the day, I alternate between praying 5 decades, then reading, then praying the next 5 decades etc. It is been an immense boost in my life. Has anyone else found similar improvements in their lives for doing meditative practice like this? What do we know about Aspergers and meditation?

I practice zazen, which, among other things, has made me much less reactive, both to external stressors and the negative self-talk inside my head. It's like space opens up between stimulus and response, allowing me time to choose a more thoughtful, adaptive response to a situation, rather than my usual reflexive knee-jerk reaction. The practice of focusing exclusively upon this present moment, rather than worrying about the future or regretting the past, and a commitment to objective reality just as it is, not as I wish it was, has helped considerably with my excessive rumination, ADD, and clinical depression.
I've tried nembutsu, nam myoho renge kyo, and omani padme hum chanting practice, but I don't think I derived anywhere near the benefit from them as I have of zazen.

You have to think of it this way - your brain's performance in a lot of ways is about as good as whatever it's used to routinely doing. While I don't think it's profound enough of a difference to cause profound spikes or drops in IQ I would say that habits matter and meditation is a habit of that type.

I personally do find meditation useful but I also think contemplation and introspection (as long as the later is intelligent and emotionally self-destructive) are equally helpful. While there's a lot of your brain that you yourself don't get to program and which is governed by genes, your endocrine system, and the like you have a particular quantity of your frontal lobe where it seems to be the case that you can significantly prune synapses, get rid of bad ideas, streamline the good ideas for efficiency, and get a lot of horsepower out of your brain as well as a lot more peace in handling the stresses that come up. For the last half of that point I think Sam Harris puts it well - ie. that difficult situations, annoyances, and the stings and barbs of life still hurt but the kinds of self-talk that perpetuates that internally significantly decreases and your emotional and mental health are improved by that accordingly.

I’ve found practicing mindfulness meditation helpful when dealing with intense emotions. It’s like hitting the reset button on my brain, but it’s not foolproof. You can’t do it once & expect results. Although individual results may vary.
Meditation is part of my daily routine.

I love old threads, I'm gonna give meditation a go or make it more of a habit.