What is meditation?
What are the Benefits of Meditation?
How meditation is beneficial to human health?
Meditation isn’t about becoming a different person, a new person, or even a better person. It’s about training in awareness and getting a healthy sense of perspective. You’re not trying to turn off your thoughts or feelings. You’re learning to observe them without judgment. And eventually, you may start to better understand them as well.As a practice of mind and body, meditation focuses on the interaction among the body, brain, soul, and your behavior.
How do you learn to meditate?
In mindfulness meditation, we’re learning how to pay attention to the breath as it goes in and out, and notice when the mind wanders from this task. This practice of returning to the breath builds the muscles of attention and mindfulness.
When we pay attention to our breath, we are learning how to return to, and remain in, the present moment—to anchor ourselves in the here and now on purpose, without judgement.
In mindfulness practice, we are learning how to return to, and remain in, the present moment—to anchor ourselves in the here and now on purpose, without judgement.
The idea behind mindfulness seems simple—the practice takes patience. Indeed, renowned meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg recounts that her first experience with meditation showed her how quickly the mind gets caught up in other tasks. “I thought, okay, what will it be, like, 800 breaths before my mind starts to wander?
And to my absolute amazement, it was one breath, and I’d be gone,” says Salzberg.
meditation has been used as an effective technique to work with the mind, and also to provide relaxation, well-being and better health. Long before the advent of modern science and medicine, dedicated meditators from a variety of spiritual traditions had already discovered the tremendous benefits of their practice.
Beyond its original spiritual purpose, today’s stressful lifestyles have inspired an ever-increasing number of people to practice meditation for health reasons. A growing corpus of research studies link meditation and physical and mental health.
6 Health benefits of meditation:
With meditation, the physiology undergoes a change and every cell in the body is filled with more prana (energy). This results in joy, peace, enthusiasm as the level of prana in the body increases.
On a physical level, meditation:
Lowers high blood pressure
Lowers the levels of blood lactate, reducing anxiety attacks
Decreases any tension-related pain, such as, tension headaches, ulcers, insomnia, muscle and joint problems
Increases serotonin production that improves mood and behavior
Improves the immune system
Increases the energy level, as you gain an inner source of energy.
I am going to mention a few benefits of meditation and hopefully get you started on a daily meditation routine.
1. Reduces Stress
Stress reduction is one of the most common reasons people try meditation.
Meditation not only calms you down but also shifts your awareness to a higher level. As a result, you don't react to situations out of emotions, thus moving you into a better state of mind. An enhanced awareness attracts peaceful situations.
One study including over 3,500 adults showed that it lives up to its reputation for stress reduction (1Trusted Source).
Normally, mental and physical stress cause increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol. This produces many of the harmful effects of stress, such as the release of inflammation-promoting chemicals called cytokines.
These effects can disrupt sleep, promote depression and anxiety, increase blood pressure and contribute to fatigue and cloudy thinking.
In an eight-week study, a meditation style called "mindfulness meditation" reduced the inflammation response caused by stress (2).
Another study in nearly 1,300 adults demonstrated that meditation may decrease stress. Notably, this effect was strongest in individuals with the highest levels of stress (3Trusted Source).
Research has shown that meditation may also improve symptoms of stress-related conditions, including irritable bowel syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder and fibromyalgia (4Trusted Source, 5Trusted Source, 6, 7, 8Trusted Source).
Many styles of meditation can help reduce stress. Meditation can also reduce symptoms in people with stress-triggered medical conditions.
2. Good Health
It is a proven fact that people who meditate regularly visit doctors much less than those who don't practice meditation. An ancient technique called Yoga Nidra has been proven very helpful in health related issues.
3. Reduction of Sleep Hours
This is one of the very little know benefits of meditation. It's always the quality of sleep that matters, and not the quantity. With regular meditation, your sleep hours would be reduced, yet you will be energized and active like never before. Advanced meditators can sleep for just three hours and still feel a sense of deep relaxation and energized alertness.
4. Less Negative Thoughts
The benefits of meditation are incredibly diverse. One example is that with meditation, you will develop very sharp senses. Negative thoughts are like cancer cells. They keep on growing and eventually kill the system. A daily meditation helps you to clearly be watchful of your thoughts and choose only the positive thoughts.
5. More Strength and Intuition
Meditation on the Agya Chakra (third eye) helps to develop intuition and strengthen willpower. What used to take five hours before may only take you two hours. Your decisions will be very fast and highly accurate. Right thought at the right time is one of the effortless results of daily meditation.
6. Healthy Relationships
You will be able to develop a deeper sense of understanding with your partner and other relationships will be strengthened. I highly recommend that family members meditate together at least once a week. This brings in an aura of harmony and unconditional love.
7. Magnetic Personality
Meditation makes you more attractive. This might sound like a daring statement, but people will feel that you are more confident, stronger and health. This makes you attractive to others. This power of attraction is great for people who work television, media and other jobs that involve being in touch with many people.
8. Less Frustration
Situations that used to upset or frustrate you will no longer make you feel so. You will realize the stupidity of indulging in such minor matters. As Buddha said, "People still curse me. But I have stopped accepting it." You are no more at mercy of circumstances when you become self-realized through meditation.
9. Prevention of Senility
After the age of 40, our brain cells die off at a rate of 100,000 per day. Regular meditation helps to reduce this rate, slowing the deterioration of body and mind associated with old age.
10. Change in Outlook
Your perception of the world changes in this journey of meditation. You will no longer look at the world as a place of frustration and worries. Rather, the world becomes a land of opportunities unfolding every single day.
11. Increased creativity
Researchers from Leiden University have been studying how open-monitoring meditation with focused attention can help to improve a person’s creativity after. What they found was interesting.
They discovered that those who practiced open-monitoring meditation performed much better on a specific task when they were assigned to come up with any new ideas.
Meditation has been known to increase and encourage the type of thinking known as divergent thinking, which allows you to come up with the biggest number of solutions to any given problem, another component of creativity.
12. Decreased anxiety levels
Meditation has also been shown to decrease the anxiety levels in those who practice it regularly. When we are meditating we begin to loosen the connections of certain neural pathways.
A section of our brain called the medial prefrontal cortex processes the information that we relate to our experience and ourselves.
Typically, the neural pathways from fear and bodily sensations to this section of the brain are strong. Therefore, when you are in a scary situation, this will trigger a very strong reaction in that portion of your brain, which in turn makes you feel anxious and unsettled.
When you do meditate, you will weaken this connection, which will allow you to react differently to the same situations.
Another added benefit to weakening this connection is you will now give strength to the Assessment Center of your brain, which is known for its reasoning. Therefore, you will be better able to respond calmly to potentially nerve-wrecking situations.
13. Improved memory
Those who practice meditation are better able to filter out distractions and increase productivity.
This ability to ignore background distractions helps one quickly remember and use new facts.
becomesy More Benefits of
Meditation...
As you can see, the benefits of meditation are plenty. These benefits are just the tip of the iceberg. Regular meditation will give you amazing success in every aspect of your life. A time will come when you will realize that meditation is even more important than everything else you have been doing because with meditation, you will do all of your work with even greater ease. All the best!
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