Meditation can be described best as thoughtful awareness. Many people mistakenly believe that to meditate is to clear your mind. Instead, true meditation is the practice of calming your mind while increasing thoughtfulness and awareness. Another misconception is that you must sit and be alone to meditate, but it is actually possible to meditate while doing tasks or while sitting still. The practice of meditation has countless mental health benefits such as stress reduction and an elevated mood. By including meditation in your daily routine, you can also improve your physical health by boosting your immune system and even reducing pain. These benefits may seem far-fetched, but they are backed up by thousands of different research studies. Learn more about the health benefits of meditation below.
Mental Health Benefits
The main effect of meditation is that it allows you to focus more fully on your thoughts and feelings rather than being distracted by other things. When you enter this state during meditation, your mood is often elevated as your anxiety and stress decreases. Meditating can lead to emotional stability and peace of mind, which brings increased creativity, clarity and happiness. This can make it easier to focus and solve problems, while also feeling calmer and more centered.
Physical Health Benefits
The practice of meditating affects your brain waves, which results in many positive effects on a physical level. When you meditate, the brain waves associated with coherence, otherwise known as alpha waves, increase. On the other hand, beta brain waves, which activate when you process information, decrease. In other words, you become less aware of external stimuli in your surroundings when you meditate, which allows you to focus more fully on your thoughts. In a state of mindfulness such as this, it is common for your blood pressure to decrease. Similarly, your blood lactate level, which can trigger anxiety attacks when too high, may be reduced through meditation.
Meditating can also have a profound effect on tension-related pain. Having poor posture, being under stress or sleeping poorly can all lead to pain. If you suffer from chronic stiff muscles and joints, particularly in your neck and back, meditating can help provide relief. When used in combination with other treatments, such as chiropractic care, meditation can be even more beneficial.
How to Start Practicing Meditation
Even with the numerous benefits of meditation, it is often difficult to get into the habit of meditating. If you want to try meditation as a method for improving your mental and physical health, it may be easiest to start with just a few minutes a day. There are still benefits to meditating just once, but you can reap even more of the positive effects by making this a daily or weekly practice. It is also important to understand that meditating is difficult for many people, and it is easy to give up if you feel like you aren’t good at it. However, mediation is a practice and the point is to constantly improve.
It is important to understand that while meditation is highly beneficial, it is not a cure-all. It is easier to succeed with your meditation goals when you set realistic expectations and use meditation in combination with other healthy practices.