When it comes to living a stress free lifestyle, meditation has been a powerful tool for it. meditation has been used as an effective technique to work with our minds, which also provides relaxation.
There are so many reasons why people try meditating. Also, for some it is part of a spiritual journey and has to do with expansion of awareness and how they perceive and experience life. Some simply want to relax, and this benefit of meditation is self-evident. Other people are interested in the benefits of meditation for health and general well-being.
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However, this article outlines 17 Facts About The Benefits Of Meditation That Will Make You Think Twice
1. Meditation Helps to Cope With Stress
In a high-stress job, such as one in the health field, techniques that derive from meditation help to not only help with stress but with mental health in the long run.
Meditation based practices help college students cope with stress and allow them to be more forgiving.
When in the larger scheme of things, group meditation helped students to cope with stressful times and give them a sense of hope.
Biologically, meditation affects the subiculum of the hippocampus, which regulates stress.
Meditation can be helpful for improving mood and decreasing distress but it’s primarily effective at reducing distracting thoughts.
2. Meditation Helps To Deal With Addiction
Study have shown that meditators had significantly more neural density, cortical thickness, and overall activity within their prefrontal cortexes.
What does this mean for people wanting to overcome addiction?
Meditation will stimulate and train your brain to be happy and “naturally high”, without the need for alcohol, prescriptions, marijuana, drugs, cigarettes, or any other addictive substance to feel good.
Meditation also supercharges the brain and body with endorphins, another super pleasurable natural brain chemical. The effect is so strong, in fact, that the so called “meditator’s high” has shown to be stronger than the well-known “runner’s high.”
Meditators have been happy, addiction free folks for millennium.
3. It Boosts Memory
Meditation cultivates and promotes the alertness of the mind and this matters a lot when it comes to the intelligence level that is considered high or of the appropriate percentage. There are different ways of improving a person’s IQ such as regular meditation.
Meditation helps in improving cognitive functions and reducing psychological stress responses. It also helps in reducing rate of forgetfulness.
4. It Lowers blood pressure
People who practice meditation for health also have the added advantage of reducing their skyrocketing blood pressure. Experts believe that meditation reduces the body’s responsiveness to cortisol and other stress hormones, similar to how blood pressure reducing medications work. It’s one of the amazing advantages of meditation.
This is because relaxation results in the formation of nitric oxide, which opens up your blood vessels.
Meditation is an excellent way to help reduce high blood pressure naturally. When we meditate, our stress levels fall significantly, and all the systems within the body begin to normalize. The result is a reduction of high blood pressure.
Also, without any negative side effects and a plethora of other benefits, meditation can also be the catalyst for a whole host of lifestyle changes which will make you healthier overall.
5. It Helps In The Reviving Of Emotional Wellness
Some people are haunted by a tortured or traumatized past. They suffer from unhealthy emotional states that are hard to understand. Luckily, meditation helps to revive emotional balance by gradually cleansing the consciousness of hidden emotionally charged memories. As a result, people who meditate end up experiencing more freedom and a greater sense of balance. The link between meditation and health has never been more apparent.
6. It slows Down Aging
Meditation has been proven to be the fountain of youth in it’s affect on aging in a number of ways, including better digestion and sleep. In addition, medical research has proven that patients who use meditation regularly show increases in the amount of melatonin produced in their bodies.
Melatonin is a very beneficial hormone which slows the aging process, energizes the immune system and retards the natural damage to cells characteristic of aging. Melatonin can also help those who are aging get more recuperative sleep, have more energy, and it can even undermine the advance of certain cancers. In every way, the increased production of melatonin due to meditation is a huge benefit to our bodies.
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7. Helps To Improves self-confidence
Our self-confidence is built on the stories we have about ourselves, so just as meditation helps us develop self-acceptance, it also works to build our self-esteem. When negative thoughts or feelings about ourselves come up during meditation, we practice simply noticing them in the moment. Over time, this leaves us better able to handle negative internal dialogue outside of meditation too.
8. Treats Insomnia
Lack of sleep can lead to serious health implications including fatigue and lack of appetite. Persons suffering from insomnia rely on sleeping pills to assist them in sleeping. Some have even tried sticking to a regular sleeping pattern but still, the condition persists.
Studies have been conducted to test the effect of meditation on sleep patterns and the results suggest that regular practice of mindfulness meditation may help in developing ways to work with nocturnal symptoms and waking consequences of chronic insomnia.
9. Meditation helps eliminate nightmares
This may look a bit strange, some may say that this is not true, but hang on. For people who suffer from horrendous nightmares each night, cannabis can actually help.
It disturbs the sleep cycle by actively interrupting the later stages of the REM or the Rapid Eye Movement sleep (the part of sleep you see dreams in). THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol) was used on various war veterans suffering from PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder)and results were in favor
10. Meditation helps you lose weight
Meditation gets your mind and body deeply connected so they can communicate effectively. In essence, your mind becomes more in tune with your body and its needs. One of the biggest causes for weight gain is mindless eating.
Also, through meditation, you can practice mindful eating where you really learn to honor body’s appetite and prevent yourself from over-eating. The more in touch your mind becomes with your body, the easier it is to stay healthy, eat right, and maintain or lose weight.
11. It improves concentration
Meditation is essentially a practice on concentration. Once we learn to concentrate on our breath, notice when we get caught up in thoughts, and return our concentration to our breath, we can translate that skill into any number of settings we choose.
Through regular meditation, we also get used to shifting our attention back to the task at hand when it strays.
12. Meditation makes you more productive
If you’re somebody who struggles with ADD (attention deficit disorder) and can never sit still, meditation is the most effective natural remedy to help you focus and productive.
Meditation helps you stay in the present moment so that you can ignore distractions. This leads to greater productivity, focus, awareness, clarity, and better decision making.
13. Greater Sense of Self-Awareness
Meditation allows us to mentally take inventory of our bodies. How does our body feel in the present moment? What amazing things is our body capable of? Do we feel strong or weak? What can we do to remedy anything that aches in our body?
Also, much like the physical practice of yoga, meditation helps you establish a stronger connection between mind and body. Through this greater sense of self-awareness, we cultivate present moment awareness which allows us to remain present, grounded, and focused in all aspects and every moment of our lives.
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14. Meditation can relieve you off Arthritis
For people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, cannabis can serve as a boon. Various independent researchers have found that cannabis induces sleep and reduces the pain and inflammation when taken optimally.
While some people previously argued that cannabis for arthritis is a mere placebo, recent studies have shunned that idea.
15. Meditation Increases Quality Of Life
Meditation increased the quality of life and improved physical and mental health. It, therefore, helped to positively benefit people with Multiple Sclerosis (Systematic review).
Also, for those with fibromyalgia, meditation does show moderate improvement in symptoms.
Meditation helped cancer patients with dealing with the stress that comes with illness.
It can activate cortical areas of the brain to relieve symptoms of ADHD (Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) and improve focus.
Meditation programs showed effective improvement in symptoms and coping mechanism in patients with fibromyalgia.
16. Meditation Helps Emotional Stability
Those who meditate have a larger right hippocampus. Also, since these regions are related to emotional control, this implies that meditation enhances emotional stability and regulation .
Also, the more years that you meditate, the folding of the brain (cortical gyrification) increases, which helps to integrate cognitive processing .
By activating the angular cingulate cortex, meditation helps with emotional processing .
17. It improves self-acceptance
When we meditate, we become more aware of, and more capable of controlling, our thoughts. A key part of meditation revolves around noticing our thoughts without judging them or getting caught up in their stories or meanings.
Also, this helps us to develop a different perspective on our internal dialogue, develop a greater understanding of ourselves, and practice noticing our thoughts and feelings without attaching meaning or judgment to them.
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