This article is a perfect lowdown to the mind-body practice of meditation.  Despite its background being firmly rooted in ancient religion and spiritual tradition, meditation nowadays is widely practiced outside of traditional religious circles as a technique to benefit mind, body and soul.

Find out the background to meditation and the proven benefits and results it has to offer.

 

The Benefits of Meditation

By Alex

April 7th

Meditation for health purposes is a mind-body practice in complementary and alternative medicine. There are many types of meditation, most of which originated in ancient religious and spiritual traditions.

Generally, a person who is meditating uses certain techniques, such as focusing attention (for example, on a word, an object, or the breath); a specific posture; and an open attitude toward distracting thoughts and emotions.

Meditation can be practiced for various reasons–for example, with an intent to increase physical relaxation, mental calmness, and psychological balance; to cope with one or more diseases and conditions; and for overall wellness.

This Backgrounder provides a general introduction to meditation and suggests some resources for finding out more. The term meditation refers to a group of techniques, most of which started in Eastern religious or spiritual traditions. These techniques have been used by many different cultures throughout the world for thousands of years.

Today, many people use meditation outside of its traditional religious or cultural settings, for health and wellness purposes. In meditation, a person learns to focus his attention and suspend the stream of thoughts that normally occupy the mind. This practice is believed to result in a state of greater physical relaxation, mental calmness, and psychological balance.

Practicing meditation can change how a person relates to the flow of emotions and thoughts in the mind. And here is your list of the benefits of meditating. At the bottom of this article you will find links to start learning how to meditate.

Health Improvements

General Health

Improvement of body luster and general health - When your mind focuses on a particular part of the body, the blood flow to that part increases and cells receive more oxygen and other nutrients in abundance. Today, many of the film stars and fashion models include meditation in their daily regime.

Positive Hormones

When practicing meditation, your heart rate and breathing slow down, your blood pressure normalizes, you use oxygen more efficiently and you sweat less. Your adrenal glands produce less cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline, you make more positive hormones, your body ages at a slower rate and your immune function improves.

Your mind also clears and your creativity increases. People who meditate regularly find it easier to give up life-damaging habits like smoking, drinking and drugs.

 

Proven Results

Research shows that meditation can help ease a host of stress-related problems, including chronic pain, headaches, anxiety, PMS, sleep disorders, even infertility. In a study on anxiety at the University of Massachusetts, 20 out of 22 anxiety-prone volunteers showed marked improvement after taking an eight-week class in meditation.

And in a study on headaches, 72 percent of headache sufferers reported moderate to great improvement after learning how to meditate.

 

Cultivate Awareness

Meditation is reported to calm the anxiety that frequently accompanies chronic pain by cultivating awareness. At the Duke University Medical School, psychiatrist Ron Vereen teaches Integrative Medicine students how to use meditation along with mindful breathing as a tool for coping with pain.

Becoming mindful through meditation doesn’t diminish pain but changes one’s understanding and relationship to pain. By removing resistance to pain, the suffering is relieved.

 

Mental Improvements

 

Being at Ease with the World

Meditation leads to a feeling of being at ease with the world. Like many people who meditate, you may find that you have greater self-esteem, self-confidence and inner peace. You’re able to concentrate more easily and and your ability to learn and remember improves.

 

Relieves Depression

Feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and isolation are hallmarks of depression-the nation’s most prevalent mental health problem. Meditation increases self-confidence and feelings of connection to others. Many studies have shown that depressed people feel much better after eliciting the relaxation response.

 

Stress Relieving

Meditation can help to resolve the deepest of neuroses, fears and conflict which play their part in causing stress and ill health.

 

Effective Treatment for Insomnia

Intrusive thoughts and increased muscle tension can interfere with your sleep. It’s not surprising, therefore, that practicing meditation, with its effects of quieting your mind and relaxing your body, has been found to be an effective treatment for insomnia. Several studies have shown that regular meditation results in higher blood levels of melatonin, a hormone that plays a critical role in the regulation of sleep.

 

Higher IQ

Increased brain wave coherence. Harmony of brain wave activity in different parts of the brain is associated with greater creativity, improved moral reasoning, and higher IQ.

 

Babies and Ladies

Meditation puts mothers in tune with their babies. Manta Japa is especially appropriate for pregnant women. After birth, daily meditation becomes a precious time to refocus and make sense of the many new thoughts and feelings which can be running through your mind, brought about by the events of childbirth and new motherhood.

“When you meditate regularly, you dramatically reduce your body’s response to stress, and that can ease the discomfort associated with PMS,” Dr. Carrington.

 

Learn How to Meditate

Breathing Meditation

The first stage of meditation is to stop distractions and make our mind clearer and more lucid. This can be accomplished by practicing a simple breathing meditation. We choose a quiet place to meditate and sit in a comfortable position. The most important thing is to keep our back straight to prevent our mind from becoming sluggish or sleepy. link.

General Meditation

Meditating a few minutes each day is a proven stress reducer, and it can improve your outlook on life as well. There are as many different meditation methods as there are instructors, but if all you need is a basic, universal method, here’s an easy way to get started. link.

Buddhist Meditation

This mindfulness actually envelops our whole life. It is the best way to appreciate our world, to appreciate the sacredness of everything. We add mindfulness and all of a sudden the whole situation becomes alive. This practice soaks into everything that we do; there’s nothing left out. Mindfulness pervades sound and space. It is a complete experience. link.

Yoga Meditation

Meditation lifts us above the cares and anxieties of our daily life, it enables us to overcome our moral weaknesses and evil habits and thus transform our very life. By dispelling ignorance, meditation removes all our morbid and childish fears and leads us to the hall of divine light, where we perceive our self as the immortal essence of all existence, where we realize that we are at once linked in a bond of eternal love with all creation. link.

Zen Meditation

Zazen is a particular kind of meditation, unique to Zen, that functions centrally as the very heart of the practice. In fact, Zen Buddhists are generally known as the “meditation Buddhists.” Basically, zazen is the study of the self. link.

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