Meditation is the habitual process of training your mind to focus and redirect your thoughts. The popularity of meditation is increasing as more people are discovering its many health benefits.
You can use it to increase awareness of yourself and your surroundings. Many people think of it as a way to reduce stress and develop concentration. People also use the practice to develop other beneficial habits and feelings, such as a positive mood and outlook, self-discipline, healthy sleep patterns and even increased pain tolerance.
Stress reduction is one of the most common reasons for which people try meditation. Normally, mental and physical stress causes increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
This produces many of the harmful effects of stress, such as the release of inflammatory chemicals called cytokines. These effects can disrupt sleep, promote depression and anxiety, increase blood pressure and contribute to fatigue and cloudy thinking. A meditation style called 'mindfulness meditation' can reduce the inflammation response caused by stress. Furthermore, research has shown that meditation may also improve symptoms of stress-related conditions, including irritable bowel syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder and fibromyalgia.
What's more, some research suggests that a variety of mindfulness and meditation exercises may reduce anxiety levels. For example, yoga has been shown to help people reduce anxiety. This is likely due to benefits from both meditative practice and physical activity.
Meditation may also help to control job-related anxiety. Some recent studies have found that employees who practice mindfulness meditation experience improved feelings of well-being and decreased distress and job strain.
Habitual meditation can help to reduce anxiety and improve stress reactivity and coping skills.
Some forms of meditation can lead to improved self-image and a more positive outlook on life. Some forms of meditation may also help you develop a stronger understanding of yourself, helping you grow into your best self.
For example, self-inquiry meditation is a form of meditation that explicitly aims to help you develop a greater understanding of yourself and how you relate to those around you.
Other forms teach you to recognise thoughts that may be harmful or self-defeating. The idea is that as you gain greater awareness of your thoughts and habits, you can steer them toward more constructive patterns.
Additionally, experience in meditation may help you to cultivate more creative problem-solving skills.
Focused-attention meditation is like weight lifting for your attention span. It helps to increase the strength and endurance of your attention. Even meditating for a short period each day may benefit you.
Improvements in attention and clarity of thinking may help to keep your mind young. In addition to fighting normal age-related memory loss, meditation can at least partially improve memory in patients with dementia. It can likewise help control stress and improve coping in those caring for family members with dementia.
The mental discipline you can develop through meditation may help you break dependencies by increasing your self-control and awareness of triggers for addictive behaviors. Moreover research has shown that meditation may help people learn to redirect their attention, manage their emotions and impulses, and increase their understanding of the causes behind their various aberrations (pertaining to mood and behavior).
What's more meditation may also help you control food cravings. Mindfulness meditation helps people to reduce emotional and binge eating.
Meditation can also improve physical health by reducing strain on the heart. Over time, high blood pressure makes the heart work harder to pump blood, which can lead to poor heart function. High blood pressure also contributes to atherosclerosis, or a narrowing of the arteries, which can lead to heart attack and stroke.
Meditation appears to control blood pressure by relaxing the nerve signals that coordinate heart function, blood vessel tension and the 'fight-or-flight' response that increases alertness in stressful situations.
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