6 Health Benefits of Meditation that One Should Know

People are carrying out meditation for thousands of years. Earlier the meditation was used to increase understanding of sacred and mystical forces. But, nowadays meditation is generally used for reducing stress and relaxing the mind. It is believed that meditation is the simplest and fastest way of reducing stress. While meditating, the attention is focused and the series of thoughts creating confusion is also eliminated. Doing meditation, even just for a few minutes can bring inner peace and keep you calm. The best part is you don’t even need any specific place or equipment to practise meditation — you can meditate anywhere like sitting in the park, home and even in any difficult office situation.

WHAT ARE THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF MEDITATION?

The benefits of practising meditation are:

• Enhances Empathy
• Controls Anxiety
• Improves Cognition
• Balances stress naturally
• Boost emotional health & happiness
• Increases consciousness

Let’s get to know about these Health Benefits of Meditation in detail.

1. Enhances Empathy

Practising compassion or loving-kindness meditation can be beneficial in enhancing empathy as it sends neural connections to the brain which further controls positive emotions like kindness and empathy. Meditation creates a deep flow that boosts social connection and makes people more friendly and caring as a person.

Read Also: 8 Health Benefits of Gardening that You Should Know

2. Controls Anxiety

If your stress level is low, the anxiety will also be reduced by default. According to the one research, almost 1300 adults noticed that meditation can be helpful in reducing anxiety. Surprisingly, the effect was much more powerful in people with a high level of anxiety.

Another research found that practising meditation attentively for 8 weeks helps in reducing the symptoms of anxiety in people with a generalized anxiety disorder as well as increasing positive self-statements. The next study states that when 47 people suffering from chronic pain performed 8 weeks of mindfulness meditation, a noticeable improvement of depression, anxiety and pain have been seen on them.

3. Improves Cognition

Researchers believe that if professionals want to increase their probability of being successful they should include meditation in their daily routine. As per the studies, both mindful and transcendental meditation practices improve the decision-making and problem-solving skills of the brain.

4. Balances Stress Naturally

Unexpected difficulties can be one of the reasons for stress. When the brain encounters immediate threats the level of cortisol or stress hormone increases in the body and activates the Autonomic Nervous System which is accountable for fight-or-flight responses. After studying the brains of regular meditators, it has been found that the level of cortisol in their brains is lower as compared to the others.

5. Boost Emotional Health & Happiness

Studies have proven that practising meditation improves self-observation and self-esteem. Meditation helps in getting a clear picture of the mind and makes you aware of the thoughts that drive your emotions and actions at that time. According to various studies, regular meditation can help in decreasing the chances of depression and mood-related disorders. Besides this, the other forms of meditation can even help in improving the emotional health of an individual.

6. Increases Consciousness

Meditation naturally develops mindful awareness in one’s mind. It allows you to reach a state in which the mind is in complete harmony with itself. After the eight-week mindful meditation course, it has been observed that the people who practise meditation regularly have increased attention and concentration span. Not just this even the people who practise meditation for a shorter period are more focused than people who don’t meditate at all.

Conclusion

Meditation needs practice so don’t judge your meditating skills as it will only increase your stress. Just keep one thing in mind that no matter for how long you practise meditation your mind will wander during meditation. If you are practising meditation for keeping your mind calm and your attention goes somewhere else, slowly return to the object you are focusing on. As you will keep on practising meditation every day you will easily find out which type of meditation will suit you the best. Just remember there is no right or wrong way of doing meditation, what is important is that it is helping you in relieving your stress.

Author Bio:

Shikha is a creative content writer at Hokosoko with 5+ years of experience in technical writing and 1 year of experience in content writing.