It’s more than a New Age distraction—meditation is becoming more and more common as modern life gets more and more complex.
What is meditation?
Meditation is a set of techniques which encourage a heightened form of awareness. It can help attain heightened states of consciousness and awareness, which can have a positive effect on wellbeing. Mindfulness? That’s essentially a modern, abridged from of meditation.
Meditation has been practiced in one form or another across the world for thousands of years. While it has a religious context, Buddhism, Hinduism, Thelema, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all have traditional meditative practices, many people globally use it independently of any religious or spiritual practice. It’s available to everyone, everywhere, all you need is a little time.
How can meditation benefit me?
Your consciousness is not rigid, it’s more like a stream, shifting fluidly from minute to minute. Meditation is a way to effect changes in that stream, altering how you perceive and respond to the stimuli around you.
It can help with many ailments, both physical and mental. It can help with anxiety, depression, sleep disorders and stress. It aids mindfulness, improves emotional wellbeing, boosts working memory and can even provide benefits to your immune system, here are details on just a few of the ways it can help:
Helping with anxiety
Across the world, anxiety remains one of the leading mental health conditions. Although in severe cases doctors may prescribe medication to help people with their anxiety, they often tend to try a more holistic approach first. Meditation is one of the most common holistic ways to treat the symptoms of anxiety, helping individuals to slow their heart rate, control harmful thoughts and prevent anxiety episodes.
Reducing stress
There’s no doubt that the world we live in can be stressful. Although stress is a completely normal bodily response, we shouldn’t be feeling stressed regularly as constant stress can cause serious problems in the body. Meditation is a great way to take time out from the busy world and to focus inwardly on yourself. The breathing exercises conducted while meditating can reduce blood pressure and lower stress levels, calming the mind and giving the body time to recover from periods of prolonged stress.
Reducing distractions
The human brain has more things than ever to keep up with and these combined with the internet and our access to smartphones means that many of us struggle with concentration. Practicing meditation and mindfulness encourages you to think about the present, to live in the current moment and to dismiss distractions, helping you to remain focused when you need to be and to improve your overall productivity.
If you would like to find out more information on any of the topics mentioned in this article, please contact Health Assured
