Have you ever taken a yoga class? I love when instructors end the set with a moment of silence to simply lie on your back, close your eyes and let your body unwind. Just these few minutes of Zen leave me feeling more calm and refreshed than before. Curious to how and why mediation leaves me feeling so good, I did a little research to share with you all. Here are some of the ways meditation helps to heal our bodies and mind.
Meditating can help you deal with stress better.
Maintaining a healthy work/life balance can be difficult, especially today when mobile technology allows us to so easily blend our professional and home life. With our phones always in hand, many of us find ourselves checking our email at the dinner table or taking a call when we should be relaxing. This wireless workplace we’ve built may be convenient but being “on” all the time can cause our bodies to go into stress mode. Incorporating meditation into our day can serve as a brief escape, allowing our bodies to “shut down” for a moment. A study done at Emory University showed that people who meditate have a better response, physically and emotionally, to stress.
Meditation can improve concentration.
People that meditate are found to have better concentration. This could be because meditation teaches us to have a narrow focus and an ability to shut out our surroundings. When applied to work and other tasks, this skill could translate into being more productive and better performing.
Our bodies can fight off illness and disease better when we meditate.
There is a link between meditation and the strength of our immune system. It is unclear, but the relation is likely based on stress. Stress is the leading cause of a long list of diseases. By meditating and relieving our stress, we could also be fending off small sicknesses, like the common cold, and more serious problems, such as high blood pressure and heart disease.
Anxiety and depression are lessened through mediation.
That feel good buzz I was talking about before? Well it’s real. A study at the University of Wisconsin discovered that regions of the left frontal lobe had an increase in electrical activity after just eight weeks of meditation. This is the kind of activity that is typically only seen in optimistic people but was able to flourish just the same (in maybe a bit more pessimistic folks) through meditation. Anxiety can also be improved. A study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry revealed that after three months of meditation and relaxing training, 20 out of 22 participants showed a drastic reduction in feelings of panic and anxiety.
Now that you know some of the health benefits of meditation, you’re probably wondering how much is recommended to reap the results. 20 minutes a day is the ultimate goal. If this sounds like too much to start, try working your way there. Begin with five minutes when you get out of bed in the morning or after a hot bath at night. When you see how quick these mini meditations go, you may be more inclined to try the full 20.
