How Meditation Improves Your Emotional Health
Meditation is defined as ‘the action or practice of meditating.’ Synonyms for meditation include contemplation, thinking, pondering, consideration, reflection, deliberation, and concentration.
Most experts and regular meditators agree that meditation is not an act, but a way of life.
According to the Chopra Center, meditation allows one to move beyond the mind’s stress-inducing thoughts and emotional upheaval into a place of clarity, peace, and complete awareness.
While meditation was considered a bit of a hippie practice for many years, health professionals as well as many type-A, career-driven professionals have learned to trust the vast benefits of meditation for emotional and physical health. A study by Li-Chuan Chu in 2009 evaluated the benefits of mindfulness meditation on a group of graduate students.
The control group received no mindfulness meditation training while the remaining group did. Upon post-treatment evaluation it was determined that the students employing mindfulness meditation methods experienced less perceived stress and negative mental health than those not practicing meditation.
Why Meditation Improves Emotional Health
Research shows that meditation as part of the treatment regimen for anxiety, depression, and medical conditions that can be exacerbated by stress including ailments such as asthma, high blood pressure, heart disease, and cancer has been successful.
Meditation is beneficial in filling participants with a sense of calm, peace, and balance due to the process of eliminating the overcrowded stream of thoughts in your mind and focusing attention on a specific event or detail.
With the influx of information technology filling our minds combined with daily tasks, job expectations, and personal obligations, we spend much of our life in our own heads. We are constantly striving to stay a pace ahead in the rat race and, in doing so, miss the opportunity to be present in our environment.
Meditation allows the opportunity to tame your thoughts, reorganize your focus, and become acutely aware of what is happening in your own body. People that use meditation regularly are more likely to feel satisfied by their lives and worry less about the future, success, and self-esteem.
Aside from experiencing self-satisfaction, meditation can also lead to deeper connections with others due to the ability to completely present in the moment.
With practice, meditation allows you to become centered regardless of the circumstances around you. While it cannot stop you from experiencing unpleasant circumstances or feeling pain it can equip you with the tools needed to accept your current state and focus on what needs to be done to get through it.
Mental And Emotional Benefits Of Meditation
While there are some nervous and anxiety disorders that can be hindered by meditation it is beneficial to many more.
The range of emotional benefits from meditation are extensive and include: • Reduced Anxiety
• Better-controlled depression
• Improved critical thinking
• Break unhealthy habits by detaching emotions from the action
• Increased control over thoughts
• Ability to stay in the moment
How To Use Meditation To Improve Emotional Health
Meditation rarely comes naturally for a beginner. You may feel silly or even frustrated at your lack of concentration in the beginning. As you grasp the process of meditation, you may even be shocked to recognize the superfluous thoughts and activities that are competing for your attention on a regular basis. Distractions will not go away.
One of the first steps to creating a successful meditation regimen that will benefit your emotional well-being is recognizing that you will encounter distractions that will compete for your thoughts and having the ability to accept the distractions and release them.
Perhaps one of the greatest side effects of meditation is that the calm does not leave immediately after the meditation practice has ended. Instead, the calm remains with you and helps you to maintain a focused and balanced outlook throughout your day, allowing you to respond to circumstances rather than react to them.
People that meditate regularly experience less emotional distress when faced with stressful situations.
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