Meditation is a good practice to get into if you constantly find yourself filled with tension, anxiety, worry, or health problems. Meditation is also important for anyone who wants to maintain an optimal level of physical, emotional, and mental health.
Benefits Of Meditation
· Boosts Quality Of Life
· Improves Sleep
· Reduces Chronic Pain
· Reduces Stress
· Solidifies Mind Body Awareness
· Improves The Enjoyment Of Life
· Well being
· Cognitive Flexibility
· Lower Blood Pressure
· Heart Health
· Weight Loss
· Boosts Memory
· Inner Peace
· Boosts Attention
· Boosts Immunity
· Provides For Deeper Relationships With Self And Others
· Reduces Depression
It has been shown that even 15 minutes of restorative meditation can help you feel calmer and have fewer health problems.
Many health problems can be directly or indirectly related to your state of mind. Excess stress in your life can lead to obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. The use of meditation can reduce your perception of stress so that you have a better chance of preventing these diseases from occurring.
Meditation involves no particular equipment, is free, and with some practice becomes second nature. It can also be practiced anywhere, it does not have to be on your bed, couch or floor. Once you are well practiced at meditation, you can do it while standing in line somewhere, walking around, and waiting for an appointment or even in rush hour traffic.
History and Practice of Meditation
Meditation is a centuries old practice that is believed to have originated in the East Asian countries. Originally, a religious practice that helped its practitioners tap into all that is sacred and mystical in the world, as it spread throughout the world; people began using it for stress reduction, healing, and relaxation.
Mind Body Exercise
Meditation is a form of mind-body exercise. By using your mind, you can induce a trance state in which all of your muscles are calm and relaxed. This state of relaxation persists long after the meditation is over with and brings about biochemical changes in your brain and body that reduce the level of stress hormones within the body.
A Change Of Focus
Most of our lives are spent focused on the noises of the world, our work, our families and relationships, traffic, bills, and day-to-day living that can be chaotic and hectic.
During the meditative process, you let go of the external noise and chaos around you so that you can turn inward, focusing attention toward your breath, and breathing.
You gradually let go of negative thoughts through visualization, the saying of a syllable or mantra, and letting the tension go from all of your skeletal muscle. In these ways, you increase your sense of well being and decrease your physical stress.
Emotional Benefits Of Meditation
Medication has the unique capacity to help you regain a sense of emotional health and well being.
Some emotional benefits of stress reduction through medication include:
· Helping you with stress management
· Improving your level of self-awareness
· Getting a new perspective regarding difficult things going on in your life
· Being mindful in the present moment
· Letting go of strong negative feelings
Meditation And Your Physical Health
If you have a medical condition precipitated or made worse by stress, meditation can control your symptoms and keep you free of disease.
Some physical symptoms and diseases believed to be helped by meditation include the following:
· Physical pain
· Depression
· Anxiety disorder
· Cancer
· Asthmatic symptoms
· Diabetes
· Heart disease
· Hypertension
· Sleep disorders
Because there are no real side effects of meditation, it is the perfect practice to reduce physical diseases and symptoms. You can use meditation alone or along with medications to control your condition. Be sure to talk to your doctor or other healthcare provider to see if it is safe to change the dose or stop any medications.While some people can reduce or eliminate the amount of medications they take for any disease, it should be done under the guidance and supervision of a healthcare practitioner.
Different Modalities Of Meditation
There are several different types of meditation, and as you become more practiced in this technique, you can move up to the more intricate forms.
Guided Imagery
For example, you can use guided imagery or guided meditation, in which you visualize yourself in a calm and relaxing state. You attempt to use as many of your senses as possible so that you can really feel as though you have been transmitted to another place.
Mantra Meditation
In mantra meditation, you choose a syllable, phrase, thought or word that you repeat repeatedly to yourself, shutting off extraneous thoughts that are trying to invade your brain. Similarly, mindfulness meditation attempts to keep you in the here and now so that you don’t focus on negative thoughts.
You can choose any type of meditation that works for you. Practices like yoga, Qigong, and Tai Chi also involve meditation associated with movement, furthering the mind-body connection by adding movement to the practice.
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