If you thought that meditating was only for Chinese monks, you have never been more wrong. Anyone can meditate for improvements in many areas of their life.
Here are 21 reasons to start meditation today:
1. Reduced Blood Pressure
Meditating can help in improving health through reduction in heart strain. In the long run, high blood pressure causes the heart to put more effort in pumping blood, a condition that can result in poor functioning of the heart.
High pressure of the blood also causes narrowing of the arteries, or atherosclerosis, which could cause strokes or heart attacks. Research shows that meditating through focusing on silent mantras can reduce blood pressure by an average of five points. This is effective in old people and those who suffer from high blood pressure.
Meditating improves your blood pressure through relaxing signals of the nerves that coordinate the functions of the heart, blood vessel tension, and the fight-or-flight response that makes you more alert when you are stressed.
2. Weight-loss Goals
If you are trying to lose some weight for a fit body, mindfulness could help you achieve it. Research by the American Psychological Association and Consumer Reports stated that 70% of the psychologists surveyed believed that meditating is an excellent strategy for losing weight.
3. Controlled Pain
Human awareness of pain is linked to the mind’s state, and it can increase in stressful situations. Research has shown that meditating increases activity in the regions of the brain that control pain. It also helps you to be more resistant to pain.
Habitual meditation helps in reducing intermittent or chronic pain in practitioners. Research has shown that terminally-ill patients suffer from less chronic pain at the end of their lives.
4. Improved Immune System
When you are continually suffering from stress, you can suffer from increased fat storage, poor digestion, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and a weak immune system. Because meditating helps to reduce stress levels, it can aid in reversing all those conditions. Your thoughts will manifest in your body, and that is why meditating will work to improve your immune system.
5. Improved Sleep
50% of people have insomnia at some point in their lives. Studies show that meditating can help you sleep sooner and for longer.
Skilled practitioners can redirect or control the “runaway” -or racing – thoughts that frequently result in insomnia. Moreover, it can assist you in feeling relaxed, tension-free, and peaceful to enable sleep.
6. Becoming in Tune with Your Body
According to research, meditating helps in increasing the ability to listen to one’s body and understand what it is communicating for one to respond accordingly. For instance, you will begin to comprehend things like why your heart is racing, why you have a headache, whether you are hungry or just anxious, and more.
7. Combats Addictions
Meditating helps you gain mental discipline that can aid you in breaking dependencies through increased self-control and awareness of addictive behavior triggers. Research shows that meditating can assist persons to learn to grow their willpower, improve the comprehension of their addictive behavior causes, control their impulses and emotions, and redirect their attention.
Therefore, meditating can help you to better control cravings and stresses related to cravings. Studies show that mindfulness meditation assists people to minimize emotional and binge eating.
8. Generating Kindness
Meditating may also increase positive actions and feelings toward yourself and people. Metta, also called loving-kindness meditation practice, starts with developing kind feelings and thoughts toward yourself.
Through meditating, individuals learn to extend this forgiveness and kindness externally even toward enemies. Studies have revealed that this meditating method is dose-dependent such that the more effort you put into it, the more positive feelings you experience.
Another study showed that it could help anger management, reduce marriage conflict, and improve social anxiety.
9. It Can Improve Your Grades
Research by the University of California at Santa Barbara discovered that students who practice mindfulness perform well in the GRE’s verbal reasoning section and have better working memory. This shows that undertaking mindfulness is an efficient and effective technique to improve cognitive function.
10. Reduced Age-Related Memory Loss
Improved clarity of thinking and attention could keep your mind young. Kirtan Kriya meditation practice combines a chant with a repetitive movement of the fingers. Research shows that this method improves the brain’s ability to perform memory tasks.
Moreover, studies have shown that numerous styles of meditating increase mental quickness, memory, and increased attention in older people. Additionally, meditating can help dementia patients partially improve memory. It can also aid in improved coping and reduced stress in people living with dementia patients.
11. It Makes Doctors Do Their Jobs Better
Mindfulness could assist medical practitioners in caring for their patients better. Research by the University of Rochester Medical Center reveals that doctors who practice mindfulness are more self-aware, better listeners, and less judgmental when they interact with their patients.
12. Lengthened Concentration Span
Focused-attention meditation practice resembles an intensive workout for your concentration. It aids in increasing the endurance and strength of your concentration. For instance, research has shown that human resource personnel who carry out mindfulness meditation are focused for more extended hours. They are also able to remember work details better than their peers who do not meditate.
Additionally, a review indicated that meditating could reverse brain patterns responsible for poor attention, worrying, and mind-wandering. Even meditating for a short period can be advantageous. Research reveals that meditating for four days is sufficient to improve attention span.
13. It is Enjoyable
After meditating for a while, you will begin enjoying the state of being peaceful and will want more of it.
14. Enhances Self-Awareness
Some forms of meditating may assist you to understand yourself better, making your best self grow. For instance, meditating through self-inquiry helps you know yourself more, and therefore, relate to others better.
Other forms of meditating help you to identify thoughts that may be self-defeating or harmful. The concept is that when you become more aware of your thought habits, you can direct them towards patterns that are more constructive. Research has shown that tai chi programs help in improving the self-esteem of people who have cancer. Studies also reveal that mindfulness meditation helps to minimize loneliness. Additionally, meditating can help you become more creative in solving problems.
15. Low Health Care Costs
In addition to improved health, meditating will also improve your cost savings in health care. According to research by the American Journal of Health Promotion, Transcendental Meditating is related to lower annual healthcare costs, as compared to individuals who fail to practice this technique.
16. Promotes Emotional Health
Some meditation forms can also cause a more positive outlook on life and a better self-image. Research on mindfulness meditation showed that it reduced depression in the participants.
When you are a stressed, cytokines – inflammatory chemicals – are released, and they can impact mood and cause depression. Studies have shown that meditating may reduce these inflammatory chemicals and cause decreased depression. Meditating also promotes changes in activity areas linked to optimism and positive thinking.
17. It Helps in Handling Colds
In addition to having good hygiene, you can reduce the grave impacts of colds with mindfulness meditation. Research by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Health discovered that individuals who meditate are more available at work because they are more resistant to acute respiratory infections, and when they get such diseases, they face less severe symptoms for a shorter time than people who do not meditate.
18. Controls Anxiety
Stress is directly related to anxiety. For instance, research shows that mindfulness meditation aids in reducing anxiety. Additionally, a meditation practice helps in minimizing anxiety disorder symptoms like panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, social anxiety, phobias, and paranoid thoughts.
Studies have also shown that meditating with different strategies may aid in reduced levels of anxiety. For instance, yoga has been proven to reduce anxiety as a result of physical activity and meditation practices. If you are in a high-pressure work environment, meditating will help in decreasing job-related anxiety.
19. Building Confidence
Meditating helps you to stop rushing between things and limiting yourself. It makes you believe that you will accomplish all the things that you want.
20. Reduces Stress
One of the common reasons people meditate is to reduce stress. According to research, 3,500 adults experiencing stress were found to have reduced stress symptoms after meditating.
Typically, physical and mental stress lead to high levels of cortisol stress hormone. This causes numerous dangerous stress impacts, like the production of cytokines that promotes inflammation.
These impacts can interfere with your sleep, cause anxiety and depression, lead to cloudy thinking and fatigue, and heighten your blood pressure. Research shows that mindfulness meditation reduces the inflammation effects created by stress. Studies have shown that meditation is more effective in people with higher stress levels.
More research reveals that meditating could also improve symptoms of conditions related to stress such as fibromyalgia, PTSD, and nervous colon.
21. Increase Performance of the Lungs
Meditating will not just improve your awareness of your breathing during the session, but also during the rest of the day. It allows you to control your breathing, which is good for your lungs.
Conclusion
Whether you are facing stress, anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, short attention spans, and other issues, meditating can help improve your condition. Meditate today for greater self-awareness and more!
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