What is Meditation?
By meditating, you are trying to focus your attention inwards. Consequently, meditation serves the purpose of relaxing our minds. This lets us discover a unique taste of quiet and ease. You basically become out of touch with your working mind.
How Meditation Changes the Brain
Research indicates that people who have been meditating have a higher volume of grey matter in their prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex section of the brain is responsible for decision-making and attention. So, the effects of meditation are clear. One study published stated that the participants’ amygdala was activated after a two-month meditation program.
Our brain is the control center of our body. It overlooks every process that takes place. It creates neural pathways which coordinate each step from the initial stage to the desired result.
For example, if you are learning something new, your brain will create new neural pathways to capture the new information. With time, in every situation, our brain will know which path to take, becoming default mode.
However, with the workloads and external stimuli, our brain could release a flood of hormones; adrenaline and cortisol. The brain becomes overworked and finds it difficult to switch to default mode. These effect factors could increase the risk of you having issues with sleep, decreased immunity, and high blood pressure. Over time, these psychological effects could lead to long-term health problems.
Below are ten science-based health advantages of meditation.
1. Helps to Reduce Stress
Individuals use counseling as a method to discuss their troubling thoughts. However, meditation also has the potential to eliminate stress. Workshops that teach techniques for inner peace have been successful in helping with mental health problems like stress.
There are instances where the hormone cortisol is released due to physical and mental strain. Therefore, researchers recommend meditation to lower this psychological stress, reducing the release of this hormone and other-stress related releases.
2. Helps to Lower Blood Pressure
The result of meditation is the relaxation of our body and mind. Research shows nitric oxide is released by the brain to lower blood pressure in meditators. It keeps their blood pressure regulated.
Clinicians are now recommending people to meditate or take part in mindfulness exercises. This is because they are natural alternatives to medications.
Another benefit of meditation is that it deactivates our control over the sympathetic nervous system or the flight-or-fight response. Over time, we will know how to react to dangerous situations calmly and carefully. We also will think about how we’d like to respond.
3. Reduces Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety
Meditation aims to reduce depression and anxiety by controlling our emotions. For example, we could reduce anxiety by focusing on our breathing and slowing down our active minds. This causes our nervous system to calm down. Regular sessions could introduce coping mechanisms and encourage us towards optimism.
Studies show that meditation for six months has shown the same effectiveness towards depression and anxiety. This reduces the need to rely on medications and avoid their side effects. In a way, meditation is the safest and most effective method to mitigate these symptoms of pessimism and anxiety.
4. Improves Sleep
Nearly fifty percent of the world’s population experience sleeplessness. However, meditation comes to its rescue. It helps us to calm our racing thoughts and helps us with exhaustion and insomnia. Consequently, those who meditate sleep longer, fall asleep faster, experience relaxation and even sleep cycles and a calm state of mind.
5. Attention Span Increases
Focused attention meditation is a type of meditation that improves your focus and prolongs it. According to a study, participants who went through focused attention meditation had high accuracy and attentiveness. Another found that 8 weeks of regular 13-minute meditation sessions improved the participants’ memory and attention. Meditation has the ability to change the brain’s processes of mind wandering and poor concentration, promoting peaceful awareness.
6. Helps Fight Addictions
Meditation helps you activate your mental discipline skills. Meditators can do this by focusing their attention on their emotions and recklessness. This makes it easier to fight off their addictions. The transition becomes smooth.
For example, studies show that people who went through traditional meditation experienced less psychological discomfort. They also fought off their addictions in less than three months. Furthermore, mindfulness programs have also helped individuals with binge eating and food addiction issues. This is by controlling their sensations and desires.
Meditation can be used to fight off any addiction by combining the right direction and steps when necessary.
7. Helps Control Pain
By meditating, you make the sensory cortex of the brain remain calm. Meditation works like a painkiller. It reduces unpleasant sensations and intensity by over fifty per cent, making it more effective than medications like morphine. The brain’s reaction towards pain reduces.
Long-term relief towards illnesses such as chronic disorders, headaches and arthritis can be reduced through regular meditation and physical therapy. It is clear to say that meditators have a higher pain tolerance than non-meditators. Focus on controlling your emotions and your inner self.
8. Increases Cognitive Ability
Meditation increases our focus and that’s because the brain’s theta and alpha waves activity is increased. Thus, our problem-solving and decision-making skills also sharpen.
Furthermore, meditation also causes our brains to undergo functional changes. This could be either improved network integration or an increased volume of grey matter in the brain. Meditators have lower risks of developing brain-weakening diseases because they have increased amounts of grey matter. This is because grey matter has large amounts of neurons present, increasing our ability to control our emotions and memory.
9. Promotes Emotional Health
Certain meditation techniques improve one’s emotional well-being, optimism and sense of self. Meditation has already shown signs of reducing symptoms of depression.
Precisely speaking, stress-related substances such as cytokines affect our mood and can result in sadness and other negative thoughts. However, it has been revealed that meditation lowers cytokines levels. To further this statement, studies show that meditators had fewer negative thoughts about unpleasant images than non-meditators. Additionally, mantra meditation fosters inner peace and self-awareness, exhibiting positive behavior changes and increased optimism.
10. Delay Aging
According to science, chromosomes have protective caps at the ends called telomeres, which affect our life years.
Longer telomeres are related to longer life, however, as time goes on in life, the telomeres are cut short.
One study showed that meditators have long telomeres when compared to non-meditators. Researchers, therefore, concluded that meditation prevents telomere shortening. That is why meditators have pleasing appearances even when they are old and live longer.
Conclusion
Meditation offers a variety of health benefits. All of them are backed up by scientific research, making the statements more accurate. Meditation is not just a term; it is an action.
Meditation connects our conscious and subconscious minds through focus and self-awareness. Therefore, even a short period of daily meditation enhances our emotional and mental well-being.
