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April 2, 2022 | Self-Care
Is your life full of stress? Do you feel overwhelming? Meditation might help you solve the problems. Learn the power of meditation.
Meditation is a set of techniques that are designed to promote a state of heightened awareness and focused attention. The power of meditation on psychological well-being are also extensive, both on an individual and societal level.
On the contrary, meditation is a deliberate way of altering how you interact with the world and how they perceive you. Both physiological and psychological benefits have been proven to be associated with meditation.
Physical effects include lowering physical arousal and reducing respiration rate. It also lowering heart rate, changing brain wave patterns, and reducing stress.
Benefits of Meditation.
- Management of anxiety disorders, depression, sleep disorders, pain issues, and hypertension
- Improved stress management
- Improvements in attention and mindfulness
- Improved self-awareness
- Better emotional health
- More fluid intelligence and better working memory
- Stronger immune system
- Ability to empathize more with others
- Relief from headaches
Scientific Proof Of The Power Of Meditation.
Meditation Sharpens Your Attention.
Meditation affects attention by improving attention skills, which is not surprising since many practices emphasize this skill. In addition, meditation counteracts habituation, which occurs when humans stop paying attention to new information in their environment.
Studies have also found that mindfulness meditation can improve problem-solving skills and reduce mind wandering. Mindfulness training has improved attention for at least five years, suggesting that trait-like changes can occur.
Could meditation replace Adderall or other drugs used to treat attention-deficit disorders? While some promising small-scale research has been conducted, especially with adults, larger randomized controlled trials are needed to understand how meditation can be combined with other treatments to treat both kids and adults with attention-deficit disorder.
Meditation Increases Resilience To Stress.
Research suggests that meditation makes the body and mind more resilient to stress. People exposed to psychological stress are less likely to have an inflammatory response when they meditate, particularly long-term meditators.
In addition, studies have shown that mindfulness practice reduces the activity in the amygdala while increasing the amygdala-prefrontal cortex connections.
Both of these parts of the brain assist us in being less reactive to stressful situations and recover more quickly after stress. In their book, Altered Traits, Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson argue that these changes are characteristic.
They also appear for longer-term meditators in the ‘baseline’ state of mindfulness, suggesting that mindfulness can improve our ability to deal with stress sustainably.
Meditation Appears To Increase Compassion.
Despite our compassion, we may suffer when we witness someone else’s suffering, resulting in paralysis or withdrawal. Many well-designed studies have demonstrated that we are more willing to take action to relieve suffering when we practice loving-kindness meditation for others.
It appears to decrease amygdala activity when suffering occurs and activate circuits in the brain related to good feelings and love. In long time meditators, activity in the “default network” quiets down, suggesting less ruminations about ourselves and our place in the world. Instead, this part of the brain ruminates on thoughts, feelings, and experiences, when not busy with focused activity.
Meditation Improves Mental Health.
Several early studies indicated that mindfulness meditation was beneficial to our mental health. However, scientific scepticism about these initial claims has grown as many studies have grown.
In JAMA Internal Medicine, a 2014 meta-analysis reviewed 47 randomized controlled trials of mindfulness meditation programs that comprised 3,515 participants. The researchers concluded that meditation programs resulted in only small to moderate reductions in anxiety and depression.
Further, meditation programs showed low, insufficient, or no effects on positive mood and feelings, substance use, and physical self-care. Meditation also seems to work differently for different populations based on the research.
Among recent, large, well-designed studies, one found that mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) for adults had no effect on depression or anxiety in teens.
There is no reason to conclude that meditation is not helpful for teenagers-it could well be that we need to develop and test interventions targeted at teenagers. Although meditation is generally beneficial to your health and happiness, there isn’t evidence that it’s better than many other methods. It should be seen as a complementary treatment for mental conditions like bipolar disorder and not as a replacement.
Meditation Has An Impact On Physical Health
Many claims have been made about mindfulness and physical health, but they are sometimes difficult to substantiate or related to other effects. It has been shown that meditation has a significant effect on physiological indices of health.
As we’ve already noted, meditation seems to buffer us from the inflammatory stress response. Furthermore, the enzyme telomerase activity seems to be increased in meditators, an enzyme implicated in longevity.
Education and exercise both have their buffering effects on the brain that could explain the differences found between non-meditators and meditators. Those with the brain changes described in these studies may continue to meditate, while others may not.
Enhances Sleep Quality
Almost half of the population will suffer from insomnia at some point in their lives. Among people who took part in mindfulness-based meditation programs, those who stayed asleep longer and experienced less severe insomnia than those whose control condition was un-medicated.
Learning how to meditate might be a helpful tool to help control your racing thoughts, which are often the cause of insomnia. In addition, it can release tension and put you in a peaceful state that makes falling asleep easier.
Calms Down The Sympathetic Nervous System
The scientific benefits of mindfulness meditation also include deactivating your sympathetic nervous system or your flight or fight reaction. The sympathetic nervous system fires up when you encounter a threat, producing stress hormones that help run or fight.
The parasympathetic nervous system activates once the danger has passed, allowing you to rest and relax. Meditation deactivates the sympathetic nervous system and activates the parasympathetic system. Initial studies indicate that this practice reduces pain, depression, stress, and anxiety.
Can Help You Control Your Cravings.
Mindless eating doesn’t usually involve the conscious decision to consume an entire bag of chips in a short amount of time. Dr. Brewer and a team of researchers published a study in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine that utilized mindfulness and meditation techniques to reduce cravings.
Twenty-eight overweight and obese people meditated for ten minutes each day for 28 days. By the end of the trial, they had reduced craving-related munching by 40%. Dr. Brewer’s research treats anxiety and cravings with meditation specifically. Mindfulness allows us to pay attention to the experience of craving so that we aren’t caught up in it. Meditation breaks the connection between urge and action.
May Help you Deal With Pain.
Meditation could help you shut down pain. A study published in the Journal of Neuroscience explored how it might be possible to do that. An MRI was used to get an initial baseline measurement of 15 people who had no experience with meditation.
The experiment involved applying a small amount of heat alternately to their calves and asking them to rate their pain level afterwards. They were then given mindfulness training for four days before repeating the whole process.
Meditation techniques helped reduce unpleasantness and intensity of pain by 57 percent and 40 percent, respectively.
According to the researcher, meditation does not change physical pain directly. Meditation reduces activity in brain areas associated with sensation, so changing our relationship with the feeling is probably a result. Essentially, reframing your brain’s perception of pain can help it become easier to handle.
Effects Of Meditation On The Brain.
In studies of mindfulness, neuroscientists have found that meditation alters the brain’s physical structure. As reported by The Observer, Harvard Medical School scientist Sara Lazar used MRI technology to verify her yoga teacher’s assertions about the benefits of meditation.
Interestingly, she found that meditation keeps us sharp as we age. Our frontal cortex, responsible for storing memories, typically shrinks as we age.
In another study, Harvard neuroscientists observed participants in a mindfulness training program who had never meditated before.
Increasing brain volume around the hippocampus and temporoparietal junction indicates that mindfulness activates the parts of the brain associated with memory storage, empathy, and emotion regulation.
In addition, meditation reduces activity in the part of the brain that triggers stress hormones related to the fight or flight survival instinct. Greater Good Magazine reports that consistent, long-term meditation strengthens people’s resilience by reducing their inflammatory stress response.
Final Thoughts
Meditation can cause positive changes in your brain and outlook, but they don’t occur overnight, and they won’t cure everything. The challenge of simply experiencing meditation is learning to let go of your expectations.
It gets easier as you practice being present without judgement or expectations. Everyone can benefit from meditation for their emotional and mental health. Without special equipment or membership, you can do it anywhere. There is also a wide range of meditation classes and support groups available.
There are also a lot of different styles, each with its strengths and benefits. Meditation is an excellent way to improve your health and quality of life, even if you only have a few minutes to spare each day.
