Meditation is a way of becoming more awake, more deliberate about what you are doing, and to learn how to respond rather than react to situations in your daily life. It takes discipline to remain still, physically and mentally, and not react to all of the stimulants in the world, and in your own mind and body. It also takes at least 20 minutes of daily practice, which can be very difficult for most people to squeeze into their busy lives. This repetition and stillness are at the core of meditation and the source of its many benefits. An Ancient Practice Meditation has its roots in our earliest religions as a way to attain enlightenment, peace or closeness with God.
Prayer is perhaps the oldest and best-known concentration practice in the West.
Long practiced in Asia, meditation became well known in the West in the 1960s when celebrities like the Beatles began studying transcendental meditation with the Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh. Around the same time, scientists began to study the seemingly supernatural abilities of Asian monks to control what had been believed to be automatic body functions. These studies confirmed that long-time meditators could indeed affect many autonomous physical functions, such as heart rate, blood pressure and the production of stress chemicals like cortisol. One of those researchers, Harvard University professor Herbert O. Benson, MD, showed that religious belief wasn't necessary to reap the benefits of meditation. By the 1990s, meditation was becoming accepted as medicine, especially through the stress reduction program at Harvard and at the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.