The Benefits Of Meditation
By: Jakov Zauzolkov
Tags: Change, Life Lessons, Happiness, Life, Meditation

The Benefits Of Meditation

How Meditation Can Influence Our Lives And How To Start

Photo by Ksenia Makagonova on Unsplash

In our modern society, stress belongs unintentionally to our daily lives: We’re working too much, running from one meeting to the next one, everything without any time for ourselves and our needs. A way to fight against it is meditation. But how does meditation influences our lives, what are the benefits, and how to meditate?

1. Less Stress

Stress can have a huge impact on our lives, our sleep is bad, we can’t concentrate probably, even depression and anxiety can be possible effects. These are caused by a hormone called cortisol, also known as “stress hormone”.

Mindfulness meditation can help us to handle our stress. Mindfulness means to concentrate on the present without being distracted by memories, thoughts, or emotions. Because of that, we aren’t focusing on things we have to do in the future or situations that happened in the past. Also, mindfulness meditation reduces the production of cortisol, the reason for our stress. When we’re meditating, we finally take some time for ourselves and our body, furthermore to organize and clear our thoughts.

2. Control Anxiety

Mindfulness Meditation reduces our stress level, which results in less anxiety. Besides, your self-esteem will grow because meditation helps you to stay calm and avoid stressful and provocative situations. Also, meditation improves your stress reactivity and coping.

Photo by Colton Sturgeon on Unsplash

3. Avoid Depression

Mindfulness meditation can help you to avoid or even come over depression, especially recurrent depression. The University of Exeter found out in 2016 that a “Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy” helps to prevent depression recurrence as an alternative method or in addition to antidepressants.

4. Better Sleep

Have you problems falling asleep every night and it takes you a long period of time to finally fall asleep? Then you might suffer from insomnia, which can have an impact on your productivity and also cause further illnesses. Mindfulness meditation can help you to come over it by simply meditating before sleep. This short period of relaxation can improve the quality of sleep, even for people with chronic insomnia.

5. Control Pain

Pain is an individual feeling of every person, some feel more, others less pain. Your state of mind is connected with your perception of pain, which can get more intensive by stress. Meditation can help to control the amount of pain you’re experiencing, and your pain will get lower than the pain people experience who never meditated before.

Photo by Matteo Di Iorio on Unsplash

6. Increase Attention

In our daily lives, we’re used to constantly thinking about our tasks and responsibilities, which can make it hard to focus on simple things. Meditation, especially focused-attention meditation, helps you to focus and lengthen your attention span. A study of 2018 shows that people who are meditating regularly performed better on a visual task and had a bigger attention span than people without meditation experience.

7. Improve Memory

The strengthening of your attention and clarity of your mind can improve your memory. A study of 2013 looked at the brains of meditating and non-meditating people. They found out that some regions of the brain of the meditating persons were more developed, and the regions most developed are associated with the memory skills of humans, which leads to the fact that daily meditation can have an impact on memory.

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

Of course, these are only some examples of the benefits of meditation. After you’ve now read the benefits, you might want to start meditating, but may not know how to start. If you want to start meditating seriously, I can recommend apps like Calm or Headspace, I’ve tried both and they left a good impression on me, but they have a monthly fee you have to pay if you want to use them. For a free solution, there are a lot of videos and audioguides on the internet to start meditating, often done nicely. Of course, you could also take a real meditation session, just look for courses in your surroundings.

Meditation is a really good habit to have: There are a lot of benefits meditation brings with it, but in total it helps you to calm down, sort your thoughts and ideas, and focus and the present. I’m meditating for quite a while now and I can say it has a really good impact on me. Since my childhood, I’m fighting with tinnitus, or ear “beeping” in general (no doctor could diagnose it exactly), and meditation was a way for me that helped to reduce the volume of the sound. I can’t say if meditation really influences my ear sounds, but every time I meditate, it gets better.

Quick Start Guide

If you really want to start straight away meditating, I can give you here a quick start guide, but I recommend looking up how to meditate probably by using the internet or asking people who have experience.

Take a seat on flat ground, like a carpet, your bed, or sofa, it doesn’t matter, just don’t sit on a chair (you CAN meditate on a chair, but I’ve never tried it). Find a pose that is comfortable for you, like the lotus position, just make sure that your posture is straight. If you want, you can sit on a pillow, so your feet are positioned a bit under your body, which could be more comfortable for you.

Once you’ve found your position, start to relax your body and close your eyes. If you want, you can set up a timer, normally between 8 and 20 minutes, but feel free to set a time that you prefer or meditate without a timer. Try to focus now on your breath and push upcoming thoughts away, focus completely on the present, how your body feels, and how you feel. I know this can be hard at first, but trust me, it will get better if you train enough. Focus completely on your breath, it may help you if you count along (for example inhale-1, exhale-2, inhale-3,… till you arrive at ten, after that, start again with one).

And… that’s it. Yes, it sounds a bit too easy, but there is really no magic behind it. The difference between guided meditation and free mediation is, of course, a big one, with a guide everything is a lot easier, but the more experience you get, the less you need a guide to focus on the present.

I hope I could help you with this little quick start guide, but if you really want to meditate, look for methods and guided sessions for beginners, whether on the internet or in real life.

Sources: