11 Amazing Ways That Meditation Can Vastly Improve Your Life

How Meditation Can Vastly Improve Your Life

We have between 60,000 and 80,000 thoughts every day.

That’s an average of 2,500 to 3,300 thoughts per hour.

Do you know what you’re thinking?

Beyond taking a peaceful moment for yourself, meditation has some powerful health benefits that you can start to experience following as little as one 10-minute session.

Here are 11 reasons why you should start meditating today:

1. Meditation Lowers Blood Pressure

Transcendental and mindfulness-based stress reduction can be helpful techniques in preventing or reducing elevated blood pressure. Through recent studies, the practice has been shown to produce clinically significant reductions in systolic (top number) and diastolic (bottom number) blood pressure, both as monotherapy as well as in conjunction with traditional medications. Meditation can be done in as little as 10 minutes a day.

2. Meditation Helps In Reducing Stress

Dr. Elizabeth Hoge, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Centre in Washington, DC explained: “We have objective measures in blood that did better in a provoked situation … It really is strong evidence that mindfulness meditation not only makes them feel better but helps them be more resilient to stress.” Dr. Hoge was the lead author in a 2017 study with 70 adults carrying a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder. The study results showed that the participants who learned the mindfulness-based techniques showed reduced physical measures of stress.

This shows us that mindfulness-based practices can alleviate stress-induced symptoms during the practice, and help mitigate stressful situations better.

3. Meditation Improves Pain Management

The practice of meditation engages multiple brain mechanisms that can alter the perception of pain through changing the information processing by the brain. Meditation can reduce pain-related activation of the somatosensory cortex of the brain.

4. Meditation Improves Sleep

It has been clinically proven through a trial of two parallel groups of adults that mindfulness-awareness practices improve sleep quality and also help with insomnia symptoms, fatigue interference, and fatigue severity. If you need help to fall asleep, to stay asleep, or to get better quality sleep, meditation might be just what you need.

5. Meditation Reduces Anxiety

A recent review study found that the effect of meditation on reducing symptoms of anxiety was equal to the effect of antidepressants. Mindfulness meditation can change the parts of the brain associated with ‘me-centered’ thoughts, and change the brain regions that are involved with attention and reducing social anxiety.

Dr. Daniel Amen, MD, has studied brain health and anxiety extensively and touches on meditation in his book.

6. Meditation Improves Mood

Researchers have found that meditation improves happiness while decreasing worry and emotional suppression. It has been shown that practicing loving-kindness meditation results in increased daily experiences of positive emotions.

7. Meditation Improves Control of Emotions

Beyond positivity and an improvement in mood, researchers from Michigan State university have found neural evidence that mindfulness helps to control negative feelings. Those who control their emotional response to various situations, and the emotional brain can recover more quickly after experiencing something negative.

8. Meditation Enhances Brain Function

More and more research is uncovering the psychological and physiological benefits of meditation, and what we’re also understanding is that it’s not just higher-order cognitive functions, but that meditation can actually alter brain activity. MRI results show that grey matter concentration increases with mindfulness meditation.

9. Meditation Boosts the Immune System Function

A randomized, controlled study found that short program in mindfulness meditation can produce positive, demonstrable effects on the brain and immune function. Mindfulness meditation can lead to a significant increase in left-sided anterior activation of the brain as well as impacting specific markers of inflammation, cell-mediated immunity, and biological aging.

10. Meditation Slows Cognitive Decline

Meditation often referred to as brain training as it can help keep the brain working better for longer.

11. Meditation Decreases Inflammation

Inflammation is often caused by psychological stress, so it makes sense that meditation as a method for reducing stress can also decreased inflammation in the body.

Meditation is a personal practice with each meditator taking their own inner journey, finding their unique approach to the practice and uncovering their own results and benefits.

Meditation doesn’t have to be just sitting or lying silently either. You can do walking meditations, yoga, stretching, running, colouring or writing. Any activity where you are conscious of your mind and your thoughts counts as meditation. Any method that gives you space, where you can notice your thoughts and your mind, counts as meditation. Try a few different methods out to find the one that best suits you. You may prefer a silent meditation, whereas your friend may prefer a guided meditation. There are also chanting meditations, drum meditations and sound meditations.

Could the answer to better sleep, less stress, and healing lie in the ancient practice of meditation? Book with us at Bay Wellness Centre to find out more.

Optimize your health with us today.