What is meditation?
Meditation is a set of techniques that are intended to encourage a state of awareness and focused attention. It is a practise that an individual uses as a technique to focus on the mind with thoughts or activities, this helps to achieve a mentally clear and emotional calm state. It can be considered as a type of mind-body complementary medicine. During meditation it helps to eliminate the thoughts that can be causing an individual stress and helps an individual focus.
Why is meditation the answer to everything?
Meditation helps one to focus on relieving stress and letting everything that is on their mind flow calmly through, significantly in stressful situations this is very beneficial. It is a powerful tool that individuals do not realise can help balance a more stable mindset. It allows the body to reset and it can be a vital component in our lives. Meditation does not need to happen for hours, it is a process that can even take 20 minutes as long as the body and mind is calmed then the focus of these thoughts are clear. Meditation has no judgement, it is the feeling where an individual is able to stay positive and help the mind clear for longer which results in a calmer atmosphere and environment. It has a correlation to better positivity as it is bringing an individual more peace.
Meditation and the link to illness and mental health
Meditation is very useful in medical conditions. Meditation can help to manage symptoms within a range of conditions such as anxiety, asthma, cancer, high blood pressure, sleep problems and depression. It is not a replacement for the traditional medical treatment but it is useful in reducing negative thoughts.
The benefits to meditation
Meditations brings both emotional and physical benefits. It causes a shift within our awareness and this can prolong to make someone feel better.
Meditation is a common stress relief. Mental and physical stress increase the levels of a hormone cause cortisol and this releases inflammatory chemicals called cytokines which is an effect of stress. The higher levels of stress disrupts sleep, fatigue, cloudy thinking and can promote depression and anxiety. Within an 8 week study used to reduce stress it showed that mindfulness meditation improves post-traumatic stress disorder and irritable bowel syndrome.
Meditation also helps to balance and control anxiety. It was shown that 1300 adults found that meditation helped to decrease anxiety because they were able to calm their mind and thoughts during particular situations which was most beneficial within their anxiety outbreaks.
It has been seen that meditation and mindfulness can improve work performance, personal relationships and health. Within a 9-5 working day, taking 5 minutes to deep breath and reflect can help to decrease stress and consequently increase overall productivity. This shows that taking some time out of the day can improve someone day overall because they get the sense of feeling better and improving productivity can help to improve someone mindset both personally and physical actions. This can help to improve someones coping and problem solving skills and avoid burnout as we all know that a busy and full packed day does not help to produce the best work at the best standard.
Overall, meditations helps to gain a new perspective on stressful situations as it reduces negative emotions and helps to promote the imagination and creativity and in particular helps an individual to be more patience and increase self-awareness.
How to meditate?
Meditation is very simple and it is something that everybody can do. A common way of mediation is to find a place that feels peaceful to you and feel your breath and notice that the mind has wandered into a calmer place within a set limited time. Other ways of meditating include body scanning and walking. The true route to meditation is being able to be calm and feel that you are in a better place within self care.
As it can be seen that meditation is a calmer route that an individual can take that will benefit a variety of conditions and thoughts in both personal lives and working environments. It can bring a sense of calmness, peace and balance that benefits emotional well-being and over health. It can help someone to learn to stay centred and keep inner peace and it only takes a very small part of someones day which can be completed anywhere.