Many people may think of meditation as some form of worship or prayer. But this is not true. Meditation is simply awareness. When you are still and free of thought you are in meditation. Being aware of your breath is meditation; paying total attention to the bird’s chirping is meditation. As long what you are doing is free from distraction to the mind, it is effectively meditation.
Meditation practice started in India more than 3,000 years ago and during recent years it has made its way to the Western world. Science has revealed its remarkable effects on our mental health such as relieving stress, managing anxiety and depression, lowering blood pressure, improving blood circulation, lowering heart rate, slowing down respiratory rate, increasing feelings of well-being, deepening relaxation and creating more gray matter (It’s a good thing!).
Just to clarify there are two main types of meditation:
Transcendental meditation: where you may use a mantra (aiding words or sounds) to help your mind to find stillness without effort, and
mindfulness meditation: where you achieve mindfulness - an open awareness of your environment without reacting with thought or emotion.
Positive effects meditation has on the body-
Less pain:
Meditation is beginning to prove effective as a treatment for chronic and acute pain. One experiment showed that four days of mindfulness meditation substantially reduced the participant’s experience of unpleasantness and the intensity of their pain (Penman, 2013).
Better focus:
Meditation is a practice of focusing our attention and being aware of when it drifts, this actually improves our focus when we’re not meditating as we have become skilled in keeping our focus from distractions. This is a lasting and long-term effect from meditating regularly, just as a muscle becomes strengthened through regular exercises.
Less stress:
Meditation has been shown to help people perform under pressure while feeling less stressed. The practice of paying more attention to the present moment helps lower stress hormones and decreases inflammation in the body.
Studies have shown that mindfulness meditation can decrease self-reported stress levels and make people feel calmer, but until now it was unknown if it was having a biological impact on the body.
Now, scientists in the US have shown that an eight-week course of mindfulness meditation can help lower inflammatory molecules and stress hormones by around 15 per cent.
This practice was shown to work better than a non-meditation stress management course (Dvorsky, 2013).
Less anxiety:
There is a section of our brain that is sometimes referred to as the Me Center (technically the medial prefrontal cortex). This is the part that learns associations between contexts and experiences and corresponds adaptive responses. Normally the neural pathways from the bodily sensation and fear centres of the brain to the Me Center are really strong. When you experience something frightening or upsetting, it causes a strong reaction in your Me Center, making you feel scared and under attack. The more we meditate, the less anxiety we have as we are actually loosening this neural connection.
This means that we don’t react as strongly to sensations that might have once lit up our Me Centers. So when we experience what we perceive as scary or upsetting sensations, we can easily look at them from a more calmer and rational state.
Improved memory:
One of the things mindful meditating has been linked to, is improving rapid memory recall. People who practiced meditation are able to adjust their brain waves that screen out distractions and increase their productivity quickly. This ability to ignore distractions creates a superior ability to rapidly remember and incorporate new facts.
More compassion:
Research shows that empathy and compassion are higher in those who meditate regularly. By doing some form of meditation, we start to understand and experience interconnectedness of human beings. Eventually, we start to realize how similar we are to one another, regardless of how many differences our mind constructs. The peace we feel within us starts emanate to others, increasing feelings of compassion and empathy.
A study in 2008 found that people who regularly meditated had stronger activation levels in their temporal parietal junctures (the part of the brain tied to empathy) when they heard the sounds of people suffering, as opposed to those who did not regularly meditate (Desteno, 2015).
More gray matter:
Meditating has been linked to creating larger amounts of gray matter in the hippocampus and frontal areas of the brain (which helps with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection). Increased gray matter can lead to more positive emotions, longer-lasting emotional stability and heightened focus during daily life. Reduced age-related effects on gray matter and reduced decline of our cognitive functioning can also be linked to meditating (Bushak, 2015).
In my opinion the ultimate benefit I’ve seen with incorporating meditation exercises in my counselling sessions and meditating in my own daily life is the liberation of the mind from attachment to things it cannot control, such as external circumstances or strong internal emotions. We become liberated with the daily practice of meditation and mindfulness (being present), where we no longer feel compelled to cling onto negative experiences, instead we can maintain a calm mind and sense of inner harmony.
You can keep reading below on how to easily meditate if you're a first timer!
With love,
Jacqui Zdravkovski.
SIMPLE MEDITATION FOR BEGINNERS
1. Sit or lie comfortably with your back straight (if sitting, you can rest up on a wall or chair)
2. Close your eyes.
3. Make no effort to control your breath; simply breathe naturally.
4. Focus your attention on the breath and on how the body moves with each inhalation and exhalation. Notice the movement of your body as you breathe. Observe your chest, shoulders, rib cage, and belly. Simply focus your attention on your breath without controlling its pace or intensity. If your mind wanders, return your focus back to your breath.
5. Maintain this meditation practice for two to three minutes to start, and then try it for longer periods.
Congratulations you have meditated!
References:
http://io9.gizmodo.com/how-meditation-changes-your-brain-and-makes-you-feel-b-470030863?IR=T
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/how-meditation-may-change-the-brain/?_r=2
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/01/24/mindfulness-meditation-lowers-stress-hormone-decreases-inflammation/
http://www.medicaldaily.com/mental-health-benefits-meditation-itll-alter-your-brains-grey-matter-and-improve-319298
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/mindfulness-meditation-empathy-compassion/398867/