Meditation is the practice of focusing awareness in a positive way to bring peacefulness and calm into your life.
There are two types of meditation:
- One is concentrating meditation, which focuses on a single word or mantra, or even an object outside yourself.
- Another type of meditation is the type that will be discussed in this article, namely mindful meditation.
Mindful meditation allows a person to concentrate on feelings, thoughts, surroundings and images that may pass through your mind. Most types of meditation require about 15 minutes of quiet and concentration to achieve calm and health benefits.
Below are 10 ways that Mindful Meditation can help improve your health, your mental well being and your relationships with others:
- Mindful meditation is used to create calm and relieve stress. Stress is an inevitable issue in life that cannot be avoided. Studies have shown that mindful meditation actually relieves stress by reducing the amount of cortisol that the body produces. Cortisol is a hormone the body produces when stressed. (Cortisol is stored in the belly as fat) So mindful meditation causes the body to chemically produce less of the stress hormone cortisol. In that same way, mindful meditation also helps us recuperate from stress.
. - Mindful meditation improves concentration. This improved concentration in turn improves job and school performance as well as enhancing though in daily life. People trained in mindfulness performed better in verbal reasoning and cognitive functioning. Students trained in mindful meditation noticed improved grades and test scores. Increased verbal reasoning skills and cognitive functioning in turn improves daily life in nearly all areas.
. - Mindfulness meditation does not necessarily decrease diseases, but does decrease stress associated with some diseases. This, in turn, reduces pain and suffering for patients with chronic diseases like Rheumatoid arthritis. In addition, many diseases have the symptom of fatigue as well as pain. Sufferers of arthritis who have fatigue as well as pain have noticed an improvement in their fatigue symptoms when practicing mindful meditation.
. - University of Oregon researchers discovered that mindful meditation increased signaling connections in the brain, giving practitioners of mindful meditation protection against mental illnesses.
. - Mindful meditation enables the brain to process pain and emotions more efficiently. This makes sense, because mindful meditation helps us control what we pay attention to. So if we can take our minds off pain and painful emotions, we will feel better, according to the journal “Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.”
. - “Frontiers in Human Neuroscience” journal has recently published studies showing that the benefits of mindful meditation continue even when we are not actively meditating. The amygdala area of the brain, which processes emotional stimuli, is changed by mindful meditation, making us more able to process emotions.
. - Meditation has always been about self-awareness as much as it has been about focus and physical awareness. Even in ancient times, people practicing meditation strove for self-awareness and the inner calm that can bring. Mindful meditation can help you know yourself and understand yourself better, which in turn improves your quality of life.
. - A study in the journal “Psychological Science” discovered that people who practice mindful meditation are more likely to be compassionate in their daily lives. So, according to this study people who practice mindful meditation are kinder in general that those who don’t.
. - Mindful meditation has been shown to lessen depression, especially in pregnant women and teenagers according to studies done at the University of Leuven and the University of Michigan. According to some studies, mindful meditation allows pregnant women and teenagers who may be prone to depression to experience a reduced amount of stress and be able to process emotions more efficiently, leading to less depression.
. - According to a University of Utah study, mindful meditation allows us to mentally process better during the day as well as manage stress. This leads us to better quality sleep at night because we have less on our minds to process before we sleep.
There are many benefits from mindful meditation. Taking a few minutes each day to be quiet and relax through this technique can improve your life in so many ways that it is worth taking time from your busy day to treat yourself to a mindful meditation practice.
Hello there,
I have to say that I am one of those people who truly believes in meditation, though, if the truth should be told, I do not engage in it often enough. At this point in my life, I have to admit that I am most stressed out for a number of reasons. There are times when I just want to get away from it all, go far away and just meditate my head off. Do you know what I mean? In short, I would like to thank you for dispensing all this vital information to the world at large, for it is most needed in these stressful and troubling times. I have tried some meditation, and I must admit that it leaves me feeling wonderfully light, not to mention that it sends me off to sleep in a very short space of time. Thanks again.
Sincerely
Nikki
I travelled most of the time while working in business. But, while working at the office, I kept a large painting of Kauai on the wall. at various moments, during the day, I would sit quietly for a number of minutes and simply appreciate the beauty of the landscape, plantings, hills, etcetera.
It would also remind me of our vacation there and how peaceful it was for my wife and I.
I guess this might be construed as a short version relevant to meditation.
It always worked.
Hi Nikki and Bob,
Thanks for hopping on our blog and leaving your wonderful comments 🙂
Yes Nikki… we know exactly what you mean… we used to do that often… meditate until our heads popped off! 🙂 However today we love mastering the skill of integrating meditation into our day-to-day actions… it is art indeed.
Bob… love what you shared… we’re taking a mini vacation (inwardly) to Kauai right now. TY for that.
BTW, here’s a guided meditation we filmed for any one looking to learn meditation or deepen their practice:
https://www.totallypresent.com/
Enjoy!
Tristan & Sabrina