Meditation is a practice of relaxation where an individual trains their mind by inducing a level of consciousness to attain certain benefits. Normal life nowadays is full of stress and relaxation from time to time is a key to rejuvenation of our system. Conditioning the mind and living from the heart provide the ideal balance to create a more fruitful and fulfilling life.
The major benefits of meditating are:
1. Better memory
Meditation improves rapid memory recall.
Research has shown that people who practice mindful meditation are more able to adjust their brains to screen out distractions as compared to people who don’t meditate and thus enabling them to recall new things better.
2. More compassion and empathy
Research has also shown that regular meditation practitioners have higher levels of compassion and empathy.
This is even evident afterwards when the practitioners are not actually meditating.
The heart is a big component of our body and goes beyond the mere function of pumping blood to all our organs. Deep feelings such as compassion and love are felt within the heart space.
3. More creativity
Research was done on focused-attention meditation and open-monitoring meditation.
Results showed that participants in open-monitoring meditation performed better at tasks that needed creativity.
4. Less anxiety
More meditation is equal to less anxiety and this is because it loosens some neural pathway connections.
It weakens the connections that deal with our personal experiences like pain and discomfort while strengthening the connections responsible with assessment.
This helps by ensuring that the next time we experience a disturbing event, we will first analyze it rationally.
5. Better focus
As meditation is a focus oriented practice, it helps us to focus even when we are not actually meditating.
But to make this effect long lasting, we have to meditate regularly.
6. Increased immunity
Meditation helps boost immunity in cancer patients, according to research.
It was found out that, progressive muscular relaxation practiced regularly, reduces the risk of breast cancer recurring.
7. Increased fertility
It’s more likely for women to conceive when they are relaxed rather than when they are stressed.
Male fertility may also be boosted through meditation as stress reduces motility (In biology, motility is the ability to move spontaneously and actively, consuming energy in the process) and sperm count.
8. Lowers blood pressure
It’s been proven that blood pressure can be lowered by teaching the body to be less responsive to hormones of stress through meditation.
9. Calmness
The difference between the mind of meditators and those who don’t meditate, often is that meditators witness the ability to have better control of their thoughts while ordinary minds are more easily controlled by the thoughts instead.
So for a meditator, when a thought occurs, however disturbing it may be, it is analyzed by our internal system first then dealt with thus giving a calmness not attainable by those who don’t meditate.
10. A more positive attitude
Because stress is reduced significantly with regular practice of meditation, a more positive outlook towards life in general is experienced.
A more balanced emotional life allows us to explore more productive activities and better cope with difficulties.
Finally, the good thing about meditation is that the benefits are there even when one is not meditating.
If you who would like to experience a new way of meditating I would recommend OmBinaural which is a next-generation binaural beats meditation audio technology. And unlike other existing meditation audios, it’s augmented with heartbeat synchronization and beautiful melodies to make meditation truly enjoyable experience.
Photo credit: Moyan Brenn
