Benefits of Meditation
Meditation is one of the best tools we have to counter the brain’s negativity bias, release accumulated stress, foster positive experiences and intentions, and enjoy the peace of present moment awareness.
Benefits of Meditation
Health Benefits of Meditation
- Decreased blood pressure and hypertension
- Lowered cholesterol levels
- Reduced production of “stress hormones” including cortisol and adrenaline
- More efficient oxygen use by the body
- Increased production of the anti-aging hormone DHEA
- Improved immune function
- Decreased anxiety, depression, and insomnia
Meditation Reduces Stress and Burnout
Chronic, unmanaged stress can make you sick and accelerate aging. As many scientific studies have found, prolonged stress can contribute to high blood pressure, heart disease, stomach ulcers, autoimmune diseases, anxiety, cancer, insomnia, chronic fatigue, obesity, depression, and accelerated aging. Regular meditation dissipates accumulated stress and cultivates a state of restful alertness.
Meditation Improves Your Focus, Memory, and Ability to Learn
As researchers have found, meditation can help you tap into your brain’s deepest potential to focus, learn, and adapt. While scientists used to believe that beyond a certain age, the brain couldn’t change or grow, we now know that brain has a quality known as plasticity, enabling it to grow new neurons and transform throughout our lives. Meditation is a powerful tool for awakening new neural connections and even transforming regions of the brain. There are many studies avaialbe to back this information up.
Meditation Helps You Create More Harmonious, Loving Relationships
When you’re feeling balanced and centered, it is much easier to respond with awareness rather than reacting in a knee-jerk way or saying something that creates toxicity in your relationships. As you meditate on a regular basis, you develop what is known as witnessing awareness—the ability to calmly and objectively observe a situation, notice when you are being triggered, and consciously choose how you want to respond. The ability to be present and aware is extremely valuable in every relationship.
Meditation Improves Creativity and Problem Solving
We each have between 60,000 and 80,000 thoughts a day—unfortunately, many of them are the same thoughts we had yesterday, last week, and last year. Meditation is a powerful practice for going beyond habitual, conditioned thought patterns into a state of expanded awareness. We connect to the field of infinite possibilities or pure potentiality, and we open to new insights, intuition, and ideas.
Meditation Decreases Depression, Anxiety, and Insomnia
he emotional effects of sitting quietly and going within are profound. The deep state of rest produced by meditation triggers the brain to release neurotransmitters, including dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. Each of these naturally occurring brain chemicals has been linked to different aspects of happiness.