The benifits of meditation

Meditation can improve your health and enhance your happiness

Though meditation has its roots in Hinduism and Buddhism, mindfulness meditation today is accessible to people of all backgrounds and beliefs. Meditation is remarkable popularity today, you may wonder “Why meditate?"

Thousands of studies have shown the positive effects of meditation practice on our health of physiological and psychological and even spiritual.

Zenbless has summarized several important reasons why meditate from these studies.

1. Meditation makes you happier

Meditation is known to help us gain awareness of our minds and enhance the flow of positive emotions. So we can see negative thoughts and become less identified with our emotions and thoughts.

Scientific evidence supports this claim: extensive studies were conducted on a group of Buddhist monks as they were meditating. The pre-frontal cortex of the monks’ brains (the part associated with happiness) was found to be extra active.

2. Meditation helps you sleep better

Various studies worldwide have shown the prevalence of insomnia in 10%–30% of the population, some even as high as 50%–60%. Solving insomnia has become a big problem, meditation just might be a solution.

Research shows that Meditation can enhance REM sleep(REM sleep is the changeover from wakefulness to sleep) and increased levels of melatonin(melatonin can promote sleep).

An article in the Harvard Health Blog confirms that meditation triggers the relaxation response. Once you have fully relaxed, you are in a better state for a good night sleep.

3. Meditation helps you reduce anxiety, stress and depression

According to Psychology Today, “Anxiety is a cognitive state connected to an inability to regulate your emotional responses to perceived threats. Mindfulness meditation strengthens a person’s cognitive ability to regulate emotions.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, “During meditation, you focus your attention and eliminate the stream of jumbled thoughts that may be crowding your mind and causing stress.”

Studies conducted at the University of Wisconsin proved that meditation has physiological effects on the brain. For example, researchers found that the part of the brain that regulates stress and anxiety shrinks when meditation is practiced consistently.

4. Meditation helps you reduce pain and heal faster

Practicing self-healing meditation, you can relieve pain by changing your mind.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, who heads up the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine at University of Massachusetts Medical School, proved back in the ‘80s that meditation and mindfulness could significantly improve pain symptoms and quality of life in chronic pain patients, even up to four years later.

When researchers had people participate in four days of mindfulness-based training, participants reported less pain intensity and unpleasantness. What’s more, MRIs showed reductions in pain-induced cerebral blood flow during meditation sessions.

5. Meditation improves your concentration and sharpens your memory

Apart from enhancing your happiness, meditation also helps your memory stay sharp and your concentration remain steady.

A 2005 study at Harvard Medical School found that meditation increases the thickness of your prefrontal cortex, the area of your brain associated with attention and self-awareness.

With mindfulness meditation, you train in remaining aware of the present moment in a non-judgmental manner. Consequently, Meditation gives you a clear mind, distractions are less and less likely to take you away.

6. Meditation can let you health better

It has been proven that meditation helps benefit the immune system. It also helps lower cholesterol, reduces blood pressure and can protect you against heart disease.

7. You needn’t be a religious person to meditate

Meditation has been beyond doctrine: it’s about developing calmness, practicing awareness and decluttering the mind.

Although contemplation is a key component of most world religions, you don’t have to be as a religion person to practice meditation.

8. Meditation benefits are almost immediate

The numerous health benefits from meditation are another great reason. Certain benefits can start making themselves felt very quickly after people start sitting. A sense of calmness and peace of mind are common experiences.

By reading this article it’s clear that there are many benefits to meditating. We hope you’re interested in the practice of meditation and its results.