Top 6 Health Benefits of Meditation

Meditation as a concept has been around for eons of years now. No longer restricted to the Himalayan monks, this concept is slowing but surely gaining popularity amongst many people, both young and old.

Meditation is a habitual process of training the mind thereby increasing our focus and concentration. This also involves decluttering the mind, working on our thoughts and redirecting them towards positivity.

Today’s hard and stressful lifestyle has prompted people to practice meditation on a regular basis, and its benefits go far beyond spirituality.

There are primarily two styles of meditation:

1. Focused-attention meditation – which involves focusing on a single object, sound, thought, or visual. This meditation type focuses on breathing patterns, or a mantra or a calming sound or picture
2. Open-monitoring meditation – this technique involves a broad awareness of all aspects of the environment and training your thought process. It also consists in becoming aware of your thoughts, feelings, and impulses rather than suppressing them

Some popular health benefits that make meditation a popular choice amongst many includes:

1. Up your emotional wellbeing

Are you loaded with emotional baggage? Then, you should resort to meditation for it helps to revive your emotional balance and steadily cleanses your consciousness. Thus, people who practice meditation not only hold a balanced outlook towards life but also are more free-spirited and satisfied.

2. Get a hold of your stress levels and anxiety

Research has proved that regular meditation benefits an individual by reducing his/her anxiety or stress levels.  Meditation calms down the mind and prevents strong emotions from resurfacing. So practice meditation regularly and enjoy some blissful peace and tranquility.

3. Enhance Self-awareness

Certain forms of meditation help an individual develop a strong understanding of themselves. When you are more in sync with your true self, you can help yourself grow into your best person. Gaining a better understanding of your thought patterns helps you to direct them towards more constructive and positive trends. Experience in meditation also helps in cultivating the habit of construction problem-solving.

4. Increasing Attention Spans

Focused-attention meditation is like a weight-lifting exercise for the mind. It helps to strengthen your attention span. This not only increases your focus but also helps you to become mindful of the minutest details of the tasks at hand. Practicing meditation even for a brief period of five days can help you see its benefits right away.

5. Improves Sleep patterns

We all suffer from insomnia at some point in time in our life. Science has proved that people who practice meditation fall asleep faster and also stay asleep for a longer duration as compared to the ones who don’t practice this powerful technique. Regular meditation relaxes you, relieves you of tensions, and helps you maintain a peaceful state – all these three help you fall asleep faster.

6. Lower Blood Pressure levels

Regular phases of high blood pressure make the heart work harder to pump out blood to the other parts of the body. Studies are showing that practicing several types of meditation relaxes the nerve signals that control the heart functions and also reduces the tension in the blood vessels.