Meditation has been used for thousands of years to help relieve stress, and improve both health and wellbeing.
Meditation can help reduce inflammation, which in turn alleviates physical pain. Furthermore, studies have revealed that it increases energy levels and boosts concentration levels.
1. Reduces Stress
Meditation helps reduce stress by slowing down or stopping the body’s fight-or-flight response, during which cortisol production occurs and can have many detrimental side effects.
High levels of cortisol cause your heart rate and blood pressure to increase, which in turn can result in numerous issues, including disrupted sleep, anxiety, depression and fatigue.
Meditation can be one of the best ways to reduce your stress. Meditation also can strengthen your immune system and increase energy.
2. Increases Self-Awareness
Meditation has been shown to significantly increase self-awareness. This is because it teaches individuals to observe their thoughts and emotions without becoming emotionally attached to them, thus helping develop greater self-knowledge.
Teaching people to recognize and redirect their thought habits can also help them avoid negative self-talk and self-sabotage.
Meditation also increases empathy, the capacity to understand and feel other people’s emotions. This skill can help build meaningful relationships and enable greater connection with people around you.
One study discovered that monks who practiced compassion meditation exhibited more activity in the part of the brain responsible for processing empathy compared to monks who didn’t meditate at all, suggesting this technique can improve with just four days of practice.
3. Improves Concentration
Meditation is an effective practice to calm your mind. Studies have revealed its beneficial properties to boost concentration and focus on tasks.
Studies suggest that mindfulness meditation, the most popular form of this discipline, increases awareness by drawing it towards breath and body awareness, training the brain to remain focused for extended periods on one thing at a time.
Studies have also demonstrated that concentration meditation activates key regions of the brain essential for focus. This activation has been noted both among novice and experienced meditators.
4. Increases Empathy
Meditation has been proven to increase empathy – the ability to understand another person’s perspective and connect emotionally. Loving-kindness meditation was found specifically to sharpen one’s ability to be empathic.
Study results on long-term meditators have demonstrated increased activity in two areas of their brain that process empathy – the insula and temporal parietal juncture.
Studies have also demonstrated the power of meditation to enhance self-compassion – the capacity to love and care for oneself without expecting anything in return – which can reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, improve communication between individuals, and make you an overall better person.
5. Reduces Anxiety
Meditation is an effective mind-body practice to reduce anxiety by keeping you present and soothing racing thoughts that cause stress.
Meditation can also help you recognize and change negative or unhelpful thoughts, which are particularly helpful as anxious or stressful thoughts often compound their impact.
Meditation helps reduce stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline while increasing serotonin levels in the brain, shrinking its size. Furthermore, meditation also decreases amygdala activity – which is responsible for feelings of fear and stress – thus providing additional benefits.
