The 12 Benefits of Meditation
The benefits of meditation are truly limitless. (And If you claim to be one of those people that don’t have time to meditate, you are likely someone who needs it the most.)
If you’ve never meditated before and are curious about the benefits you can expect, read on. Here are just a handful of the benefits this practice can bring.
Stress Reduction: Clearing your mind of your to-do lists, conflicts, and neverending trains of thought can reduce much of the stress that these things cause. Meditation requires you to focus your breathing, mental state, and physical movement into something that’s still and calm. There’s not much that’s better for stress than meditation.
Control Anxiety: Just like meditation reduces stress, it can help you control your anxiety. Anxiety can take many forms and come at different times of your life, but clearing your mind and focusing can help you take back control of negative emotions and anxiety.
Promote Emotional Health: You might be lucky enough to not experience stress or anxiety, but mediation can still benefit you. By emptying your mind and focusing on your personal wellbeing, your baseline for satisfaction and gratitude can improve, which translates into better emotional health.
Enhance Self-Awareness: When is the last time you thought about yourself, your decisions, your opportunities in a dedicated way? This act doesn’t happen naturally, so setting some time aside to think about you can help you become more self-aware.
Lengthen Attention Span: Human’s attention spans have been getting shorter and shorter thanks to the constant stimulus of information and gratification that mobile devices bring to us. Slowing down and avoiding screens can lengthen your attention span so you can focus on tasks, conversations, and ideas that matter in your life.
Help Reduce Age-Related Memory Loss: As we age, many of us will start to lose our memory, whether from illness or just general apathy. Meditation can help you maintain and improve your memory even as you get older.
Can Generate Kindness: Someone who is less stressed, less anxious, and has a better attention span is better equipped to be kind in both the business world and at home. Think of the people you know who meditate. How do they interact with you? We’re guessing they’re kinder than average.
Help in the battle with addiction: If you are suffering from an addiction, whether it’s drugs, alcohol, sugar or gambling, meditation may be able to help. Because meditation is so self-reflective, you may be able to get down to the root of your addiction and find better ways to treat it.
Improves sleep: Training your mind to focus and slow down can also benefit you while you’re trying to fall asleep (and stay asleep). Try meditating right before bed to calm nerves and promote contentment.
Helps control pain: Mindful meditation can reduce physical pain up to 57%, according to a study by NCCIH. They tested meditation’s pain-relieving capabilities compared to opioids and found that meditation regulates the same area of the brain—-without any medication.
Can Decrease Blood Pressure: A study suggests that mindful meditation twice a day may stimulate certain genes that produce telomerase, an enzyme that may reduce blood pressure.
Help moderate your body’s production of cortisol: In another study, researchers found that meditation reduces levels of cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone responsible for stress and adrenaline. Too much cortisol in your system (or too often) can result in inflammation, high blood pressure, weight gain, and poor sleep so regulating it is important if you want to be healthy.
We’ve seen these benefits of meditation firsthand which is one of the reasons we created the OAK Journal. Explore it now and give meditation a chance. You may be surprised by the range of mental and physical benefits.