by Rico Handjaja

When you think about meditation or mindfulness practices, it’s likely you picture a traditional vision – one of a person, likely a spiritual individual, sitting cross-legged on the ground with their pointer finger and thumbs touching. While this is one way to practice meditation, it is not the only one. Today, meditation is emerging as a way for people to connect with their inner selves.

Meditation has many health benefits to human life due to its calming abilities. Studies explore how the benefits of meditation can support positive mental health and uncover that it can directly act as a healing mechanism.

Below, we’ll investigate how meditation and mental wellness are interconnected and identify ways that you may be able to try practicing meditation in daily life to reap its health benefits.

What is Meditation?

The practice of meditation stems from various religious traditions as a means to focus the mind. More specifically, it relates to training the mind to remain clear and stable in all circumstances, no matter how the experience makes you feel.

People in ancient civilizations started meditating as early as 200,000 years ago. However, there are no written and recorded principles of meditation before the Hindu Vedas in 1500 BCE. Prior, practices were transmitted orally by tribes and rituals. Meditation was referred to as “fire-gazing” in hunter-gatherer societies. It wasn’t until around 600 and 400 BCE that Taoism and Buddhism popularized mindfulness meditation and praised it as a healing practice.

While it’s impossible to determine the true source of meditation, it can be considered a wide-reaching practice that exceeds religious confines. Meditation today exists as a way for busy, full-minded people to harness the ability to quiet and control their mind and thoughts.

Through engaging in deep breathing and self-focusing, people can learn to connect to their present moment.

Understanding Meditation’s Impact on Mental Health

From its use hundreds of thousands of years ago to today, meditation profoundly impacts mental wellness. Past meditators used the practice to focus the mind to harmonize with spiritual sources from within, thus quieting the mind and allowing peaceful introspection about the mystical happenings of life. Meditation practice today has shifted into a way to become more self-aware and bring stillness to the mind and body. This tranquility through complementary and integrative health proves to improve mental wellness significantly through:

Anxiety Reduction

Anxiety is a shared feeling for most people, whether experiencing it once in a while or more chronically. For people that struggle to control their persistent anxiety, meditation has been identified as a way to reduce daily feelings of anxiety and its associated symptoms.

This comes from developing the ability to focus on the present moment rather than harping on negative and worrisome thoughts and emotions. This heightened self-awareness allows for a more balanced and resilient response to stressors.

Depression Management

While anxiety and depression are often incorrectly used synonymously, they are different disorders. Depression itself is a condition that alters a person’s mood and negatively impacts their desire to participate in daily activities. People suffering from depression may benefit from meditation.

The hippocampus in the brain plays a role in emotional processing, such as anxiety and avoidance behaviors. Individuals with diagnosed depression often have a smaller hippocampus, yet research identifies that mindfulness meditation may increase the hippocampus size and improve depressive symptoms. Thus, this leads to greater emotional regulation, which may reduce depression over time.

Stress Relief

There are many sources of stress, and everybody experiences it periodically. Regardless of the cause, meditation may alleviate its symptoms and allow for stronger coping mechanisms.

A complex stress pathway in the brain is the Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal (HPA) pathway, and stressors increase its adrenaline output. Adrenaline is a stress hormone your body produces to prepare for dangerous situations. With mindfulness based stress reduction, adrenaline levels are shown to decrease significantly. Thus, meditation may be a helpful coping technique to consistently reduce stress.

Emotional Regulation

The ability to be introspective and regulate your emotions are essential tools for people to possess. An individual may feel overwhelmed, angry, upset, or overly emotional without them. Meditation is an effective tool to enhance control and regulation.

Meditation trains the brain to remain calm and non-judgmental, even under challenging circumstances. This helps keep a level head and reduce negative or painful thoughts and feelings. With this reduced emotional reactivity, people may live more stable lives. This allows for greater control and a healthier response to challenging situations.

With all of its benefits, transcendental meditation can improve mental wellness. Those who practice can experience reduced anxiety, depression, and stress to improve their daily lives.

Improved Focus and Concentration

One of the pitfalls of people who struggle with mental wellness is their inability to focus and concentrate on tasks. This can lead to additional stress and guilt, thus spiraling their condition. Meditation can help people strengthen their concentration and calm their traveling mind.

Studies suggest that even irregular meditation practice can improve focus. The prefrontal cortex of the brain is often associated with concentration. The number of active cells in the prefrontal cortex can increase with meditation. With more cells comes greater neuron connections, allowing a person to have more sustained focus.

With all of the benefits of meditation, mindfulness meditation can be a great way to improve mental and physical health. Those who practice can experience reduced anxiety, depression, and stress to improve their daily lives.

The Mind-Body Connection: Meditation and Physical Health

The connection between the mind and body has been a consistent philosophical debate for centuries. Medicine earlier than three centuries ago almost always treated the mind and body as a single entity. However, Western medicine shifted to separate the two and focus on physical healing separately from mental wellness. Thankfully, with the 20th century came again a greater focus on the importance of the complex links between the mind and the body.

Chronic Pain

If a person suffers from chronic pain, they are experiencing pain from inflammation or dysfunctional nerves. This often lasts from a few weeks to years with little symptom relief. Meditation may relieve chronic pain symptoms instead of relying on an abundance of medication.

Research suggests that meditation can reduce pain through mental strengthening and conditioning. Disengagement and disconnection from the seeming threat of pain can be one way. Fear reduction, coping and accepting pain, and self-regulation of thoughts about pain may also play a role. This displays the strength of the mind and strengthens the belief that the mind and body are truly synchronous.

Blood Pressure

Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a common health issue with many potential consequences. While causes can be physical, stress is also a trigger. Reducing long-term high pressure is important to prevent chronic conditions like strokes, heart attacks, and kidney disease.

Meditation decreases blood pressure to reduce stress levels and improve mental health conditions. In some cases, patients who took pressure medications could reduce or eliminate these medications after sustained mindfulness practices due to consistent blood pressure maintenance.

Sleep Health

Sleep is one of the most important aspects of physical and mental wellness. Without sleep, the body and mind can feel sluggish, leading to issues with emotional regulation. Regular meditation has been shown to decrease occurrences of insomnia and improve sleep quality overall.

This is done by promoting relaxation, calming the mind, and encouraging stress reduction. By removing focus from daily life and entering a tranquil state, the body is more apt to fall and stay asleep longer.

With many more benefits of mindful meditation for physical health, such as improved immune function and post traumatic stress disorder relief, meditation can enhance body health. Mental wellness also benefits from physical wellness because there is a presumed link between the mind and body. When you feel better physically, your mental state is stronger, too.

Techniques and Approaches for Daily Meditation

If you’ve never meditated before, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and confused about how to get started. Meditation is simple and unstrict – it can be done anywhere, at any time. From your daily commute to preparing to sleep, any time can become meditation time.

First-time meditators should start to practice meditation with a smaller amount of time. Even 10 minutes can suffice. Then, sit in a position comfortable to you; this can be cross-legged, seated in a chair, kneeling, or however you can be relaxed and focused. Notice your body’s position and follow your breaths, slowly in and out of your lungs. If you feel your mind wandering, avoid obsessing over the content and kindly redirect it back to silence.

If you’re uncomfortable starting alone, guided meditation spaces provide step-by-step instructions to teach you how to quiet your mind. It may also help to put meditation reminders around your space, such as a post-it note on your desk corner, to help you remember to take time to relax daily.

There are various types of meditations to pick from. Explore body scan meditation, mindfulness meditation, and transcendental meditation to identify which best suits you. Be consistent, and soon you’ll find yourself stronger mentally.

Try Practicing Mindfulness Meditation Today

If you struggle with mental wellness, you may benefit from mindfulness meditation practice. There are dozens of benefits of meditation for the mind and body. The positive consequences are limitless, from greater inner self-awareness to improved sleep quality that results in more effective emotional regulation.

With even a just a few minutes a day, you, too, can see improved mental health after meditation. Find the best meditation form for you and stick to it for prolonged results.

 

References

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