Does Meditation Work? 5 Reasons Why It's Worth A Try
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Many people are unaware of what meditation is, and how it could help them.
Meditation is giving yourself permission to hit the pause button on life. When you do this, you allow yourself room to breathe, to calm your mind and find compassion and solace.
While skeptics are often turned off of meditation by stereotypes there is plenty of evidence to suggest it can help people with a variety of chronic illnesses. In this post we’ll examine five reasons why you should try meditation.
Sleep Better
There may be no commodity more valued and yet, more abused than sleep. A good night’s sleep has become a precious thing as we increasingly bring our phones and tablets to bed. In fact, studies have shown that bringing our phones to bed makes you sleep deprived and exhausted.
The problem? All that app usage, game playing, Instagram scrolling, and reading makes it hard to calm the mind. That’s where meditation comes in.
Science suggests that meditation may help to treat insomnia, additionally, experts believe that by introducing mindful meditating into your life, you can keep your mind calmer throughout the day, which can reduce stress and promote better sleep.
Calm Your Active Mind
Everyone’s lives are busy these days and often our brains can feel like we have a hamster (or two) running on a wheel. Meditation can help.
A study has shown that mindfulness training improves working memory capacity and reduces mind wandering. This can have implications for a wide variety of areas in your life. Ultimately it is about improving our experience of life.
Improve Depression
In fact, not only could meditation improve depression symptoms from those suffering with the mental condition, it leads to fewer serious relapses.
In a 2013 study, scientists discovered that people who practiced meditation have more control over how their brains process negative triggers like pain.
The study, conducted by Brown University, found that mindfulness meditation training such as body and breath sensations, may help prevent depression and reduces distress in chronic pain.
Protect Your Heart
Heart disease is the second leading cause of death in Canada, which makes looking after your heart incredibly important. One way of boosting your heart health is meditation.
In one 2012 study, patients that had coronary heart disease practiced meditation and showed a reduced risk of heart attack, stroke and even death.
Reduce Your Stress Level
Meditation provides you the ability to override the part of the brain responsible for fear. This is important because when we’re afraid the brain releases cortisol. While cortisol is helpful in a truly fearful situation, in your normal-everyday-life it is damaging and can be linked to all sorts of health issues.
This study suggests that meditation can help you cut back on stress and anxiety by almost 40 percent. What’s even better is it doesn’t take a lot of time to reap the benefits. In this study, scientist found that brief mindfulness meditation training altered psychological responses to stress.
Final Thoughts
There is an increasing amount of evidence to suggest that meditation has many health benefits. Mindful meditation can help improve your quality of life and the best part is, it doesn’t take a lot of time or effort to start feeling the benefits.
If you need help getting started, Medical Meditations has twelve self-guided meditation modules developed by Dr. Nikhil Joshi to improve the lives of people suffering from chronic illnesses.
Medical Meditation is a free, unique app designed for Android or iPhone users to help people suffering from chronic illnesses, depression, anxiety or grief. To find out more about Medical Meditations and Dr. Nikhil Joshi, click here, or if you’re ready to get started, download the app now.
Photos are courtesy of Robert Conway