The Transformative Power of Meditation: Exploring its Profound Benefits
In the fast-paced and ever-evolving world we live in, finding moments of tranquility and inner peace has become an essential pursuit for many. One practice that has gained remarkable popularity for its myriad benefits is meditation. Often associated with spiritual and mindfulness practices, meditation offers a wealth of advantages that extend beyond the realm of relaxation. In this blog post, we'll delve into the profound benefits of meditation, shedding light on how this ancient practice can positively impact our physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
Meditation Benefits
There are endless benefits to meditation and many of them you can discover on your own just by inviting a daily practice. I am going to explore 5 major benefits of meditation, backed by scientific evidence.
Treatment for Psychological Conditions
A systematic review over 209 studies on mindfulness-based meditation found it to be successful in reducing anxiety, depression, stress and a variety of other psychological conditions.(1)
Meditation allows you to drop into a state of deep relaxation. It can teach you how to mitigate the intense effects of anxiety and depression through different lenses such as detachment and altered focus.
Improves Cognition
In a 4 day meditation study, the practice was shown to reduce fatigue while improving mindfulness. This increased mindfulness improves working memory (visual and spatial) and executive functioning.(2)
This practice allows you to bring your intention inward while silencing your mind. This helps you to exercise your brain in different ways while exploring your internal state.
Decreases Blood Pressure
A review found that meditation can help lower your risk for cardiovascular disease by reducing some of the risk factors such as hypertension and psychological stress. Several different styles of meditation showed beneficial effects in lowering blood pressure.(3)
Meditation may have positive effects on the cardiovascular system through a mind-heart connection and anti-inflammatory mechanisms. (4)
Improves Sleep
A study on meditation based therapies found that those who meditated were able to stay asleep longer. The intervention results showed a significant reduction in insomnia severity. (5)
Meditation overtime enhances your body’s ability to drop into a state of relaxation quicker. This may help you do so at the end of the day as well when you want to let go of external and internal stimuli and drift off.
Pain Control
A systematic review over 38 studies concluded that mindfulness meditation can reduce pain and depression symptoms while overall improving quality of life.(6)
While more rigorous studies are needed to determine the effects on chronic pain, this suggests potential for benefits.
How Meditation Works:
There are two types of meditation mentioned below:
Focused Attention (FA)
Open Monitoring (OM)
If you have seen or read Eat Pray Love (my all time favorite book and movie) there is a clear example of these differences. When Liz is staying at an Ashram in India she meditates an hour every morning and evening and focuses on a mediation (FA). Here she is using the mantra as a focal point to avoid getting wrapped up in the wandering mind. When she goes to Bali and seeks guidance from a medicine man he tells her to sit still and smile (OM). In this technique it is okay for her mind to wander; she should just observe that she is thinking and then let it go.
Focused Attention meditation restructures cognitive functioning. It brings your attention to a focal point such as the breath, a mantra, or an area of your body. Typically your mind would be wandering from thought to thought, stimulating various reactions in your physical and emotional body. FA meditation suppresses these feelings or responses by guiding you in dissociating from the wandering mind.(2) Open Monitoring meditation teaches you to actively detach from these thoughts when they come into your mind without trying to force them out.(2) You can view your mind as a blue sky and every thought as a passing cloud.
During meditation the physical relaxation induces your Central Nervous System(CNS) to function at a different level. The CNS is receiving less input and producing less output. In result, it has time to process internal activities at an increased pace.(2) I briefly mentioned this in benefit number two (improves cognition) above. This mind-body interaction opens up a realm for numerous potential benefits to slip in. By inducing relaxation, ease of mind, and increased control over your internal function we can begin to see many cognitive enhancements through this practice.
Resources:
Saeed, S. A., Cunningham, K., & Bloch, R. M. (2019). Depression and Anxiety Disorders: Benefits of Exercise, Yoga, and Meditation. American family physician, 99(10), 620–627.
Brandmeyer, T., Delorme, A., & Wahbeh, H. (2019). The neuroscience of meditation: classification, phenomenology, correlates, and mechanisms. Progress in brain research, 244, 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.pbr.2018.10.020
Koike, M. K., & Cardoso, R. (2014). Meditation can produce beneficial effects to prevent cardiovascular disease. Hormone molecular biology and clinical investigation, 18(3), 137–143. https://doi.org/10.1515/hmbci-2013-0056
Olex, S., Newberg, A., & Figueredo, V. M. (2013). Meditation: should a cardiologist care?. International journal of cardiology, 168(3), 1805–1810. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcard.2013.06.086
Koike, M. K., & Cardoso, R. (2014). Meditation can produce beneficial effects to prevent cardiovascular disease. Hormone molecular biology and clinical investigation, 18(3), 137–143. https://doi.org/10.1515/hmbci-2013-0056
Hilton, L., Hempel, S., Ewing, B. A., Apaydin, E., Xenakis, L., Newberry, S., Colaiaco, B., Maher, A. R., Shanman, R. M., Sorbero, M. E., & Maglione, M. A. (2017). Mindfulness Meditation for Chronic Pain: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, 51(2), 199–213. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-016-9844-2
