Mostly it is difficult for people to sit in a place and spend some time calmly without thinking about anything and relaxing their minds. Indians somewhere are pretty much aware of the process of relaxing the body and calming down the mind. The process of sitting in a resting position keeping straight back and exhaling and inhaling slowly is called meditation.
Meditation is a process of keeping one’s mind and health free from any kind of anxiety and depression. After working the whole day, the body and the mind get disturbed, and to help the body and mind to be active again, meditation is an easier way to do that. Stress and disorders can’t be touched like the physical pain of the body can be treated with massaging over a specific place. This can be reduced by reducing mental stress.
Relaxation is a response that people get after doing a concentrated meditation for a long duration. Meditation lowers the increased blood pressure and the heart rate is improved along with relaxation in the nerves of the mind. When the body is quiet and calm and the tiredness and stress get released from the muscles.
The heart of the meditation is the soothing power and during its practice, the whole focus should be on continuous in and out-breathing. The brain should be clear of thoughts and all the focus should be made on one soothing voice or sound.
It is not hard to do meditation or to learn anything regarding meditation from any counselor or doctor. There is no need to visit somewhere like the therapist again and again. Daily practice makes a person perfect at meditating and a person can concentrate to be in a stable and calm state. After good practice, a person becomes an expert in producing these calm and relaxed states. A person who meditates often is the most relaxed ever.
Body Balance with Meditation
Meditation is not something trendy or new, it is thousands of years old practice that is deadly needed today in such a stressful life. It has enough health benefits and stress, anxiety, and depression are released keeping mind and body toxins-free.
The direct effect of meditation goes to the nervous system and during stress, the heart rate and blood pressure remain in control. The spiritual side of meditation can’t be ignored. Meditation is helpful in building of six senses and the connection of the soul to the white light. It helps to create creativity in a person’s way of thinking.
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Meditation and its Forms
Meditation has many forms and some of them are:
1. Concentration and Meditation
In Concentration meditation, the brain tries to focus and produce concentration, and basically once the mind is concentrated all other forms of meditation can be achieved.
2. Transcendental Meditation
In the transcendental Meditation technique, a word or chanting of any positive words is repeated to calm down your mind and quiet the thoughts that emerge.
3. Mindfulness Meditation
In mindfulness meditation, encouragement is given to calm down the mind and relax it by focusing on negative thoughts to let them pass by.
4. Meditation and Walking
As you walk and take footsteps, breathing in and out turns your focus towards mind and body.
5. Heart-centered Meditation
In this form of meditation, the mind remains relaxed and quiet while the heart has awareness and is the energy center of the chest.
How to Start Practicing?
It is not like going to the gym and having pieces of equipment, meditation is very simple and requires only great focus and dedication to achieve meditation practice. The things needed for performing the meditation practice are a quiet space, and practice every day to gain experience in the power of meditation. One can start meditation by giving it every day five to ten minutes for practice and meditating at the same time every day helps to strengthen your power to do meditation a habit gets established and then it becomes a necessary part of your everyday routine. The following points are necessary to understand.
Set a place for meditation and surround the place with beautiful candles and flowers to calm down the mind and make it easier for you to meditate. It is key to a smooth meditation process.
To perform meditation, one should sit down with a straight back and close your eyes and focus on anything such as a burning candle.
Deep breathing is necessary for meditation.
If suddenly, the concentration from the object or the candle in front of you wanders, bring it back to the center of the candle or the object.
Breathing in and out slowly is very necessary. Consider the breathing process as a river that carries away your thought while breathing out.
Chanting “Om” many times while meditating helps in creating a positive aura around removing the negativity and helping the mind in achieving peace and “Shanti”. Chanting loudly helps in dragging out the negative thoughts from the mind and letting the positive thoughts peep in.
A noticeable change is seen after doing meditation for the duration. People feel internal happiness along with inner peace. They love their work from the heart and this all happens because of meditation.
Benefits of Meditation
Meditation is very popular among everyone and even science has accepted this reality of meditation and its good effects on health. Here are some scientific benefits of meditation.
Stress minimization:
People meditate and the biggest reason behind meditation is to reduce stress a positive change is shown in those people who have stress after doing meditation. Meditation is the only remedy and therapy for the reduction and mitigation of stress. Stress has many reasons and lighting some scented candles and flowers all around while doing meditation makes a positive environment for doing meditation.
Cortisol increases when a person is under enough stress and the hormone can cause heart failure and some other effects like hypertension too. The release of cortisol is responsible for the release of chemicals that promote inflammation called cytokines. Stress can disturb sleep patterns and appetite, anxiety, and depression with increased blood pressure is a common thing that comes with stress.
Mindfulness meditation form helps reduce inflammation caused by stress. Meditation destroys stress and for the youngsters of today’s world meditation is the top thing chosen by people to get over stress and its effect has been stronger.
The symptoms of depression like post-traumatic disorder and stress can be improved by meditation
Anxiety Control
Those who perform meditation are less prone to anxiety and depression. According to the study, meditation reduced anxiety issues in people. The symptoms of brain disorders and other nerve disorders are also reduced. The obsessive nature and the panic nature of the person reduce.
Some volunteers stood up to experiment with whether their anxiety levels get reduced while doing regular yoga. Long-term meditation helps in reducing anxiety levels and around 2466 people have shown positive results in panic reduction.
Anxiety gets reduced by performing yoga along with some meditation. Yoga is worldwide famous for curing diseases.
Every person has some job-related issues and stress due to work and we cannot cut down the risk but the anxiety of the mind and the disorders can be reduced. Meditation when done properly, there is no need to have medication for stress and anxiety because it all gets managed with meditation.
Promotion of Health
Self-image is improved while performing yoga and a person’s look towards life gets more livingly. In around 4500 people, depression was decreased by doing meditation
The ones who performed meditation on daily basis for three years had an interview regarding the experience and their experiences found that meditation decreases depression for a lifetime.
Mindfulness practiced by people helps in brainstorming and the electrical activities of the brain are controlled properly. People who practice meditation have greater brains as compared to those who don’t practice meditation. Those who practice meditation daily are optimistic in their lives and can fulfill their goals in a better way
Self-Awareness
To understand yourself better and to develop a better understanding of self-love, it is important to meditate. Meditation helps to grow yourself. How a person relates himself to the environment and what he thinks is dependent on the positive aura around him.
Positivity is maintained by performing meditation and a greater understanding of the goals of life is achieved with this practice. Managing and recognizing which thought is better for you and which one does not also depend on the meditation process. Meditation changes the whole thought process of your mind and keeps you healthy with healthy activities.
Some women who are suffering from deadly cancer had taken part in the program of meditation and it helped them to be confident and improve who they are and received a lot of love and support from society.
The meditation programs were conducted and 40 men were asked to participate into it and the result that came was there were reduced feelings of loneliness among men and women. With meditation, a person finds more clear ways of solving any problem.
Memory Loss Due to Age May Get Reduced
Attention in the thinking process and a clean mindset are all that is achieved with long meditation practices. In Hindus, Kirtan and Kiriya is also a method of practicing meditation and what people do in it is people chant any mantra repeatedly for a duration to get into the concentration phase of the meditation. People who do regular meditation have low memory loss. Doing meditation of different types and styles can help in increasing the thinking capacity of a person and further multiple meditation styles help in increasing mental attention and awareness and quickness. Older people who become prone to dementia if meditate regularly can prevent themselves from dementia. Meditation can help in improving memory in younger and older people. Stress control and age-related problems can be solved timely with meditation.
Meditation can be done anywhere at any place there is no need for equipment or anything. The meditation styles are of basically two types:
Attention and focus laid meditation:
Concentrating on a single object or on the flame of a candle is an old technique of increasing concentration. Meditation needs concentration and focus. The focus can be created by listening to smooth songs like white noise and the sound of the flute. Visualizing a single picture for making concentration is also a way to meditate. During meditation to improve concentration one may focus on the calming sounds or the mantras and breathing.
Open–monitoring meditation:
The environment in which we presently define us and having awareness about the environment makes us more thoughtful and a sense of self. Sometimes we try to hide and suppress what we feel but ultimately, meditation has the power to help us do the needy.
Facts about meditation and Health
Many researchers and studies have shown the health benefits of Meditation in life:
Meditation has shown greater improvement in the health of those people who suffer from some cancer therapies and other side effects of some treatments. Anxieties, stress, and fatigue can be cured by meditating. Meditation improves sleep disturbances and mood swings. The clinical oncology practices from the Society for Integrative Oncology recommend meditation for the overall mind and body settlement to reduce anxiety and mood swings. They assure that meditation improves the quality of a person’s life.
Many shreds of evidence from doctors and medical specialists prove that blood pressure gets reduced by practicing meditation. Transcendental meditation is used as a therapy for the treatment of blood pressure issues. this is according to the literature and science review.
Menopause systems can be helped out with meditation techniques. Some women who have these menopause periods coming closer can meditate. Yoga and Tai chi are helpful in the reduction of menopause at a small age and the study of 2010 has revealed that meditation can be easily practiced with the help of yoga and stress and mood swings along with disturbances.
Anxiety improvement due to meditation has been proven. Though we don’t have solid proof and evidence on this too but still according to a study done in 2014, mindfulness form of meditation helps in reducing all the bad stressful activities related to the brain. Low self-esteem has been improved by meditation practices. The quality of mental health becomes stable and calm.
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is helped by mindfulness meditation. Still, this case is not supported by any evidence but some treatments have become easy with the help of meditation.
Meditation is safe and healthy for a normal person as well as a sick patient. Sometimes yoga and meditation are done together but some people cannot perform a physical activity so they chant “Om”.
It is not reviewed that hyperactivity disorder can be treated by meditation because when a managed study and research were done on this topic no conclusions came out as results So this couldn’t be supported widely.
To quit smoking, many people think that meditation will do but there is no proper evidence that smoking can be stopped by meditating because this is a mind-plus-body activity. Some meditation forms are helpful in aiding this smoking problem.