Top Meditation Benefits
Meditation has many benefits to health and well-being and while I have the Top 5 listed, I urge you to explore and experience the benefits. You’re life can depend on it. Literally…..
1. Positiveness
Many of us experience the day to day struggle, hustle, and rat race. Sometimes it may feel as though life just happens to us but how do we mitigate those effects. Meditating just a few minutes a day may change our output on life and circumstances.
According to a clinical study, those who meditated showed measurable changes in activity in areas related to positive thinking and optimism.
(16).
You may see the glass half empty but through meditation it is now half full. Meditation is a mood changer and definitely increases positiveness.
2. Immunity
As you are reading this article you want to be your best, peak performance, and many times, there is no time for sick. Naturally you want to be feel healthy and strong.
Our immune system is highly intelligent and responds to both negative and positive thoughts, thus meditation creates a positive mental environment for the immune system to emerge.
A recent study confirmed that, after being given weekly meditation training for 8 weeks, 48 biotech workers had significantly higher levels of antibodies than the control group (coworkers who didn’t meditate) as well as higher levels than before the study.
3. Improved Memory
Memory loss may be something we don’t have to dread or worry about as we get old. If there was a miracle cure and it was free you would take it right? Well meditation is a discipline you can practice and it does cost anything but time well spent.
We can all experience the benefits of meditating whether young or old. A review of 12 studies found that multiple meditation styles increased attention, memory and mental quickness in older volunteers (28).
Another study conducted by researchers in Boston found that frequent meditation seemed to bolster the cerebral cortex of its subjects’ brains. The cortex deals with mental functions such as learning, concentration and memory. Regular meditation increases blood flow to the brain, which leads to a stronger network of blood vessels in the cerebral cortex and reinforces memory capacity.
4. Focus and Attention
Internet, social media-instagram, facebook, and the likes. It’s a distraction, we watch a video, article, it links and vines to others and next thing we know time has passed.
Meditation is the key, and that’s according to a study cited in the Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Journal. It states that regular meditation can enhance various cognitive processes and one of those being focus and attention.
Next time you are at work, school, home, and whatever task at hand may be, you may say “I just can’t seem to focus and get clarity”. Remember meditation and adopt it as a daily practice 1-2 times per day.
5. Reduced Stress
Stress is the story of many of our lives, whether it be eustress or distress. Normally, mental and physical stress cause increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol. This produces many of the harmful effects of stress, such as the release of inflammation-promoting chemicals called cytokines.
These effects can disrupt sleep, promote depression and anxiety, increase blood pressure and contribute to fatigue and cloudy thinking.
To counteract these effects, meditation was put to a test.
A study including over 3,500 adults showed that meditation is linked to stress reduction (1). In another eight-week study, a meditation style called “mindfulness meditation” reduced the inflammation response caused by stress (2).
Meditation Now
Remember this, we can’t always control what happens on the outside, but we can control what happens within. With urgency, Prioritize the discipline by maintaining a regular meditation practice of at least 15 minutes a day. If you like this article please share it with your friends, they will be thankful you did.