Why Meditation?
What about meditation makes it such a power house for healing and de-stressing? Let's unpack this below, taking medical studies, personal experiences and more into consideration.
Improved Mental Health
Regular meditation can improve your mental health, mood, and your daily outlook on life. The practice of meditation, training your brain, helps you to live your life to the fullest.
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Meditating is all about the present moment. When you meditate, you can assess your physical and mental state in a safe space.
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Additionally, meditation can help boost your creativity. It's good for artists who are looking for inspiration or a cure to writers block.
Meditation Helps Regulate Negative Emotions
A study published in the medical journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience showed the immediate benefits of meditation. There were two control groups, one listened to a guided meditation, the second group listened to a presentation. Then they were shown disturbing images. With the group that meditated, their recorded brain activity showed a quicker recovery in regards to the emotional response.
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This implies meditation leads to healthier emotional regulation and an easier "bounce back" from emotional lows. Think, less crippling negative feelings, and feeling down for shorter durations.
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Source: How Meditation Can Improve Your Mental Health.
https://www.everydayhealth.com/meditation/how-meditation-can-improve-your-mental-health/
Benefits of Meditation
See below some brief benefits of meditation, including physical and mental benefits, and overall life enhancements. Claims will be discussed further on this page.
Healing Your Body
Cultivating Peace of Mind
Pure Bliss
Physical Benefits
Meditation has a wide array of physical benefits. From lowering stress levels (Cortisol), lowering blood pressure, & aiding weight loss, to strengthening your immune system, meditation can and will reshape your whole body for the best.
Mental Benefits
Through meditation, mindfulness, and self-awareness, a happy, positive and carefree mindset is often cultivated. Meditation has proven to be beneficial for people experiencing anxiety, depression, and PTSD.
Overall Enhanced Life
The peace that you find in your meditation practice will naturally flow into all areas of your life. Your relationships will improve, your vitality, your relationship with yourself and so much more. Allow meditation to enrich your life, and step feet first into radical healing and self love.
Meditation Affects Your Perception of Pain
Through meditation, your body and mind become better equipped at handling pain. This is due to the physical changes that take place. As well as the mental stamina and resilience that you foster within yourself in your meditation practice.
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Meditation leads to higher GABA levels. GABA is a neurotransmitter that has a calming effect. GABA has an effect on pain perception and management of anxiety. Meditation also relieves stress, which leads to tension, inflammation, and body aches if it goes untreated.
You respond differently to bodily sensations when you are in meditation. The lenses that you look through are impartial, curious, and without judgment. This, in turn, changes your relationship with pain and your body on a deeper level.
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Source: International Pain Foundation. Positive Effects of Meditation on Managing Chronic Pain https://internationalpain.org/positive-effects-of-meditation-on-managing-chronic-pain/
Let's talk about the human brain
In deep states of meditation, significant changes happen to brain activity. You can activate different aspects of your brain while decreasing activity in other places. This is a fancy way of saying that you can de-stress and calm down.
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Keep scrolling to see scans of brain activity before and after meditation.
Changes in the Parietal lobe
The parietal lobe processes sensory information about your surrounding world. Essentially, it orients you in time and space.
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When you have decreased activity here, you are more able to turn your attention and awareness inwards. You can look at your life and everything around you in a different light, or from a different view. This can lead you to personal insight, a release of emotion, overpowering feelings of love, bliss and alignment.
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Source: Collective Evolution
A Neuroscientist Explains What Happens To Your Brain When You Meditate
Changes in the Parietal lobe
As you can see, after meditation, activity surrounding the Parietal lobe has decreased significantly.
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Source: Collective Evolution
Chemicals produced during meditation
Source: EOC Institute
- Endorphins: a ‘natural high,’ it is also released when you exercise
- Growth hormone: produced in the pituitary gland, it supports your organs and tissues. it is released the most when your brainwaves are in the delta phase
- GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid): best known for making you feel calm. if your gaba levels are low, you may experience anxiety, nervousness, racing thoughts, and bad habits that you can’t kick.
- serotonin: best known as the ‘happy hormone,’ it stabilizes your mood and affects your whole body.
- Melatonin: produced in the pineal gland, it is associated with the sleep/wake cycle
- DHEA: best known as the ‘longevity hormone,’ DHEA is associated with good heart health and brain function. production of DHEA slows year after year