THE BENEFITS OF MINDFULNESS MEDITATION
The benefits of a mindfulness meditation practice are no secret to the thousands of people around the globe who practice daily. Studies have shown that incorporating meditation into our lives has a major impact on our overall health and well-being, and is highly recommended as a means of coping with stress and anxiety.
Here are just a few of the benefits that mindfulness meditation can bring courtesy of Wanderlust.
Less Stress, More Happiness
It’s a little-known secret that Wall Street execs, famous artists, and corporations around the world are some of the biggest advocates of meditation as a way to manage stress. A 2005 study at Harvard Medical School found that meditation increases the thickness of your prefrontal cortex, the area of your brain associated with attention and self-awareness. Furthermore, we now know it even reduces employee stress and burnout. A study on teachers at a school for children with severe behavioral problems who were treated to a Transcendental Meditation program had less stress, less depression, and overall lower burnout than other teachers.
Reduce Pain and Heal Faster
Jon Kabat-Zinn, who heads up the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine at University of Massachusetts Medical School, proved back in the ‘80s that meditation and mindfulness could significantly improve pain symptoms and quality of life in chronic pain patients, even up to four years later. His program, called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is practiced widely. More recently, researchers had people participate in four days of mindfulness-based training, participants reported less pain intensity and unpleasantness. What’s more, MRIs showed reductions in pain-induced cerebral blood flow during meditation sessions.
Don’t Let the Little Things Get You Down
Relaxing your body and mind with meditation helps you to stay centered when you inevitably encounter those everyday stressors. Investigators from the Benson-Henry Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital found that practicing meditation causes what is called the “relaxation response,” the opposite of the “fight-or-flight” response we get when we get stressed. Their studies showed that the relaxation response alleviates anxiety and also has positive effects on heart rate, blood pressure, and brain activity.
A Clear Path to Achieving Your Goals
World-class athletes, top managers and world-class performers, when tested, have all shown high levels of what’s called brain integration. This means that their brains are wired with strong connections between the different areas, they have heightened attention, and they’re able to think quickly to deal with problems. This has proven to be the key to success, as noted by U.S. neuroscientist Dr. Fred Travis because it’s the fire starter behind the creativity that often leads to success. A study from Harvard Medical School demonstrated that meditation causes changes in brain waves that actually improve the brain’s functionality.
No More Stress Eating
Researchers at UC San Francisco studied a group of women to test if meditation could prevent overeating. The scientists didn’t prescribe any diet, but instead taught mindful eating, and had participants meditate for thirty minutes a day. The results showed that while the control group actually gained weight, the meditation participants maintained their weights, plus lowered their cortisol levels. Higher reductions in cortisol and stress also showed higher reductions in abdominal fat.
Better Sleep at Night Means Brighter Days
A good night’s sleep is essential to our cognitive functioning. Meditation enhances REM sleep and increases our level of melatonin, it also helps with serious sleep problems. Researchers conducted a study to see if mindfulness meditation would benefit those struggling with chronic insomnia. After eight weeks, those in the meditation training had less total wake time during the night, were more relaxed before going to bed, and reduced the severity of their sleep problems. Plus, in a follow up study six months later, the insomnia sufferers had maintained a better quality of sleep.
Beat Anxiety, Send Worries Packing
Focusing on all the terrible things that might happen and worrying about everything, causes our bodies a lot of stress and anxiety. Dr. Elizabeth Hoge, a psychiatrist and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, found that meditation could even help those with a generalized anxiety disorder, a condition marked by hard-to-control worries, poor sleep, and irritability.
A Happy Pill, with No Side Effects
Meditation helps us gain awareness of our minds so that we can see negative thoughts for what they are and become less identified with them. Negative thoughts create negative emotions and meditation helps you become aware of when those thoughts are present and render them powerless. A Harvard study found that mind-wandering, which often means drifting to these negative thoughts, was linked to unhappiness. Recently, Madhav Goyal, who led a study by Johns Hopkins researchers, said that for depression, “We found a roughly 10 to 20 percent improvement in depressive symptoms compared to the placebo groups. This is similar to the effects of antidepressants in similar populations.”
Enhance Your Relationships
Learning to better recognize your own emotions, and those of others, you’ll more easily experience lasting harmony in your relationships. Researchers from the University of California-San Francisco taught 82 teachers, all in committed relationships, how to meditate. Compared with a control group that hadn’t learned meditation, the participants gave fewer negative facial expressions during a partner interaction test. Maharishi International University in Iowa found that those who practiced meditation reported significantly greater relationship satisfaction than those who didn’t. Those who meditated regularly saw the greatest benefits.
and many more!
The benefits of building a mindfulness meditation practice are countless and far-reaching. Being able to live your life with more clarity enables you to manage life's challenges more easily and effectively. You will be able to break free from the negative thoughts that create your worry, stress and anxiety. All aspects of your life will improve and that's something we can all benefit from.