Health x Wellness
Meditation and its health benefits
Solve your health issues by practicing meditation
Meditation was originally meant to enhance one’s understanding of the blessed and mystical forces of life. Nowadays, it is practiced as a technique to relax your body and mind, while lowering your stress levels.
In meditation, your mind is awake but focused on maintaining calm and discovering more about your inner self. By doing so, it helps to sort through your thoughts, resulting in improved physical and emotional well-being.
Here are some of the health benefits that meditation can provide as well as the methods of meditating:
High-stress levels
Meditation increases your mental endurance and patience when facing stress. By learning to eliminate random thoughts in your mind, you can decrease negative emotions and radiate positive vibes instead.
Finding out more about yourself heightens your self-awareness, allowing you to replace bad habits with good ones. It also provides a different perspective when coping with stress.
Medical conditions
Medication isn’t a direct solution to your illnesses. It complements ongoing treatment and helps to control your medical conditions such as depression, insomnia and high blood pressure.
Do seek advice from your doctor before engaging in meditation specifically to deal with medical issues. Without proper instructions or guidelines, meditation could worsen your mental or physical condition.
Boosts immune system
Meditation helps to reduce the risk of contracting the common illnesses and prevents infection. This therapeutic practice helps to generate antibodies in your body that combat flu virus.
Here are two types of meditation you could practice:
Guided meditation
You could make use of visualisations or create mental images that help to soothe your body and mind. Use this process to stimulate your five senses. Attend classes to achieve better results.
By keeping your body and mind calm, you can relieve yourself of worries and stress. This helps you to be more satisfied with your daily life and your surroundings. It also strengthens your mental capability and inner peace even in difficult situations.
Yoga
Yoga is also a form of meditation that requires a combination of body postures and skillful breathing exercises. Not only does yoga improve your body flexibility, it also decreases the risk of heart disease and lowers blood pressure. Researchers from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have also found that yoga helps in weight loss.
If you are new to meditation, here are several tips on how to improve on it:
Posture
Similar to exercise, posture is always a crucial factor that people tend to overlook. During meditation, always sit straight up with your head tilted upwards. Your mind will not be able to focus if you slouch. Balancing your body helps your mind to stay in balance as well. Try to be as comfortable as possible so that your mind will not be distracted by any forms of discomfort.
Focus
To be able to meditate effectively, you need to be able to focus. In meditation, focus on an object, image or even your own breathing. This helps to relieve your mind of distractions from your surroundings or events.
Relaxed breathing
Deepen your breathing with your diaphragm muscle. This helps you to breathe more efficiently when your breathing rate slows down, allowing you to have a higher intake of oxygen.
Try not to use too much of your upper body muscles. Focusing on your natural breathing also helps you to be aware of your present moment.
Settle for a quiet surrounding
Meditating in a noisy setting would not help you to focus. By meditating in silence, you get to understand your mind and appreciate the calmness better. With minimal distractions available, you will be able to hone your meditation skills.
