According to a certified meditation and mindfulness teacher Marina Zwicky, meditation is the ultimate tool for relieving stress, enhancing your wellbeing, and achieving what you really want in life.
We already talked about ways to build your reality through hypnotherapy, meditation, and visualization practice in one of our previous articles. Today, let’s take a closer look at the power of meditation and its numerous benefits for your body, mind, and wellbeing.
1. Meditation helps replace negativity with positive energy
Being aware of your negative thoughts during meditation helps you interrupt the stream of negative interpretation and evaluation in your mind and instead turn your focus to positive things in your life.
When you are in a better place mentally, you can appreciate the world around you and live a happier life, sharing positive energy with others.
2. Meditation helps you let go of the past
Many of us tend to dwell on the past – events, people, and words. We keep ruminating on that awkward moment at work 2 years ago, that negative comment on social media, and that rude thing our neighbor said to us that morning.
Meditation makes you conscious of those destructive thoughts and helps switch your attention from the past to the present. You can put your energy into building a better reality, instead of thinking about what already happened.
3. Meditation helps you manage stress response
When you feel stressed in your mind, your body responds. Your muscles get tense, heart rate increases, blood pressure rises, breathing becomes shallow, and stress hormone cortisol along with adrenaline go up.
This fight or flight mode is useful when you are facing real danger, but we often get in this condition because of something far less life-threatening – like a work presentation or a meeting. And such regular stress can lead to problems with digestive and cardiovascular systems, among other health concerns.
Mindfulness meditation relieves stress and anxiety, lowers heart rate, clears your mind, and removes the tension from your muscles.
4. Meditation helps you sleep better
If you struggle with insomnia and find yourself in the middle of the night worrying about everything you need to do tomorrow or something you said wrong in a fight 5 years ago – add meditation into your evening routine.
By calming and soothing your mind before bed, you will be able to clear it of intrusive thoughts and troubles, achieving inner peace and improving the quality of your sleep.
For example, one study found that mindfulness meditation has an even better effect on sleep quality among older adults than sleep hygiene education.
5. Meditation improves mental health
Besides reducing stress and anxiety, regular meditation can be effective for relieving the symptoms of other mental health issues due to its profound healing effect.
For example, one research demonstrated that meditation therapy helps reduce the symptoms of clinical depressive disorders.
6. Meditation improves focus and concentration
In order to focus on one thing, you need to learn how to “silence” your mind – to clear the mess of unwanted thoughts polluting your consciousness.
Meditation is a great way to improve your focus and concentration, as it helps calm your mind and increase your comprehension, giving way to thoughts that are actually important at that moment.
This clarity of mind also helps you make better decisions at work and improve your professional performance.
7. Meditation relieves chronic pain
Chronic pain can significantly affect our overall wellbeing. But the good news is that we can modify our pain perception and maintain a good quality of life with the help of meditation.
In one study, chronic pain patients who didn’t see any improvements with traditional medical care, were trained self-regulation through mindfulness meditation. This practice helped them reduce the experience of suffering and overall pain perception.
8. Meditation helps you set and achieve your goals
When you’re meditating, you’re spending some quality time with yourself. You learn to understand yourself better, what you want and what you don’t want.
With this deep understanding, you can set better goals. And then, with relevant meditation techniques, you will be able to achieve them.
For example, affirmation meditation is a great way to get ready for an important meeting – you can set yourself for success and program yourself to achieve the best possible result.
9. Meditation helps you manage your diet
By being mindful of what and when you eat, you will not only be able to properly enjoy your food, but also avoid overeating and gaining weight.
Mindful meditation helps you improve your relationship with food and become aware of all taste sensations. No more binge-eating potato chips while binge-watching your favorite show!
And this benefit is supported by scientific research too – for example, one study found that mindful meditation helps significantly decrease food cravings, emotional eating, and body image concern in women with eating disorders.
10. Meditation helps improve athletic performance
Thanks to the anxiety-relieving and mind-clearing effects, regular meditation practice helps athletes achieve greater focus, get rid of ruminative thinking, and achieve optimal performance.
Note that according to one of the studies in this field, it’s important to choose the right meditation technique based on the type of sport for maximizing your results.
