Melt Away The Day With The Benefits Of Meditation
Participating in Meditation has been shown as an effective way wipe away the day’s stress. If you often find yourself stressed, anxious, or worried, consider giving meditation a try. Even spending just a few minutes a day can give you a sense of calm and control when viewing the benefits of meditation. The beauty of meditation is that anyone can practice it. It’s also entirely free and does not require any additional setup or equipment. Park Ave Magazine seeks to spread the ‘zen’ and dive deeper into this topic.
Understanding The Use of Meditation
Meditation is a practice that has existed for thousands of years. Though it was originally was meant to help deepen understanding of life, these days it has a simpler use. Nowadays, meditation is considered a type of mind-body union to achieve relaxation and sound mind. To properly meditate, one must focus and tune out unwanted thoughts that may be crowding your mind. The truth is that this is often the cause of stress. When done properly, this process can result in enhanced physical and emotional well-being.
Benefits Of Meditation
Though there are many applications, the main focus of benefits involved are the emotional and mental applications. Some illnesses can also be helped by the practice as well.
Emotional Application
The emotional benefits of meditation can include:
- Increased patience and tolerance to stress
- Better focus and presence
- Achieving better perspectives for problems
- Gaining self-awareness
- Reducing negative emotions
- Building stress-management skills
- Increased imagination and creative problem-solving
Meditation and illness
Meditation might also be useful if you have a medical condition, especially one that may be worsened by stress.
While a growing body of scientific research supports the health benefits of meditation, some researchers believe it’s not yet possible to draw conclusions about the possible benefits of meditation.
With that in mind, some research suggests that meditation may help people manage symptoms of conditions such as:
- Anxiety
- Chronic pain
- Depression
- High blood pressure
- Irritable bowel syndrome
- Sleep problems
- Tension headaches
The Elements Of Meditation
During your meditative practice, many different elements can come into play. The most common features in meditation include:
A quiet setting: It’s best to sit in a quiet spot with few distractions. This includes no television, radios or cellphones. As you get more skilled at meditation, you can begin to take your practice anywhere. The most beneficial is in high-stress situations where you gain the most from meditation.
Focused attention: This is the next best element and arguably the hardest for beginners. Focusing your attention is what helps free your mind from stress and anxiety. It mainly helps to focus your attention on specific objects, mantras, images, or even just your own breath.
Relaxed breathing: This technique involves the previous element of focus. Breathe deep, at an even pace the diaphragm muscle to expand your lungs. Make sure that you slow your breathing, taking in a lot of oxygen. Then try to reduce the use of shoulders, upper chest muscles while breathing so that you breathe more efficiently with your diaphragm.
Open attitude: This is also a crucial element that can include your focus. Allow yourself to have thoughts as they come but learn to gently release them. Do not judge them but don’t allow them to linger around, either.
A comfortable position: There are many ways that you can practice meditation, as long as you’re comfortable. You can be sitting cross legged (or whatever is comfortable), lying down, walking, or engaging in other activities. Just try to be comfortable so that you can get the most out of your meditation. Aim to keep good posture during meditation.
