Breathe In, Breathe Out
Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years as a means of grounding oneself and coping with the stress of a busy world. When life feels like it moves faster than ever nowadays, meditation can be excellent for your mental, emotional, and even physical wellbeing. Here are 20 reasons why you should consider incorporating meditation into your daily routine.
1. Reduce Stress
Probably the best-known benefit of meditation is a reduction in stress. Physical & mental stress lead to increased levels of cortisol, one of your stress hormones. Increased cortisol levels over time can lead to high blood pressure, insomnia and brain fog.
2. Support Emotional Health
Mindful meditation can help to improve both your self-image and your outlook on life. A study in 2015 showed that people who practice mindful meditation daily also saw a decrease in negative thoughts. Releasing negative thoughts makes room for positive ones.
3. Improve Attention Span
An increase in short-form content consumption, along with the phenomenon of doomscrolling, has led to depleted attention spans. Just like going to the gym trains your body, meditation trains your mind. By clearing your mind, meditation helps you stay focused for long periods and grow your attention span.
4. Reduce Memory Loss
Along with an increased attention span, research shows that meditation can also improve your memory. This can be helpful for anything other than trying to stick to routines to preventing age-related memory problems such as dementia.
5. Improve Sleep
Nearly half the population suffers from acute or chronic insomnia, or lack of sleep. Heightened cortisol and racing thoughts are two of the most common causes of insomnia. Subjects who meditate regularly have reported falling asleep easier and staying asleep longer.
6. Lower Blood Pressure
High blood pressure makes it harder for your heart to pump blood, leading to weakened heart function, narrowed arteries, and increased potential for strokes and heart attacks. Meditation reduces the strain on your heart by relaxing nerve signals. This is especially helpful for people with pre-existing conditions.
7. Reduce Depression
For people suffering from depression, mindful meditation can be an enormous help in managing the disorder. While meditation cannot “fix” mental illnesses, meditation can help to make depression easier to live with. In one study done over a three-year period, subjects saw a noted decrease in depression.
8. Control Anxiety
Similarly, while there is no way to completely eliminate anxiety, meditation can help you deal with stressors that can cause undue anxiety. Meditation can reduce symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder. These symptoms can include paranoia, panic attacks, and obsessive-compulsive behaviors.
9. Greater Compassion
Some types of meditation, such as the aptly-named loving-kindness meditation can help practitioners extend kindness and forgiveness to others. 22 different studies have shown an increase in the subjects’ compassion, towards both themselves and others.
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10. Improved Willpower
Willpower can be strengthened just like any muscle. Meditation can help build up delayed gratification rather than going for quick hits of dopamine. Meditation also builds up the gray matter in your brain that helps with decision making.
11. Lower Heart Rate
Nobody likes when your heart is racing a million miles per hour, especially not your heart, which has to work extra hard to keep up with you. Along with exercise and healthy eating habits, meditation can be a major help in reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease.
12. Help With Feeling Present
If you feel weighed down by an inability to exist in the moment, meditation is a wonderful grounding tool. In feeling more present in your body and the space around you, meditation can bridge the gap between past emotions and future anxieties.
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13. Reduce Inflammation
We’ve already discussed how meditation can have a positive impact on cardiovascular health, but it can also reduce inflammation in other body parts. Inflammatory conditions such as IBS and rheumatoid arthritis can be worsened by psychological stressors. Meditation can help you feel good inside and out.
14. Strengthen Immune System
Your immune system is your body’s frontline defense, so of course you want to keep it strong. Research shows that meditation can actually alter some of your body’s immune pathways. These pathways include the genes associated with interferon signaling, which protects your body from threats of viruses and cancers.
15. Control Pain
As with mental illnesses, meditation cannot cure chronic or acute pain. Studies have shown that medication can reduce your brain’s perception of pain. Meditation has even been shown to alleviate end-of-life pain in patients with terminal illnesses.
16. Reduce Binge Eating
Meditation can help you redirect your attention towards more productive sources and increase your willpower. For people dealing with binge and emotional eating, meditation can be helpful in dealing with cravings. For this reason, it can also help you lose weight.
17. Increase Energy Levels
People suffering from mental and physical illnesses often experience decreased energy levels as a result. By helping you deal with some of the stressors of daily life, meditation can also provide a must-needed energy boost. Deep breathing increases the amount of your oxygen intake, sort of like filling up your brain.
18. Build Routines
If you’re the sort of person who struggles with sticking to a routine, meditation can help. By blocking out as little as five minutes of your day for meditation, you can turn what feels like an obligation into a healthy habit. The time spent meditating can also help you go over your day and plan what you want to do next.
19. Fight Addiction
Building up your mental fortitude can even help those struggling with addictions. By controlling emotions and impulses, meditation can help you navigate potential triggers. Lessening craving-related stress ultimately lessens the cravings themselves.
20. Increase Creativity
You know how you always get your best ideas in the shower? Well, meditation can help you hold onto and further develop those ideas. Once you’ve calmed your mind, creativity will easily flow.
