For most of history, meditation has been an act mostly only associated with certain religions and particularly Eastern countries in the world. But recently, it’s popularity has spread across the world. Majority of people may have all heard about meditation at some point, but not many know what meditation really is.
What is meditation?
Meditation is a practice activity where an individual uses various methods like such sitting and focusing on a particular thought or an activity like breathing, as a method to train once ability to focus more and gain mental clarity in order to be more calm and relaxed.
This is a simplified explanation of what meditation consists of. However, due to meditation being linked heavily to the spiritual and/or religious world, it is somewhat a controversial subject. With people very focused on proving why meditation doesn’t work or why meditation works.
For the purpose of this article, we are going to view meditation just as a way of clearing your mind. Other uses depend on you as the individual.
Why is meditation important?
From the moment we are born, our brains have always been learning machines which always process data and analyze it all the time. For the most part, this is all well and good. The problem however, comes when we cannot control our minds anymore. Because of the speed at which our lives are now moving at, it is becoming increasingly hard to get our minds to relax andn not overthink everything. Which is where meditation comes in.
Meditation can help us recenter our thoughts as we take a few minutes to STOP. BREATH and observe our thoughts. This act, while so simple, can help one feel better due to the mere reduction of the clustered thoughts that occur in our busy lives -which Social Media has only made worse.
The truth is that today’s life is faster than ever before. From the moment we wake up, we are already overwhelmed by our daily tasks and even when you don’t have any, checking your phone gets you into a loop of thinking about all sorts of matters that are going on around the world. This therefore strains our minds to a very great extend. The situation is so intense that the World Health Organisation predicts burnout will become a global pandemic by 2030.
Benefits of meditation
- Meditation has been shown to decrease stress and reduce anxiety
- Increases focus and attention span
- Better emotional health
- Improves physical health
Meditation benefits in detail
How meditation reduces stress
Almost everyone has at some point found themselves stressed. Whether it’s too much work or the events of our daily lives just overwhelming us, we tend to get stressed every now and then. It is common knowledge that if you are stressed, you are advised to rest more, take a vacation or some other form of relaxation. One method of reducing stress that is usually not talked about enough is meditation.
Because meditation is all about mindfulness and getting your brain to focus on only specific things, it is one practice that can reduce stress more than others.
When one meditates, it gets their brain activity to slow down, thus all the chaotic thoughts going on in ones mind come to a brief pause. As soon as you meditate consistently, you are able to separate yourself from a lot of activities going on in your mind daily. Instead of focusing on a hundred problems you have daily, you can just focus in on one at a time.
The less clutter in your mind, the less stressed you become. Meditation alone can immensely reduce your cortisol levels -which is a stress hormone.
How meditation increases focus and attention span
The average attention span of people nowadays is very low. This is because we are overwhelmed by the ever increasing amount of content we consume. The internet gives us so much information that we can barely keep up. The internet gives us so much information that we can barely keep up.
As you are reading this article, probably 3 notifications popped up on your device. This alone reduces your ability to focus on this one article.
The practice of meditation however, can help reduce the need for our minds to think about too many things at once. By learning to focus on your breathing or a specific thought through meditating, you are less overwhelmed by stimuli. Learning to sit on one place and quieting your mind allows you to increase the ability to focus on one thing for a long time…an ability that social media reduced very much for us.
Emotional health
Meditation helps one become more aware in general. Because of this, people who meditate are more likely to be aware of their actions and also their emotional status at any point. This makes them more emotionally aware and thus puts them in a place where they can keep their emotional well-being at ease.
Meditation also reduces the need for validation that comes from others. According to Mark Manson, meditating trains you to become more aware of what thoughts and emotions dictate your behaviour, this includes the time you are attempting to receive love and validation that may not be working. It forces you to become more aware of your needy and neurotic behaviours and put an end to them.
By realising such behaviours from yourself, you can put yourself in an emotional state that benefits you instead of being unaware of your negative behaviours.
Physical Health
By meditating more, you get to have better sleep, your heart and cardiovascular system become better as you are less stressed and you also lower your blood pressure too.
Meditation also increases your ability to withstand pain. Lastly, meditation causes your immune system to work better.
How to meditate
So you know the benefits of meditation and you want to start reaping the benefits too. The first question that may come to your mind is “how do I meditate?”
Meditation is simple to do even though it is challenging to actually follow through. Just follow the steps below:
- Sit upright in a chair or lay on a flat surface if you prefer.
- Focus your attention on your breath. Observe how you are breathing, but don’t change anything.
- Even if you feel the strong urge to start thinking about other things, resist it and go back to focusing on your breathing pattern. Try counting each time you inhale and exhale to remain focused on your breathing.
- When your mind begins to wonder elsewhere, just observe those thoughts, but return your attention to your breath.
- Continue this for about 5-10 minutes, then when you are done, open your eyes and observe how you feel.
By merely doing this on a consistent basis, you become aware of the type of thoughts that run through your mind. Your observation of these thoughts as you meditate allows you to then detach from them
Detaching from your thoughts eases the pressure in your mind to deal with every single thought in your brain and allows you to relax a bit more as attachment to our minds is what causes a lot of stress for us.
Conclusion
Meditation is quickly becoming a global phenomenon that people use to be more calm and control their stress levels. With every year that passes, meditation becomes more important because our lives are getting more stressful each passing day.
Try meditation today and see the benefits for yourself.
Subscribe to this blog to get updates when new content is uploaded.
Thinker's Boulevard 
One thought on “The surprising truth about meditation: does it even work?”