Meditation is one of the practices that are more and more adopted nowadays, not only because it became a trend, but because it has many benefits for the body and the brain. So what is meditation?
It is defined as a type of mental exercise that involves focus, relaxation, and awareness. It is to the brain, what physical exercise is to the body. This type of practice is usually done alone, where you are in a sitting position barely moving, and your eyes are closed. The techniques of meditation are many, therefore, we will not talk about them in this article but instead we will tackle the benefits of meditation to your brain.
1- MEDITATION REDUCES STRESS LEVELS
As mentioned before, meditation focuses on relaxation which results in reducing stress and anxiety. A study showed that practicing meditation for a period of three months can lead to significantly reducing stress. It also found that meditation decreases the density of brain tissue associated with worrying and anxiety. Therefore if you suffer from stress and anxiety, meditation is the answer for you.
2- IT INCREASES YOUR WELL-BEING
Meditation has been found to do make you feel better about yourself and your being, according to different studies. Another practice that has similar effects is yoga. Alongside meditation, the two activities have important therapeutic effects and have the ability to improve the quality of life when practiced regularly.
3- IT MAKES YOU MORE CONNECTED AND EMPATHETIC
Compassion meditation (one type of meditation) will make you feel more connected to others. This meditation is based on compassion which is able to enhance the brain areas linked to mental processing and empathy. It can also help you improve your social connections. It is said that this kind of meditation has the ability to make you a hugger even if you never was one.
4- IT CAN IMPROVE YOUR FOCUS
Improving the focus and awareness of the practitioner is the main aim of meditation. Research has found that meditating can improve your reasoning processes and your skills in performing tasks that require focusing. A study that worked on testing the different benefits of the diverse types of meditation has found that all the types are able to improve focus.
5- IT CAN MAKE YOUR RELATIONSHIPS BETTER
Just like we mentioned before, meditation can make you empathize more with others. Furthermore, it improves or creates in you the ability to understand other people’s feelings and signs. Finally, it improves your emotional stability which makes you fewer influences by the negative people that you stumble upon in your life. All of these improvements can bring you closer to people and make you able to conduct new and better relationships.
6- IT CAN IMPROVE YOUR CREATIVITY
According to various studies, meditation has the ability to make you more inspired which affects your creativity. Another clue for that is that some important creative people such as performance artist, writer, and filmmaker Marina Abramović, artist Yoko Ono and filmmaker David Lynch had meditation on top of their priorities list.
