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Six Great Reasons Why Meditation is Good For You!
Why is meditation becoming more and more popular and why is it good for you?
In today’s world, where we constantly find ourselves running from one task to another, dealing with stressful situations and trying to make ends meet, we are more prone to panic attacks, anxiety and everything else that is caused by stress and not knowing how to properly handle it. it is becoming more and more obvious that meditation can help us overcome a lot of problems, especially if practiced on a regular basis. Here are 6 reasons why you should meditate regularly:
1. Meditation increases your ability to focus.
When you first start to practice meditation you will see that it is not always easy to keep focus on what you need to do. You will often catch your mind trying to wonder around other thoughts and you will need to remind yourself to get back into the meditative state. However, in time, you will notice it will get easier to focus on meditation and keep your focus on it. This is because your mind will become trained to reach a state of being without getting distracted. As if you are aiming an arrow to a target. You learn how to be in the present moment and pay attention to the smallest details without losing focus. Soon, this will become a routine for you even when you don’t meditate, you find that your mind is better organized and free from cluttering thoughts.
2. Meditation improves your memory and learning.
Meditation increases the blood flow to the vessels in your brain. The area that is responsible in our brains of memory and concentration is the outer cortex. When you have more blood going into this area, it improves that region, which in turn will give you better concentration for memory and learning. Meditation creates denser gray matter in your brain, which improves its function. In just a few short weeks you can easily notice the change in your memory and learning skills.
3. Meditation increases your creativity.
Most people usually associate a creative brain with stimulation. However, it is quite the opposite. Calmness, relaxation, clarity are what our brain needs to rejuvenate. When you start your day with a short Mindfulness Meditation, and try to be in the present and be aware of the moment you are in, you learn how to untangle all the knots that are keeping you from connecting to the creative side of your brain. Focus teaches you patience and insight. These are important ingredients in the creative process. When this becomes a daily routine you start looking at things from a different perspective, an angle maybe you have never noticed before. Meditation boosts your self confidence and teaches you to be yourself. Which are essential in the creative process.
4. Meditation decreases stress and anxiety.
The main reason why most people are willing to practice meditation in today’s world, is to decrease their stress and anxiety, and to be able to deal with life’s events effectively. And meditation does exactly that, by creating a deep relaxation mood and calmness. It is quite beneficial to overcome anxiety and panic attacks because it teaches you to focus on positive things in a tranquil way and keeps you grounded and in the moment. When you are able to reduce your stress and anxiety, you will find that the problems that once seemed overwhelming and tiring, are now under your control. This can help decreasing depression. Not just because it provides relaxation but it also provides a positive approach to everything around us.
5. Meditation can strengthen your immune system.
One of the things that destroys our immune system is high levels of stress. There are thousands of scientific studies that show us the physical damage caused by stress. Think of the TV commercials for antidepressants and think of how you see a man or a woman in those commercials suffering from headaches, joint pain, and other physical illnesses. It is true that once we can learn to keep stress under control, we can greatly improve our physical health because our immune system would be much stronger due to meditation and its benefits on our minds and our bodies. Think about not having to take medication that will give you more side effects while it is trying to cure something else. Then you need medication for this or that side effect, and then there are the permanent damages caused in our bodies due to the long term use of certain medications. The list goes on and on. Sometimes, the answer is right in front of our eyes, but we don’t know how to see it. What could be better than a natural solution? There is a direct connection between our brain and our immune system. Not just meditation but there are alternative therapies to cure certain illnesses like music therapy or therapy with binaural beats etc. All of these experiments exist because science tells us that our brains control our physical health way more than we are aware of. And meditation is one of these methods and a very effective one at that.
6. Meditation is good for your heart health and it can decrease your high blood pressure.
Going back to stress and anxiety, two major causes of heart attack, you can see by now how meditation can help you in this area. But it is not good only because it lowers the stress and anxiety levels in our bodies but meditation teaches us a breathing technique that helps with the blood flow, respiratory system and it controls the levels of adrenaline that creates stress and anxiety. High levels of adrenaline make our hearts beat faster and it causes our blood pressure to go higher. There are moments in our lives when we naturally do need more adrenaline, for example when we need self defense, but too much of it and high levels of it on a regular basis has bad effects on our bodies. A healthier heart begins with a balanced body. Meditation provides this balance for you. When left untreated, just like heart disease, high blood pressure can be deadly too by causing stroke, kidney failure, heart attack and heart disease. Scientific research also shows that meditation and yoga can reduce hypertension in just a few weeks.