Benefits Of Meditation

Meditation plays a large part in Eastern philosophies and religions. Later on, the West also got hold of it and has realized that it has a lot of health benefits.

Everyday we deal with stress. And, stress has profound negative effects on the body and mind.  Meditation for just 15 minutes at a time lowers the level of stress in your system and thus contributes to a decreased risk of heart disease.  It also allows you to relax and enables you to make more effective decisions.

According to meditation experts, the practice of meditation also makes you self aware; you are more aware of what is happening around you. This enables you to focus on the present rather than events that happened in the past or the future. It teaches you to be in control of your mind.  Emotions are more likely to be brought under control.

Meditation may also help you to develop insight into your subconscious. This is because our attitudes, behavior, feelings and perceptions are all connected and if you are able to harness it, you will be able to understand yourself better.

Meditation allows you to have a more positive outlook on life and even make changes in yourself. You become content or thankful with what you have instead of harboring feelings of anger, anxiety, greed, hatred and jealousy towards yourself and others.

You will also be able to see the big picture instead of the small one when given a task at work so even if there are a few setbacks a long the way, you are still able to keep your eye on the end game.

Meditation can also make you feel younger. This is because in one study, people who have been practicing this for many years were physiologically 12 years younger than their chronological age. The results of the test were based on the test subject’s auditory discrimination, blood pressure and eye sight.

So now that you know the benefits of meditation and what it can possibly do, you are probably asking yourself right now how does it work? Well, let us first correct the common misconception about meditation.

A lot of people think that you have to sit in a pretzel position or go off to some far away place to make this work. The truth is that you just have to find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed, sit on the floor or on a chair in whatever position you like best and slowly clear your mind of all thoughts.

You should keep in mind that sitting in a comfortable position may sometimes make you doze off. So concentrate otherwise it defeats the purpose of this exercise.

Next, you should close your eyes, focus on your breathing and let the positive air go in and the negative thoughts go out. You might hear sounds nearby and since you can’t do anything about that, just acknowledge that it is there and just concentrate on this exercise.

This can be done at work or at home and how long it will be done depends on you. Some people may start out for 5 minutes and then extend the time in the future. The important thing is that you feel recharged and ready to taken on whatever challenge is out there when you are ready to open your eyes.