Meditation: A simple way to look after your mental health
Meditation has been used as an effective tool to work with the mind, and also to provide relaxation, wellbeing and better health. Long before modern science and medicine, dedicated meditation from a variety of spiritual traditions had already discovered the extraordinary benefits of their practice.
Beyond its original spiritual purpose, today’s stressful lifestyle have inspired an ever-increasing number of people to practice meditation for health reasons. Research has shown meditation to be positively related to physical health. There are also studies showing how meditation positively affects the brain.
Indeed, regular meditation increases grey matter (neuronal cell bodies and synapses) in the:
- Insula, which handles introspection, self awareness and empathy for the emotions of others
- Hippocampus, which plays a key role in remembering personal events, visual spatial memory, establishing the content of events, and calming the amygdala and the production of stress hormones (such as cortisol)
- Prefrontal cortex, which supports executive functions, self-control and guiding emotions
Regular meditation has also been shown to increase activation in the left prefrontal cortex, which lifts mood. It also promotes learning by increasing the power and reach of gamma range brainwaves.
Meditation is the quintessential training of attention. Attention is like a vacuum cleaner, sucking its contents into your brain through “experience dependent neuroplasticity”. Thus, getting better attention is the basis for a better life.
Essentially, mindfulness meditation:
- Helps you focus on the present, which can improve your concentration on other tasks in your daily life
- Helps you focus on the present, which means you are less likely to focus on anxious thoughts that can fuel depression
- Encourages you to slow down, allows for deeper self-reflection, and can help you discover positive attributes about yourself
- Lowers the stress hormone, making you feel more relaxed
- Alters the brain receptors associated with drug and alcohol addiction, which may reduce cravings for these substances
- Increases your awareness of cravings and allows you better manage them
- Strengthens circuits in the brain that pick up on other people’s emotions
- Promotes altruistic behaviour and decreases the implicit or unconscious bias responsible for perpetuating harmful stereotypes
Meditation can have many health benefits, from physical to mental and emotional. To reduce stress, improve your focus, or deal with addictions, depression or chronic pain, you should try meditation to see if it is right for you.
As well as your basic mindfulness practice, there are other types of meditation you can try. While they all include aspects of mindfulness, they also offer alternative anchor of focus during meditation.
- Loving kindness meditation: the aim is to direct feelings of compassion towards yourself and others. You can direct positive thoughts towards yourself, someone you love, or someone you do not particularly like at the moment. This form of meditation has actually been shown to improve self esteem and resolve conflicts.
- Body scan meditation: this ensures that you focus on bodily sensations, not just your breath. For instance, you can start at your toes, and take a few moments to focus on how they feel, when they are grounded on the floor. Then move through your legs, chest, arms, shoulders, neck and head, slowly noticing the sensations of each body part. This form of meditation could help in reducing chronic pain or dealing with tension, stress or trauma.
- Walking meditation: allows you to focus on each step as you mindfully lift and place your foot on the ground. This is for people who do not particularly like sitting for a traditional mindfulness meditation. It also gives the added health advantage that comes with walking.
The best meditation of all is the one you will do. So, find what you like and will stick with. Meditation can be done anywhere that you can focus.
Relax. Rest. Intend to meditate. Come into a sense of presence with yourself. Find something to support attention, such as the sensations of breathing, a word or phrase, or an image. Use a support that is stimulating enough to keep yourself present. Feel free to do walking meditation or use an audio program to guide you. Meditating with others can also help you stay focused.
Start by giving attention fully to the support, letting go of everything else. Center in on it, become absorbed in it, even for just a few breathe or a few minutes.
Then, with an ongoing awareness of your support, let your attention expand to include your body, thoughts, feelings, wants, and overall mental atmosphere. Allow things to come into your mind and leave freely. Gently open up to relaxing and quieting, and to an increasingly stable presence as experiencing, being a body breathing in peace.
You can meditate for as long as you like. One minute is good. Ten, twenty, or even forty-five minutes is even better. It is recommended you try to meditate at the same time each day.
Towards the end of meditation, let the benefits sink into you. If you get distracted or engulfed in painful feelings when you relax into yourself, it would be helpful to build up more inner resources before meditating. Meditation is a skill, so try not to criticize yourself. You will get better at it over time, and its benefits for you will increase.
To get started with meditation, some guided apps are well-suited for specific purposes.
Headspace is great for daily meditations, while Calm is useful to help you sleep. If you are new at meditation, you can try Simple Habit. If you are a skeptic, you can try Ten Percent Happier. If you are looking for variety, check out Insight Timer.
Also, at PAT Consulting, we have a mind wellness community that would help you practice meditation and give you a platform to discuss issues relating to your mental health and wellbeing. Contact us at info@patnigeria.com or 0907 870 6967 to find out more.
#PATCares
Implementing mindfulness in your workplace has several benefits. Our next article will discuss some of the importance of mindfulness in the workplace and the benefits to employees.
