Meditate Daily For Health
If you think that meditation is simply a left over from the flower power days of the 60’s think again. I must admit I used to think that people who had time to meditate were just the calm laid back types who didn’t really need it. I have to say I was wrong. Over the last few years scientists have learned a great deal about the health benefits of meditation and have begun to understand how it works.
The effects of long term meditation are profound. It can dramatically change certain facets of your psychology, temperament and physical health. Several studies published in a variety of reputable journals have shown that meditation improves concentration and learning. Others have shown that it improves emotional health. Meditation made subjects less anxious and more able to manage their emotions.
This finding was backed up by another study using brain imaging to observe meditators while they were meditating. It showed that the part of the brain that deals with our emotions was far less active in long term meditators than in non meditators or novices. Of course those who practice meditation have always said that the benefits of meditation are manifested in those who persevere.
It seems that regular daily meditation can indeed help with the difficult task of living in the world. The benefits of meditation have been found to improve chronic pain, eating disorders, drug addiction, psoriasis, depression, high blood pressure, anxiety to name but a few. These conditions are all strongly linked to emotions and this is the likely reason why meditation is effective.
What might really recruit a host of new meditators though is the finding that meditation is anti aging. The action of the enzyme telomerase, which protects against cellular aging, is suppressed when we are under stress but it increased in meditators.
A current study at Stanford University is investigating whether another of the benefits of meditation might be increased empathy and compassion. This is likely because compassionate behavior is linked to good emotional balance and emotional balance is improved with meditation. The Center for Compassion and Altruism is funded by many different entities including neuroscientists, business leaders and the Dalai Lama. They are also investigating the possibility that altruism could be increased by meditating.
The Benefits of Meditation Can Be Fast
To gain the benefits of meditation you don’t have to live in a Zen monastery and meditate all day. In the Transcendental Meditation movement they have always taught members to meditate for 15 minutes twice a day to gain maximum benefits. Now the effectiveness of this is being born out in scientific studies.
In the chronic pain relief study participants benefited by practicing meditation for only 20 minutes a day for three days. Cognitive performance can be improved with similar short meditations experience. Dr.Richard Davidson Director of the Waisman Laboratory says that “It is possible to produce substantial changes in brain function by the short term practice of meditation”. He has found that after two weeks of meditating 30 minutes a day there were profound changes in brain function in novice meditators.
Even though this is the case it does seem that the longer you have been practicing the more benefits you will reap. Some of the research mentioned above did use meditators who had been practicing for many years.
Still if you start now you will begin to accumulate the benefits of meditation straight away and will keep accumulating them as the years go by. Not only that but meditating is rather pleasurable and it really does make you feel calmer and less anxious.
It isn’t hard to begin meditating and you can do it anywhere without a guru. There are various ways to meditate but the focused attention method is the best known and the one studied by most researchers. Here is some help with getting started with meditation.
