Advantages that meditation can have in maintaining your body

Meditation is a practice that involves focusing one’s mind on a particular object, thought, or a particular activity to achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm state. There are many types of meditation like mindfulness meditation, the transcendental meditation, yoga meditation, Zazen, and so on. 

Meditation is a life-saving and strengthening form of fitness, practiced for thousands of years in India. It has shown to have numerous benefits on both the mind and body. From stress reduction to improved mental focus, from increased self-awareness to increased creativity and productivity, these are some benefits of meditation.

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Here are the benefits of meditation on your body:

1. Helps in de-stressing:

One of the main reasons why people try out meditation is to tackle stress. A study titled the Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: A systematic review and meta-analysis has found that doing meditation showed evidence of a reduction in anxiety. Many studies and research papers have concluded that meditation helps to reduce the stress levels in a person, anxiety and depression by lowering the levels of stress hormones in the body.

Usually, mental and physical stress increases the stress hormone called cortisol. This leads to the release of an inflammatory chemical called cytokines. These cytokines can disrupt the sleeping pattern, increase anxiety levels and blood pressure, and lead to fatigue. An 8-week study titled, A comparison of mindfulness-based stress reduction and active control in modulation of neurogenic inflammation found that mindful meditation can reduce the inflammation response.

2. Increased Self-awareness:

Meditation assists in making you more aware of who you are and increases self-awareness, which can lead to greater self-knowledge, emotional intelligence and personal growth. A 2019 study submitted to the National Library of Medicine found that adults using an app for mindful meditation exhibited reduced symptoms of loneliness. In fact, it increased their social skills as well.

3. Improved sleep quality:

A study titled A Randomized Controlled Trial of Mindfulness Meditation for Chronic Insomnia, found that people who practiced meditation slept for a longer time span. It improved their insomnia. It may also help treating chronic insomnia in adults and could be an alternative to traditional methods. Meditation relaxes the body, releases tension and lets you fall asleep peacefully.

Meditation can also help to improve the overall quality of sleep by reducing the number of awakenings during the night and increasing the amount of deep sleep. Deep sleep is the most mandatory and restorative stage of sleep and is essential for physical and emotional well-being.

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