Meditation has been around for thousands and thousands of years, since it originated from ancient spiritual traditions. It truly has proven to be an effective method for physical and mental well-being; from boosting the immune system to relieving stress and tuning out the chaos from your mind.

Whether it’s relief from tension at work or tension from your muscles, meditation is truly able to get to the root of those stressors and help them. 

But how exactly is meditation able to achieve this monumental feat? Well, in our guide, we’ll answer the profound question of how meditation supports health and healing? Let’s find out!

The Mental Health Benefits of Meditation

Dating back to 1500 BCEE, the first records of meditation depict how it was used to treat physical ailments. But as it evolved, the spiritual masters discovered how this ritual was able to also calm the mind and relieve people of stress and anxiety. 

As we’ve come to know more and more about meditation, we’ve learned about the powers it possesses to actually target the stressors of our minds. Our brains have several different ways to pack up and store stress, worry, and other forms of anxiety, and with meditation, we’re able to locate those irritants and target them. 

When you practice meditation for mental wellness, you achieve emotional balance and are able to manage your stress whenever and wherever. Without further ado, let’s look at some key benefits of mediation below.

•  Reduce Stress

Meditation activates the body’s response to relaxation and lowers cortisol levels, the main hormone responsible for triggering stress. To put it simply, it’s like tiny little robots climbing up into your brain and chucking out the atoms stressing you out and replacing them with molecules of calm and relaxation. 

Basically that’s what happens when you’re meditating, it’s not just targeting the surface level, but the exercises with the help of royalty free meditation music and calming elements, are designed to target the core of it all. After each session, meditation gives your brain a much needed cleaning and vacuuming, so you can focus on the rest of your day with a brain that is not cluttered and filled with distractions. 

And a clear mind means, a mind that will not succumb to stress and anxiety. 

•  Improves Focus and Concentration

With a clean and clutter-free mind, you’re able to focus on things with more clarity and focus. It’s like wiping your spectacles after they’ve fogged up, you put them on and suddenly you begin noticing things you didn’t before. 

Consider meditation as your lint-free cloth and cleaning solution, with each session, your brain is wiped clean off of distractions and litter. You become more mindful as it trains the brain to stay present and in the moment, improving cognitive function and improving productivity.

And as you practice meditation regularly, your brain becomes accustomed to staying clean and free of diversions, and your concentration is thoroughly refined with your focus, being sharp as a knife.

•  Emotional Resilience

As we become stressed, we lose track of our emotions, they seem to be all over the place or we just seem fixated on one negative emotion. There’s no in-between. We can’t seem to shake it off, no matter how much we want to. 

When you begin meditating, you’re able to manage that fixation on negative emotions, you can switch your brain from wanting to preoccupy itself with negativity and stress-inducing elements. Regular meditation gives you that lightswitch, to instantly turn off the emerging bouts of despair and make you respond to life’s challenges more calmly and logically. 

Physical Health Benefits of Meditation

We’ve explored what benefits meditation has on our mental health, and there are many. Now, let’s go through the physical health benefits from regular meditation. 

You see, this mindfulness practice originated with the intention of treating physical ailments besides the spirit, from pain-relief to imbalances in the immune system. Just like the brain storing stress impacting our mental health, it can do the same for our physical health. The body can also hold on to pain and discomfort, leading to the degradation of any existing health issues. 

Let’s look at some key physical health benefits of meditation below, 

•  Lowers Blood Pressure

With regular meditation underway, you can regulate the heart rate and have some control over your blood pressure levels. It all comes back to stress, because due to stress we often experience increased heart palpitations. And as we found out earlier, meditation being so instrumental in managing stress, it can advertently reduce your heart rate.

Meditation can also decrease and control the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, which is in charge of the fight-or-flight response and is responsible for our anxiety running amok. 

Also, with major cardiovascular risks directly correlated to increased heart rate, meditation reduces chances of such diseases developing at all. 

•  Boosts Immune Function

When you practice regular meditation, you’re able to fine-tune the body’s immune response. It’s almost as if the meditators load your body’s immune system with ammunition, allowing it to fight-off infections and allergies with more precision. 

What meditation basically does is activates your body’s immune-fighting genes to become more proactive in the event of any disease or illness emerging in the body. It increases the number of CD-4 cells which are also known as helper cells, that send signals to other cells to destroy and eradicate any signs of infections. 

With meditation honing immune responses at every session, your body eventually becomes more in-tune with its surroundings and is able to take control of any upcoming ailments that could affect it. 

•  Relieves Chronic Pain

As the body’s stressors are reduced with every meditation session, not only is your mind trained to perceive things happening to you differently, but so is your body. You see, with meditation’s ability to change the mind’s perception of pain, those struggling with chronic pain such as arthritis or fibromyalgia, can become more adept and able at managing their pain. 

Coupling that with its mainstay benefit of improving concentration, it contributes to the body’s ability to improve the body’s threshold of pain. Combine those with the increased quality of life, chronic pain sufferers are able to relive their discomfort with more ease and stability with meditation. 

Emotional and Spiritual Healing 

We’ve gotten the physical and mental well-being out of the way, another one of meditation’s originating benefits, spiritual and emotional healing, must be discussed. When you meditate regularly, you’re able to create a deeper connection with yourself, free of distractors. 

You encourage more emotional healing and are able to establish a form of inner peace with your own self. With your emotions in control and mind at ease, meditation also helps with an elevated spiritual growth. You’re more self-aware than before, you nurture more compassion within you, and can enrich a sense of tranquility within you. 

Let’s take a look at some facets of meditation supporting spiritual and emotional healing below, 

•  More Self-Awareness

When you meditate, you’re able to look deep within and cultivate more self-awareness. You can reflect on your own feelings, emotions and thoughts  with a fine-toothed comb and introspect on what puts you at ease. You’re able to put the reins on your racing mind and focus on what matters. 

•  Compassion and Kindness

As you begin focusing on what truly matters with regular meditation, you begin to understand the power and importance of compassion and kindness. There are forms of meditation that are about generating feelings of goodwill and empathy towards yourself, other people, and our planet. 

Speaking of, meditation allows you to connect with nature and acknowledge the greatness of the earth we live on. You’re able to value its inhabitants and prioritize the well-being of the environment. 

•  Inner Peace

Naturally as you gain more self-awareness and begin practicing compassion and kindness towards yourself and others, you inadvertently achieve inner peace. You’re able to calm your mind and obtain a healthy sense of calm, composure and balance. 

Your emotional healing is achieved and your inner peace attained, all thanks to meditation and mindfulness. There’s nothing quite like experiencing inner peace when you have secured it without the aid of anything else. You learn to value and prioritize yourself more, and you want to maintain that peace for as long as you want, and meditating takes you there. 

How Can You Incorporate Meditation?

Here are a few ways you can incorporate meditation in your life. 

• Start small with just 5-10 minutes a day and gradually increase with your pace and comfort level.
• Create a comfortable space in your home that is free of noise or distractions for practicing meditation. 
• Try different styles such as mantra, mindfulness or guided to see what works best for you.
• Use apps like Headspace or Calm to guide your meditation and keep you motivated.

Conclusion 

We hope you enjoyed our deep-dive into how meditation can support your health and healing.  Whether you’re looking to manage anxiety, improve focus, or achieve inner peace, meditating in your daily routine is a step towards health and healing.