Why meditate? What benefits can meditation bring to my life?
If you asked yourself these questions at least once without finding a satisfactory answer, and probably why you never started meditating, then this article is for you.
Throughout my career I came across several negative opinions and criticisms from people who saw meditation as just a new age hobby for its own sake, without real added value in everyday life.
I therefore decided to gather in this guide seven reasons that should push anyone to start meditating.
If you want to learn more about the subject, I also recommend reading our study on the 76 benefits of meditation tested by science .
Very often, when life confronts us with obstacles that require a particular degree of concentration and reasoning, we need to find a quick solution. At this point the question arises: where to start?
Meditation is an excellent technique to improve one’s mood starting from the inside and, although many people are skeptical when it comes to this kind of practices, it has been scientifically proven that there are many concrete advantages that last over time
Why start with meditation?
Everyone faces difficult times in his own way: many men start going to the gym even if they have no weight problems, while many women turn to beauty centers to improve their appearance and feel safer. All these people feel, like you, the desire to like each other, to be happy, to bring order to life. The benefits of meditation in this sense are obvious: the practice of meditation serves precisely to reduce stress and insecurity, fighting them from the inside. It should also be noted that meditation costs practically nothing, being able to practice it at any time and directly at home. The benefits of meditation can be absorbed by anyone, in virtually any condition, without having to spend more than 10 minutes a day for 5 days a week.
The 7 Great benefits of meditation
Below you can find a list of direct and indirect benefits that will help you understand why to meditate and improve your life from the first moment. It is important to note, before starting, that in order to maximize the effects and benefits of meditation it is recommended to regularly perform this type of practice. As mentioned above, it is possible to meditate even just 10 minutes a day to feel good immediately.
1) Meditation helps relieve pain
A study carried out in 2011 by MIT showed that it is possible to relieve pain through meditation .
The concentration obtained during meditation sessions makes it possible to focus on one part of the body, allowing the body to reduce the sensation of pain. This research also suggested that it would be possible for some patients suffering from chronic pain to train themselves through meditation and to “protect” their mind from continuous pain.
2) Meditation improves the immune system
There are many studies that have shown that anxiety and the much hated stress worsen our daily life. Among the many negative aspects of stress, one of the most debilitating is the lowering of the immune defenses: the most stressed and anxious people therefore tend to get sick more easily. It is precisely in this aspect that the benefits of meditation are more evident: a correct meditation allows to decrease all the chemical values related to stress , as well as the production of cortisol (the famous hormone that causes it), so as to act indirectly on the system immune system and increase its defenses.
3) Meditation improves fertility
If you are trying to have a baby, you may be interested to know that stress decreases fertility. We have already explained how meditation helps the body fight this great enemy of ours and improve all the aspects that may have been influenced by stress and anxiety.
4) Meditation increases self-confidence
One of the most obvious benefits of meditation is inner peace: meditation helps identify one’s thoughts without having to process them emotionally and, for this reason, helps the brain relax just as if it had an outlet valve that manages the pressure of thoughts.
When you meditate you will notice many negative thoughts of the day just passed, coming to mind, especially when it comes to those about yourself and your abilities.
When this category of thoughts crosses and chains with your stream of consciousness during a meditation session, you will notice how the negativity of thought will be rationally processed by your brain and will not “clog” it as it happens when your mind is distracted by stimuli external. With a regular meditation exercise it will therefore be possible to improve your ability to manage those thoughts without being overwhelmed.
5) Meditation improves body health
Among the various advantages of meditation, some are more “biological” than others: in fact, meditation allows us to decrease blood pressure and increase the production of serotonin . This type of body regulation is exceptional, because it teaches you to manage your biological functions and reach a level of calm and tranquility that will influence many other areas of your life.
6) Meditation develops creativity, emotional happiness and concentration
All these advantages related to meditation are evident when one begins to meditate for more than a week: the state of calm and tranquility helps to stimulate some “talents” who are drowsy and who are put into second place during periods of high stress. The creativity is one of the most important examples of this type of benefit: to be creative you need a good balance between peace and dynamism, easy to reach thanks to meditation. The emotional happiness is another point to be heavily explored during meditation: meditate anyone feel immediately inner happiness justified by the absence of chaos and lack of stress.
Those looking for a little concentrationyou will already know that meditation is one of the best ways to achieve it, thanks to the breathing techniques and the mental approach that meditation allows you to achieve.
7) Meditation helps in social relationships
This advantage can be considered an indirect effect of all the previous advantages that were not mentioned due to lack of space in this article.
To have a healthy and happy social life you have to be comfortable with yourself, be focused and calm and be emotionally stable, but when one of these factors is missing it is very easy to find yourself in difficulty with the management of your social relationships.
Meditation helps and accompanies people to have a healthy and happy lifestyle precisely because it does not oppress the personality and does not force the individual to try to be something he is not. At the beginning of the article I talked to you about the gym and the beauty center as methods of escape from your own insecurities: although these places perfectly fulfill their role of improving their physical appearance and body health, they should not be used as ways of escapefor some real inner problems that could never be dealt with in this way. Meditation, on the other hand, allows us to reach our own well-being through an introspective path, allowing our illnesses to be manifested without damage and helping a process of immediate relaxation which, with the right exercise, can last for a very long time.
