A simple and calming mental exercise, meditation is the practice of training the mind to maintain deep and focused concentration. In addition to an immediate sense of peace and relaxation, over time many participants experience improvements in mood, blood pressure, self-control and emotional balance.
For those on the path to recovery from addiction or substance abuse, incorporating meditation into your healing plan can help alleviate anxiety and depression, which can be underlying issues of your addiction. In addition, meditation has been shown to have the following benefits:
Benefits of Practicing Meditation:
1. Meditation Reduces Stress
Everyone could do with a little less stress in their lives. Meditation releases endorphins in the same way the exercising does. Endorphins reduce stress in the brain. This reduction of stress lets you focus on exploring yourself and your own mind without all of your smaller, but still nagging worries getting in the way.
2. Meditation Helps You Focus
Meditating lets you learn how to discipline yourself and your mind. This discipline will be reflected in your life away from meditation as well. Your mind will be able to focus more naturally and many people experience increased efficiency.
3. Meditation Makes You Happier
Meditation causes the pituitary gland in your brain to secrete endorphins, which are known to elevate your mood and have a positive effect on your whole body. This release of positivity in your system will help you be happier overall. It alters the brain activity to enhance the area associated with positive emotional experiences.
4. Meditation Lowers Blood Pressure
By decreasing psychological stress and increasing your ability to cope with stressful situations, meditation can make your blood pressure lower. Both in the short term and later in life, meditation can make your blood pressure lower.
5. Meditation Relieves Pain
Practicing meditation in the long term can lead to physical changes in the brain that can help alter your perception of pain. The people who meditate often can experience a lowered sensitivity to pain. Meditation can be a great way of dealing with chronic pain as well.
6. Meditation Connects You With Yourself
One of the major points of meditation is to learn to how let your mind direct itself rather than consciously directing it. This non-attachment is meant to give you a better understanding of yourself and a better connection to what is going on in your mind and in your body.
7. Meditation Connects You to Others
While meditation is mostly concentrated on self-growth, it can also improve your social interaction skills. After practicing meditation for a while, your mind will become more focused on compassionate feelings that can be directed toward others. Any amount of meditation practice can make you feel better about dealing with yourself and dealing with others.
8. Meditation Brings Emotional Balance
Meditation can help you learn to put aside neurotic or unhealthy emotions related to certain situations. Once these negative feelings can be put aside, you may be able to focus on the situation at hand and how you really feel about it rather than having it colored by information that is emotionally triggered rather than logically triggered.
9. Meditation Gives You Better Control Over Your Emotions
As mentioned above, meditation can help you put aside negative emotions that can taint your response to an emotional situation. It can also help you control your emotions overall. With the help of meditation, if you want to be more positive, you may be able to put aside negativity and bring the positivity to the top. If you want to be more caring, you may be able to focus on the caring expressions you would like to be making and put aside the less caring attitudes that you no longer need.
10. Meditation Continues to Help Even When You Are Not Practicing
You can still benefit from your brain’s emotional processing even when you are not actively meditating. According to a study done but Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, the brain region with the amygdala responds to emotional stimuli. This response can be changed by meditation. This occurs even when you are not in active meditation.