If stress has you anxious, tense and worried, you might try meditation. Spending even a few minutes in meditation can help restore your calm and inner peace sound healing certification.
Anyone can practice meditation. It’s simple and doesn’t cost much. And you don’t need any special equipment.
You can practice meditation wherever you are. You can meditate when you’re out for a walk, riding the bus, waiting at the doctor’s office or even in the middle of a business meeting.
Understanding meditation
Meditation has been around for thousands of years. Early meditation was meant to help deepen understanding of the sacred and mystical forces of life. These days, meditation is most often used to relax and lower stress.
Meditation is a type of mind-body complementary medicine. Meditation can help you relax deeply and calm your mind.
During meditation, you focus on one thing. You get rid of the stream of thoughts that may be crowding your mind and causing stress. This process can lead to better physical and emotional well-being.
Benefits of meditation
Meditation can give you a sense of calm, peace and balance that can benefit your emotional well-being and your overall health. You also can use it to relax and cope with stress by focusing on something that calms you. Meditation can help you learn to stay centered and keep inner peace.
These benefits don’t end when your meditation session ends. Meditation can help take you more calmly through your day. And meditation may help you manage symptoms of some medical conditions.
Meditation and emotional and physical well-being
When you meditate, you may clear away the information overload that builds up every day and contributes to your stress.
The emotional and physical benefits of meditation can include:
Giving you a new way to look at things that cause stress.
Building skills to manage your stress.
Making you more self-aware.
Focusing on the present.
Reducing negative feelings.
Helping you be more creative.
Helping you be more patient.
Lowering resting heart rate.
Lowering resting blood pressure.
Helping you sleep better.
Meditation and illness
Meditation also might help if you have a medical condition. This is most often true if you have a condition that stress makes worse.
A lot of research shows that meditation is good for health. But some experts believe there’s not enough research to prove that meditation helps.
With that in mind, some research suggests that meditation may help people manage symptoms of conditions such as:
Anxiety.
Asthma.
Cancer.
Chronic pain.
Depression.
Heart disease.
High blood pressure.
Irritable bowel syndrome.
Sleep problems.
Tension headaches.
Be sure to talk to your healthcare professional about the pros and cons of using meditation if you have any of these or other health conditions. Sometimes, meditation might worsen symptoms linked to some mental health conditions.
Meditation doesn’t replace medical treatment. But it may help to add it to other treatments.
Types of meditation
Meditation is an umbrella term for the many ways to get to a relaxed state. There are many types of meditation and ways to relax that use parts of meditation. All share the same goal of gaining inner peace.
Ways to meditate can include:
Guided meditation. This is sometimes called guided imagery or visualization. With this method of meditation, you form mental images of places or things that help you relax.
You try to use as many senses as you can. These include things you can smell, see, hear and feel. You may be led through this process by a guide or teacher.
Mantra meditation. In this type of meditation, you repeat a calming word, thought or phrase to keep out unwanted thoughts.
Mindfulness meditation.This type of meditation is based on being mindful. This means being more aware of the present.
In mindfulness meditation, you focus on one thing, such as the flow of your breath. You can notice your thoughts and feelings. But let them pass without judging them.
Qigong. This practice most often combines meditation, relaxation, movement and breathing exercises to restore and maintain balance. Qigong (CHEE-gung) is part of Chinese medicine.
Tai chi. This is a form of gentle Chinese martial arts training. In tai chi (TIE-CHEE), you do a series of postures or movements in a slow, graceful way. And you do deep breathing with the movements.
Yoga. You do a series of postures with controlled breathing. This helps give you a more flexible body and a calm mind. To do the poses, you need to balance and focus. That helps you to focus less on your busy day and more on the moment.
Parts of meditation
Each type of meditation may include certain features to help you meditate. These may vary depending on whose guidance you follow or who’s teaching a class. Some of the most common features in meditation include:
Focused attention. Focusing your attention is one of the most important elements of meditation.
Focusing your attention is what helps free your mind from the many things that cause stress and worry. You can focus your attention on things such as a certain object, an image, a mantra or even your breathing.
Relaxed breathing. This technique involves deep, even-paced breathing using the muscle between your chest and your belly, called the diaphragm muscle, to expand your lungs. The purpose is to slow your breathing, take in more oxygen, and reduce the use of shoulder, neck and upper chest muscles while breathing so that you breathe better.
A quiet setting. If you’re a beginner, meditation may be easier if you’re in a quiet spot. Aim to have fewer things that can distract you, including no television, computers or cellphones.
As you get more skilled at meditation, you may be able to do it anywhere. This includes high-stress places, such as a traffic jam, a stressful work meeting or a long line at the grocery store. This is when you can get the most out of meditation.
A comfortable position. You can practice meditation whether you’re sitting, lying down, walking, or in other positions or activities. Just try to be comfortable so that you can get the most out of your meditation. Aim to keep good posture during meditation.
Open attitude. Let thoughts pass through your mind without judging them.