10 proven direct health benefits of meditation
Meditation has been a saving grace for me. I am so happy to see that the health benefits of meditation are now being studied scientifically so that we have proof that it works for those who are skeptical. When I started meditating, it was out of sheer desperation to live and experience life differently. I had struggled with bouts of depression and anxiety all of my life and was told to give meditation a try. What began as a trial, quickly turned into a daily practice that revolutionized the way that I perceived everything. Meditation and mindfulness has taken me and continues to guide me on a path of self-discovery. It is the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning every day, as I know it plugs me into something that is far greater than my own finite conceptions of life.
I would like to draw you into this life enhancing practice.
Here are 10 proven direct health benefits of meditation.
1. Ability to focus is enhanced. “Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that college students who were trained in mindfulness performed better on the verbal reasoning section of the GRE, and also experienced improvements in their working memory.” This demonstrates the powerful influence that meditation has over cognitive functioning and follows suit with my own experience. I started meditation while I was in college and experienced drastic changes in my ability to focus in class and an improvement on test scores.
2. Music sounds better. In a study found in the journal, Psychology of Music, meditation improves our ability to really engage with the music we are listening to. I have found that I became so engaged with what I was listening to that the quality of music I listen to on a daily basis shifted dramatically. I started choosing music that made me feel good rather than music that darkened my mood or just played in the background as a distraction. “In research by Ferguson and Sheldon (2013), participants who listened to upbeat classical compositions by Aaron Copland, while actively trying to feel happier, felt their moods lift more than those who passively listened to the music. This suggests that engaging with music, rather than allowing it to wash over us, gives the experience extra emotional power.”
3. Boosts creativity. In a study done by Leiden University, Netherlands, it was found that meditation improves our ability to create. “Certain meditation techniques can promote creative thinking, even if you have never meditated before. The study is a clear indication that you don’t need to be an experienced meditator to profit more from meditation. The findings support the belief that meditation can have a long-lasting influence on human cognition, including how we conceive new ideas.” This isn’t surprising to me at all. Before I sit down to play music, sing, write, teach a class, or paint, I always at least close my eyes and take a few grounding breaths. If I want to really center in, I will take a longer amount of time to practice mindfulness pre-creation time. I find that when I do this, I become more calm, focuses, and ultimately a greater channel for the creative energy to flow through me.
4. Helps with weight loss. In a study done by the Department of Medicine at the University of CA in San Francisco, CA, it was found that mindfulness meditation helped participants with emotional eating and ultimately reduced cortisol and abdominal fat over time. “To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore effects of a novel mindful eating and stress reduction program on abdominal adiposity and fat distribution. The intervention was successful in increasing mindfulness and responsiveness to bodily sensations, reducing anxiety and eating in response to external food cues, and tended to reduce eating in response to emotions.” When I started meditating, I immediately became more relaxed and ultimately more mindful of what I was putting into my body on an emotional, physical, and spiritual level. I started to recognize how I would pick up a sugary food when I felt stressed and then began to choose better ways to cope with the stress. I noticed how different foods made me feel after eating them. I started to eat slower, without distractions (No TV for instance.) I started to lose weight that first month and I have had a beautiful, conscious relationship with my body ever since.
5. Improves your sex life. Findings by the EOC Institute demonstrate the many ways the meditation can improve your libido. “Did you know that meditation, with so many benefits, can also lead to feelings of sexual arousal? Among the many reasons are increased endorphins, more focus, better self image, more DHEA, and better blood flow.” I used to feel so shamed and afraid of my body and sexuality, but through mindfulness practices have fallen deeply in love with my body and the more I fall in love with my body the better choices I make for conscious sexuality.
6. Improves sleep. “Mindfulness meditation practices resulted in improved sleep quality for older adults with moderate sleep disturbance in a clinical trial comparing meditation to a more structured program focusing on changing poor sleep habits and establishing a bedtime routine, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.” As a result of my daily meditation practice, I am a very sound sleeper. Even if I do wake up, I can more easily fall back into slumber where as I used to lay awake for hours at a time some evenings.
7. Enhances mood. “A review study last year at Johns Hopkins looked at the relationship between mindfulness meditation and its ability to reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety, and pain. Researcher Madhav Goyal and his team found that the effect size of meditation was moderate, at 0.3. If this sounds low, keep in mind that the effect size for antidepressants is also 0.3, which makes the effect of meditation sound pretty good.” This was a key factor in me returning to my meditation practice every day. Beginning my day with mindfulness creates a positive foundation for the remainder of my day to be built upon.
8. Helps with addiction. For those of you who don’t know my story, I was an dual diagnosis addict, and through mindfulness meditation, I have been sober for nearly 7 years now. I can not express how grateful I am for this simple gift that we are given to be able to simply sit, be still, and breathe.. we do hardly anything at all and we are given the world in return. To demonstrate this, a Forbes article writes, “One study, for example, pitted mindfulness training against the American Lung Association’s freedom from smoking (FFS) program, and found that people who learned mindfulness were many times more likely to have quit smoking by the end of the training, and at 17 weeks follow-up, than those in the conventional treatment.”
9. Awakens compassion. In a society where violence in the media is common and most of this generation’s kids are sitting in front of video games that further cultivate desensitization towards violence, meditation comes in like a white knight. We must work at remaining open to standing in the face of suffering, with a compassionate heart. See here for a study that shows changes in neural responses to suffering.
10. Improves memory. When I first got sober, my memory was a disaster. After practicing mindfulness, my memory improved more and more as the years went by and now I feel very comfortable. See here for a study that shows astounding results on how meditation improves m
memory!
Alana Roach is a International Yogi currently based out of Annapolis, MD. Formerly adorned by the city lights and the busy streets of America, she was then whisked away by the illustrious path of yoga and took to traveling the world to share it with others. A few years back she started to write about the transformation she undertook by practicing conscious meditation. She practices
and teaches varied styles of yoga at Ruahstudio.com, leads international retreats with Truenatureyogawellness.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/08/mindfulness-meditation-benefits-health_n_3016045.html
http://www.spring.org.uk/2013/09/10-magical-effects-music-has-on-the-mind.php
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141028082355.html
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jobe/2011/651936/
http://eocinstitute.org/meditation/increase-your-libido-through-meditation_455/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150216131115.htm
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810010000681
