By Swami Saradananda
Many people come to meditation seeking relief from ill-health. As a mind–body modality, meditation has a long history of being used to help people cope with the illness of all kinds – both physical and mental.
While meditation is not a universal cure, it can help alleviate pain and reduce the symptoms of many diseases. It has, for example, been found to help relieve stress, insomnia, anxiety, and depression, and it can help to lower blood pressure, cholesterol, and the risks of heart disease and stroke.
Many of the other recognized benefits of meditation are relevant to coping with diseases, such as greater patience and compassion, more energy and stamina, heightened concentration, enhanced inner resilience, and more openness of heart and creativity. Regular meditation practice is, therefore, likely to give you an increased sense of all-around wellbeing.
Meditation has been shown to positively affect your parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which controls automatic processes in the body such as heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure. Studies suggest that, as a result of this, meditation can bring about a reduction in stress, improved blood flow, and a healthier supply of digestive juices.
As meditation can help to lower your blood pressure, it can prove especially useful if you suffer from any medical condition that is worsened by stress. Getting rid of excess stress is extremely important for the immune system, especially if you are prone to any chronic illnesses, such as arthritis, diabetes, obesity, or heart or respiratory diseases.
People with these kinds of conditions can often feel helpless and out of control. But meditation can give you the strength to look at your situation more calmly and with greater objectivity and to take greater responsibility for your own health. It also helps you to control your vital energy, prãna, and direct it where it is most needed. This creates increasingly favorable conditions for healthy cell regeneration, as well as helping you to feel that you have more control over your own life.
Meditation tends to increase activity in the prefrontal cortex, the right anterior insula, and the right hippocampus – regions of the brain that help regulate emotions and anxiety. When stimulated, these regions support the efficient functioning of the immune system.
As meditation tends to make you feel more settled (less stressed), enhance positive thinking, relax your body, calm your mind, increase mental clarity and encourage non-judgmental observation, it can help you to better understand and accept any health conditions that you have, and deal with them more efficiently and compassionately. Many people who meditate regularly develop greater acceptance not only of their illness but also of themselves and the world in general.
Meditation also helps you to develop mental discipline and willpower, which can assist recovery from addiction, excessive eating, and other unhealthy habits.
Healthcare professionals are increasingly recommending meditation as part of a multidisciplinary approach to reduce anxiety and chronic pain and to improve quality of life. Studies show that those who meditate often undergo encouraging changes in attitudes related to positive thinking and optimism.
As meditation is connected to your state of mind, it has also been shown to help with the perception of pain. Meditating patients showed increased activity in the brain centers known to control pain and also reported greater indifference to pain.
Recent evidence also supports the use of meditation as an adjunct or complementary therapy to control blood pressure. This is because it relaxes the nerve signals that coordinate heart function, tension in blood vessels, and the “fight-or-flight” response (the body’s defense reaction when you are in a stressful or dangerous situation). Blood pressure decreases not only during meditation but also over time if you practice regularly.
Meditation-based programs also seem to be helpful in reducing common menopausal symptoms. They lessen the frequency and intensity of hot flashes, sleep and mood disturbances, and muscle and joint pain.
Research has shown that meditation seems to improve symptoms of stress-related conditions as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and fibromyalgia. This makes sense because, during meditation, you focus your attention, eliminating the stream of jumbled thoughts that may be crowding your mind and causing stress.
The improvements in attention and clarity of thinking that meditation can bring mean it can also be a useful tool to fight age-related memory loss and at least partially improve memory in patients with dementia.
Nearly half the population struggles with insomnia at some points in their lives – usually the result of the mind having difficulty quieting down at the end of the day. Studies have found that people who meditate tend to fall asleep sooner and wake up more rested than those who don’t.
Recently, there have been more and more studies designed to help researchers understand how meditation actually works. One interesting finding from this is that meditation has been shown to offer the body and mind more profound rest than deep sleep – a benefit that builds up over time and reduces stress, which accounts for over 60 percent of doctor visits.
As you can see, meditation has a multitude of potential health benefits. Please note, however, that although it can be a helpful component in leading a healthy life, it isn’t a replacement for traditional medical treatment. If you plan to use meditation to ease any of the aforementioned or other health problems, it is suggested that you first speak with your healthcare professional.
Note: In some cases, meditation may worsen symptoms associated with certain mental health conditions, such as clinical depression and certain forms of psychosis, so be sure to consult a medical professional in such cases.
More Positive Perspectives on LifeSometimes people claim that they do not want the sense of calm contentment that meditation brings because they fear it might dull their “cutting edge.” Without the constant goading of dynamic discontent, they worry that they will not be sufficiently driven to get ahead in life.
Meditation is not contrary to prospering or to following your dreams. In fact, it might enable you to be more effective in obtaining more of what you really want out of life, as it empowers you to work from a place of inner peace, rather than restless tension and anxiety. A useful analogy might be that stretched and relaxed muscles tend to run better than ones knotted up with stress.
A peaceful mind is preferable when trying to achieve advancement of any kind in life. If you are calm, pleasant, and unselfish in your daily life, obstacles are likely to shrink; if you are stressed, negative, and judgemental, they are likely to grow.
