By Jayita Bhattacharjee
Meditation unleashes the domain of a free spirit, and it has been integrated into some form or other by every spiritual path. If you ever wonder about the need to meditate, what is the necessity to delve into the sea of silence, then below are some of the facts that can answer your unanswered question.
Meditation gives you contentment
Meditation is the daily habitual process of training your mind to learn how to focus so you can manage to redirect your thoughts. People who engage in meditation normally live happier lives compared to those who don’t. It brings a flow of positive emotions and enhances constructive, creative thoughts. Daily meditation for a few minutes can fill your mind with aspiring energy that will pull you up from your sense of fatigue. Scientific findings will support this claim. As per studies conducted on a group of Buddhist monks, while they were engaged in meditative acts, the pre-frontal cortex of their brains (the area associated with happiness) was found to have extra activity. It leads to an enhanced self-perception and imparts a positive outlook on life. Meditators experience lesser negative thoughts, and they have not such negative perceptions of the world and surroundings around them. It gives you a happy, healthy emotional release. The inflammatory chemicals called cytokines are released in stressful situations, and affect mood and cause depression. The levels of those inflammatory chemicals are reduced. Happiness comes as the inflammatory cytokines go down.
Enhances self-awareness
Consistent meditation helps you in gaining a strong understanding of yourself. And there, you grow gradually into the best version of yourself. e.g., As you engage in a self-inquiry meditation, you know yourself and can relate to those around you. You recognize thoughts that are destructive or self-defeating. So you can steer those thoughts towards a constructive pattern. As per studies, practicing Tai chi improves self-efficacy, and your belief in your capacity or ability to face the challenges sees an improvement. Mindfulness meditators feel reduced loneliness and increased levels of social contact compared to those who do not practice it. In addition, meditators can cultivate creative skills. There comes a pervading peace and a general calmness of mind though this feeling is subtle and fleeting by nature. It brings an awareness of what is present in your mind, what remains there so you can acknowledge it just to witness, but not to wipe the mind clean of any debris. It heightens your level of awareness. It makes you an observer and not an agitator or judgmental.
Meditation curbs your stress, anxiety, and depression
There is an immense transformative potential of meditation, and it should not be overlooked. As per the University of Wisconsin studies, meditation has displayed physiological effects on the brain. Researchers have found that the region of the brain that regulates anxiety and stress, that is found to shrink as you practice meditation on a consistent basis. As you shift your attention to moment-to-moment experiences, meditation trains the mind and guides it to remain calm even in situations that might cause stress. They also direct the mind to go through a significant amount of reduced anxiety by unnecessarily worrying about the future.
There is no need for a person to be religious in order to meditate
Meditation has a wide range of benefits. It enhances calmness, makes you practice awareness, and eventually helps you to declutter the mind. The noteworthy thing is, you do not have to adhere to any particular religion to practice meditation and access its benefits. Many people define themselves as spiritual but not religious but still engage in daily meditation. Contemplation is needed as a key component in many religions, but meditation is about making you aware of the present moment. Connecting with the stillness is the key from this perspective.
Meditation assists you in your sleeping process
Troubling insomnia that many dread is often mitigated by consistent meditation practice. For those that suffer from some form of sleep deprivation, be it chronic or occasional, meditation helps you fall asleep by triggering the relaxation response. A part of the meditative population has the opposite problem: they fall asleep the moment they begin to meditate.
Kirtan Kriya, a meditative method that combines a mantra or a chant with a repetitive motion of your fingers to assist you in focusing your thoughts, as per studies in people with age-related memory loss, has demonstrated better performance on neuropsychological tests. It increases
memory, attention span, and mental alertness in older people. It boosts your mental clarity.
The memory is sharpened due to meditation
Most people go through an age-related memory loss. The memory stays sharp, and the focus and concentration on any given thing can remain steady, so you do not deviate from your focal point. Mindfulness meditation takes good care of this problem, as it trains you how to remain aware of the present moment while pulling away all the distractions from the mind. So distractions have less and less power over you, and you are more and more rooted in what this moment has to offer.
Meditation can be instrumental in fighting addictions
Meditation helps you develop mental discipline, enhances your self-control, and brings an awareness of triggers for addictive behavioral patterns. So you can recognize them easily. As you meditate, it helps you redirect your attention, better manage the emotions and impulses, and understand the causes behind them. As per a study, a study in 60 people receiving treatment for alcohol use disorder found that engaging in transcendental meditation was associated with lower stress levels, reduced psychological distress, alcohol cravings, and alcohol usage after three months. It helps you better manage your food cravings. As per 14 studies, the findings are that mindfulness meditation assisted the participants in lowering emotional and binge eating.
Meditation is accessible anywhere
You do not need specialized equipment or a place, just a calm, quiet place for a few minutes of daily practice. There are two major forms of meditation: Focused-attention mediation and Open-monitoring meditation.
Focused attention meditation focuses on a single object, thought, sound or visualization and emphasizes freeing your mind from interfering distractions. It may focus on breathing or mantra or a soothing sound.
Open monitoring meditation encourages enhanced awareness of all aspects of your surroundings and environment, guiding the stream of thoughts and enhancing the sense of self. It includes the awareness of suppressed thoughts, feelings, or impulses.
Meditation generates kindness
Certain types of meditations specifically enhance the positive feelings towards yourself and others, and so does it engage you in positive actions towards others in the community. In this sense, metta meditation generates continual kindness by developing kind thoughts and feelings towards yourself and others. Consistently practicing this, meditators learn to extend this loving-kindness externally, at first to the friends and acquaintances, and gradually it comes to extending it even to the enemies. As per a study of 50 college students, practicing metta meditation three times per week demonstrated positive emotions, better interpersonal reactions, and an enhanced understanding of others after a time period of 4 weeks. The more you practice, the more the benefits appear to accumulate.
Meditation helps us unlock unconditional well-being
When we immerse in deep meditation, we are training our minds to be present at the moment without allowing ourselves to be caught up in external fascination or being repelled by whatever emerges in our mind-stream. We become able to meet each and every moment with composure, an equanimity no matter what challenges may appear in that moment. We have full access to the essence of each moment as it arises. We relate to our minds moment to moment with the qualities of being non-judgmental and aware. In doing so, we make the discovery that even situations, thoughts, and emotions that we may find unacceptable may hold spaciousness and peace. In the congeniality of the situation, we can unlock our creativity. This is how the journey of mindfulness begins, which leads us consequently to a sense of well-being.
Your life will always have its own challenges. In that sense, you can never assume your life to be freed from them. So the answer to these difficult situations is to find the means to make a breakthrough through the rising struggles and give you the streaks of joy. In meditation, the measure lies in how present we can be at the moment given the challenges and the pleasures that surface.
Every situation that reveals the challenges and delights becomes an opportunity for practice. To stay open and just witness their arising to meet them unconditionally allows us to meet every moment as it comes. We release the need to control, enhance or suppress whatever arises in the process.
As meditation gives rise to spaciousness, we can sustain the awareness of our emotional reactions and face challenges of all sorts in the healthy manner possible as they don’t really measure up to anything about us. The challenges do not measure who we are. The authentic measure can be defined as what we are bringing to the moment we have now. If we bring our resilience, compassion, kindness, and confidence, no matter how we meet our challenges, we are giving it a good enough try.
Things are appearing the way they are. We do not exert our control on them. They come and leave, appear and disappear in a flow and all we do is experience them without being controlling. We are just simply available to whatever arises and maintain the delicate balance between spontaneity and the commitment to working with the mind. Though the nature of well-being is innate, we need to unlock it and work on its stability to sustain it. So, we work on its unearthing and then find the essentialities in its sustenance. Mindfulness becomes that essential element for stability and awareness, making it feasible to work with every moment. The deep sense well- being evokes the feeling of joy. And there arises the laughter of the soul. It emerges as we embrace the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen next. Not knowing where this is going does not trap us in anxiety. There comes a relaxation as you feel; there was never a moment like this moment. And there’s never going to be a moment like this one. From this perspective comes an unparalleled moment. Exhilarated, we do not feel the urge to push or pull anything. Effortlessly, meditation takes us from complexity to simplicity.
