Living busy lives with a nonstop schedule can leave you feeling stressed, overwhelmed and often means you don’t stop to notice the little things. By practising meditation for even just 10 minutes a day, you could start to notice a difference in your overall wellbeing and mental health.
Meditation and mindfulness can be helpful concepts to ensure you feel better within yourself. So, whether you’ve never tried it before or you’re not sure what difference it can really make, Wellbeing 365 offer some insight.
1. What is meditation?
Meditation is very simple but it can take patience. It is a practice of focusing the mind and training attention and awareness, in order to achieve a clearer outlook. Meditation can be very useful in helping you find a healthy sense of perspective, which is important if you struggle with anxiety or stress.
Meditation is a skill, and it can take practice to make sure you are comfortable doing it. Most meditations involve sitting in a quiet place and closing your eyes, allowing you to calm your mind and focus on your breathing. Your aim should be to prevent your mind from jumping from one thought to another, and to avoid getting caught up in your thoughts or emotions.
Read next: Ways to Manage Mental Health Naturally
2. Meditation and mindfulness
Mindfulness is a term often used alongside meditation, as it means to pay more attention to the present moment. Meditation can help you achieve this, along with a better understanding of what is going on inside your mind and reconnecting with your body.
Mindfulness is a concept of being present and engaged in the moment, without distraction. It’s very easy to go through life without noticing the things around us, which can often impact our emotions and wellbeing.
3. How can meditation help?
Meditation has shown to have a lot of positive effects on your mental wellbeing. In particular, meditation can help to reduce stress as it reminds you to stop, remain calm and focus your mind. This gives you a chance to take stock and bring yourself back to the present, which in turn can help to put things into perspective.
Less stress can eventually lead to less anxiety. By being more aware of yourself and your thoughts, you can begin to feel more at ease with your mind. Meditation can help you to better understand what’s going on in your mind, and it could lead to a clearer path of how to move forward.
Meditation has also shown to improve your emotional strength. This means you may experience a better way of treating yourself, by noticing negative thoughts and being able to quieten your inner critic. Meditation can allow you to see the present much more clearly, which can in turn positively change the way you view yourself.
There have been some studies to suggest that meditation may help to control pain. By calming your mind and relaxing your muscles through practising meditation, you can reduce your pain levels. Scientific studies have shown that meditation can aid neuroplasticity, which the ability of the brain’s networks to change through growth or reorganisation, which can lead to lower pain sensitivity.
