Overview
Many of us have probably felt stressed at some point as if there were too many things going on because of how demanding life can be. While stress can have negative effects on our health, sometimes all it takes to feel better in the here and now is pausing for a minute to clear the mind.
After just eight weeks of consistent practice, meditation has been clinically shown to reduce stress because of the fact that by training the mind to be less reactive and a little more open. We become well-equipped to deal with stress, including those related to work, family, relationships, school, money, and even traffic.
Meditation trains us to become observers of certain mental patterns so that we become less affected by mental stress.
What is Meditation?
Meditation involves conditioning your mind to concentrate and reroute its thoughts. Meditation has become more and more common as people become aware of its many health advantages.
It aids in becoming a better person by being more mindful and conscious of yourself and your environment lf. Most individuals consider it to be a means of improving focus and reducing stress.
Additionally, people use the practice to cultivate other positive traits and emotions, including a cheerful perspective on life, self-control, restful sleep patterns, and even a higher pain threshold.
Major styles of meditation
Some of the major types of meditation include
Guided meditation
Guided meditation is, also known as guided imagery or visualisation, is a type of meditation in which you create calming mental images or scenarios in your head.
Guided refers to the fact that a teacher or guide usually leads this procedure. It's frequently advised to appeal to as many senses as you can to promote calmness in your relaxing environment, such as scent, sounds, and textures.
Vipassana Meditation (Sayagyi U Ba Khin Tradition)
Vipassana is a traditional Indian meditation technique that translates to seeing things as they are. It has been around for more than 2,500 years and is attributed to the start of mindfulness meditation.
Vipassana meditation seeks to change the individual through introspection. You can create a strong connection between your mind and body by concentrating on the physical feelings in your body. Teachers of the practice claim that this interconnectedness fosters love and compassion while assisting in mental balance.
Vipassana is traditionally taught over the length of a 10-day course, during which students are required to refrain from many things.
Transcendental meditation
Transcendental meditation may sound lofty, but it's a simple technique: You decide on a mantra—a word, a sentence, or a sound—and recite it twice daily for 20 minutes. You should perform this while sitting and with your eyes closed.
By meditating in this manner, you can experience a sense of peace and calm as your body and mind are completely relaxed.
Mindfulness meditation
This is the process of being focused, interested, and openly present with everything you are experiencing at any one time, including your body and your thoughts. Paying attention to our present-moment experiences with curiosity, openness, and a readiness to be inexperienced could be considered practising mindfulness.
It enables us to live more in the now and avoid staying stuck in the past or the future. A body scan is a frequent way to start a mindfulness meditation practice. This entails scanning your entire body, from head to toe (or vice versa), to become aware of any pain, tightness, or other unusual sensations you encounter and to observe them objectively.
Meditative Meditation
This includes certain varieties of yoga and dance and the ancient Chinese arts of qigong and tai chi. The term meditative movement generally refers to exercise that is performed while paying attention to your body.
Even though they are not considered to be types of meditation, certain activities like jogging, walking, or painting can cause many people to enter a state of meditation.
Benefits of meditation
For many people, meditation can help with emotional regulation and improve memory, attention, and mood. A meditation practice may also aid in controlling difficult emotions like anger.
Some of the major benefits of stress include
1. Enhances self-awareness
2. Promotes emotional health
3. Controls Anxiety
4. Lengthens attention span
5. Reduce age-related memory loss
6. Generate kindness
7. Get rid of addictions
8. Improves sleep
Causes of stress
We tend to understand the issue we're dealing with and what's worrying us out, which is why stress frequently arises from it. However, worry is a visceral emotion that can linger and is frequently accompanied by a mystery. Although the words are frequently used interchangeably, the two states are very distinct.
Understanding the function of the amygdala, which are two almond-sized processing chips in the brain that controls our perceptions, judgments, and emotions, is important in understanding why we feel stressed.
The amygdala functions as our emotional thermostat, controlling how we respond to stress and anxiety. Depending on the gravity of the danger it perceives, it either maintains a cool and collected state, cranks up as it should in response to everyday stressors, or may overheat when we are overstimulated, which causes us to become irrational and reactive.
Regarding evolution, the amygdala has always been a valuable tool for warning us of potentially fatal situations and invoking our fight or flight reaction, such as an approaching wild animal.
However, it has been trained to respond similarly to common sources of stress in contemporary times, so an impending deadline may start to feel just as threatening as a ravenous wolf.
Managing stress with meditation
Stress management is the goal of meditation, not its elimination. That largely comes down to how we view stress. We can lessen the effects on our emotional and physical health by changing our mindset.
Stress frequently receives a poor rap, which may not be entirely fair. Consider where we might be if we didn't have the distress signal that prompts us to run away from peril. Or if we weren't under any time constraints to complete an assignment or our homework.
Some people excel in high-stress occupations, feeling in full control in the fast lane and completely stressed out in the slow lane. Thus, the levels of tension can differ significantly from person to person. Even positive events that are for the best will cause stress. There's no avoiding it.
The degree of distress we associate with a particular incident depends on how we evaluate stressful circumstances. But by viewing this through the prism of mindfulness, we can soften our perception of worry and adopt a more accepting attitude towards it.
Try to refrain from assigning negative labels the next time you experience a stress reaction in a good situation. Consider it as something strong and energising that will better equip us to handle life's difficulties.
Simple meditation practice for beginners
- You could try this easy and simple meditation to manage your stress.
- Find a peaceful area first, then get into a comfortable position. You might want to sit cross-legged, lie down, or sit up straight with your feet on the floor.
- If you like, close your eyes and put your hands somewhere cosy to rest them, like by your sides or on your knees.
- Keep an eye on your breathing. Pay attention to your inhales and exhales.
- As you breathe, pay attention to how your chest and abdomen move up and down or in and out.
- Pick one component of your breathing to pay attention to. A few examples are your abdomen, chest, or the air entering and leaving your nostrils. Avoid criticising yourself and just listen to the sounds around you and concentrate on one of them if you are having problems doing this.
- Keep focusing on the area or sound you have selected.
- Remember that it's normal for your mind to occasionally stray and attempt to bring it back to whatever it was you were concentrating on.
- Continue until the five minutes have passed.
Summary
Meditation could be part of the modern-day wellness lexicon, but the truth is that meditation has been around for millennia. Although we cannot completely eradicate stress, we can learn to reframe our perception of it through meditation and develop more accepting attitudes towards it.
