The medical profession has fallen in love with meditation. Study after study points to new and important ways the practice can aid the human mind and body. Daily sessions that include focusing the mind, attending to bodily sensations and calming ongoing thoughts can lead to dozens of beneficial emotional, mental and physical results, including the following:
Improved Mental Health
Meditating regularly is one of the best ways to prevent and deal with anxiety, mental health professionals say. You can get behavioral treatment from a counselor that specializes in teaching effective techniques. How does calming the mind enhance the health of your emotional and psychological side?
For one thing, being able to cease negative thoughts is a starting point for many types of depression and anxiety treatment. In addition, if you meditate daily, it’s possible to reduce stress to manageable levels and enhance your ability to pay attention throughout the day. That’s good news for people who have trouble with auditory hallucinations, lack of focus and schizophrenia.
Fights Age-Related Memory Problems
It’s common for older people to suffer a certain amount of memory loss as the brain ages. Long-term studies of people who spend about a half-hour per day in deep contemplation and mind-calming exercises were much less likely to suffer from routine age-related memory decline. Some experts believe that meditative activity is a way of cleansing the brain of certain substances that lead to dementia-like symptoms.
Can Help Eliminate Addictions
Large-scale research projects have demonstrated that people who meditate regularly are better able to fight against addictions to alcohol and drugs. There’s even some evidence that points to the practice’s ability to alleviate withdrawal symptoms in long-term addicts who try to stop all at once. No one is sure exactly why it works, but it appears that people who sit in contemplation for short sessions every day develop a stronger will and thus can better resist cravings to drink or use drugs.
About one-third of all adults have occasional trouble falling to sleep. Those who engage in regular meditation, however, have a much better chance of sleeping deeply and soundly each night. That’s because meditating is a way to train the mind to shut off, shut down and fully relax. It’s possible that contemplative practices are actually re-training the human brain to do what it was designed to do, which is close up shop for eight hours at a time.
Help People Deal with Chronic Pain
People who suffer from chronic pain fight a constant battle against depression, sleeplessness, anxiety and other challenges. In many cases, drug therapy either doesn’t work at all or loses its effectiveness over time. One bright spot in this area of research is meditation. The activity appears to be able to switch off certain pain receptors in the brain and give temporary relief to sufferers of chronic pain. Some of the most active research on contemplative brain training is in the area of pain, especially focusing on ways to halt debilitating pain.