The Benefits of Meditation: What Science Says

Mindfulness practices are getting more popular with each year. If you are new to them, you might ask: but why should I practice with them? The answer is simple: the benefits of meditation are numerous! They include reduced stress and anxiety, increased self awareness and even physical conditions like decreased blood pressure!

Understanding Meditation and Its Appeal

The popularity of meditation is increasing with each year. And no wonder, as it offers numerous benefits that improve the quality of our everyday life. You can use it as a way to reduce stress, anxiety, train your attention and develop healthy habits.

Some studies even suggest that meditation helps fight addictions. For example: one study established that practicing transcendental meditation during alcohol use disorder treatment was associated with better outcomes.

Here I listed 7 main benefits of meditation. Feel free to add some more!

1. Meditation: Reducing Stress and Anxieties

One of the most popular meditation profits is stress reduction. That stress might be induced by many things: work, generalized anxieties, everyday life struggles, relationships etc. Under stressful situations, our body produces cortisol.

And while cortisol might be helpful, long elevated levels of that hormone lead to impaired learning, weakens the immune system, reduces bone formation (which may lead to osteoporosis), and many more.

That’s why it’s important to manage stress!

Meditation which focuses on calming the mind, identifying emotions and feelings reduces stress and anxieties. It might be incorporated into everyday mindfulness habits, treated as a part of therapy, or both at the same time.

Mindfulness practice was found to be effective in treating anxieties, tackling stress and appears to be fruitful for PTSD and depression symptoms.

2. Tool to Train Self-Awareness

Mindfulness practices are also a great way to develop a stronger connection with your inner self. Thus, you might better understand what you are actually feeling at the present moment. It is also a way to identify intrusive thoughts or harmful beliefs.

Meditation profits include:

• Reduced feeling of loneliness and increased social contact (as suggested here);
• Better understanding of your own feelings;
• Achieving a stage of relaxation that allows you to reach a state of awareness without thought (check it out here!).

3. Improved Cognition and Attention Span

This one is probably the one that brought my attention (pun intended!) to mindfulness practices. It usually takes some time to notice improved cognition and attention span. However, that benefit of meditation helps in literally every aspect of your everyday life.

You struggle with looking too much into your mobile? Can’t focus on work and prefer to watch reels? Or maybe you can’t read more than 2 pages of a book?

This is exactly where meditation comes in. Study showed that meditators show better attention while being under distractor. Moreover: short mindfulness work improves attention better than a rest-time.

And if you worry that you need years to notice effects: you don’t! This study suggests that even 4 days of meditation training can enhance the ability to sustain attention.

4. Improve Your Sleep with Mindfulness

Another great benefit of meditation is a better sleep schedule. One study shows that meditation might be a viable treatment option for people with chronic insomnia.

But does that mean that you have to be diagnosed with that illness? Absolutely not.

A lot of meditation techniques help you relax your body and at the same time contain racing thoughts. The more you practice, the easier it gets. Thanks to that, you have an easier time placing yourself in that peaceful state right before you sleep.

As a result: it shortens the time that it takes you to fall asleep and increases sleep quality.

5. Meditation Profit: Promoting Emotional Health

In today’s fast-paced world, we often forget about taking care of our emotional health. One of the benefits of mindfulness is the fact that it helps you to check your emotions and feelings. And you don’t need any fancy techniques!

Meta-analytic review proved that love-kindness meditation can enhance positive emotions in daily life. What’s more: ongoing practice provides short-term positive emotions.

This study showed another meditation profit: brief mindfulness practice improves emotion processing, such as:

• Emotion intensity;
• Emotional memory;
• Emotional attention bias.

6. Mindfulness and Pain Control: Exploring Connection

We often think about pain as something that comes straight from our body. But it’s not true. While the body receives stimulus, processing that information is connected to your brain. Thus, your perception of pain might be more severe if you are:

• Under heavy stress or anxiety;
• Influenced by fear;
• Unsure of your own feelings, emotions.

And as you already know: meditation can tackle all those problems!

There are studies that prove (like this one or that one) mindfulness practices can decrease the intensity of chronic pain. Of course, that is not to say that it is a substitute for traditional therapy.

However, it can be treated as an effective supplement that completes the whole treatment.

7. Improved Physical Health and Condition

As for now, I focused mostly on mental health, but did you know that mindfulness practices also improves physical health?

For example, meditation profits include:

• Decreased blood pressure;
• Beneficial effects on autonomic reflexes;
• Enhancement in insulin resistance;
• Possibly reduced cardiovascular risk in middle-aged people.

However, I must emphasize one thing: though benefits of meditation on physical health are numerous, it is NOT to replace therapy. Don’t listen to people who claim that you can cure diabetes with 10 minutes of mindfulness every day.

Always consult your trusted physician, therapist, psychologist etc. when in doubt.

The Benefits of Meditation: Forging Your Own Path

I’ve listed the benefits of meditation, with studies that support its advantages. They will improve your life in many fields. Maybe even after your first week of mindfulness practices. Reduced stress, anxieties, fears, better attention span, cognition, and even decreased blood pressure.

However, it is important not to rely solely on my words. So here, in the end, I want to ask you: find your own meditation profits that suit you best.

Maybe that is something from my list?

2–3 things from it?

Or maybe something else entirely that I didn’t even think about?

I don’t know that! The only person who will know is YOU. So have fun on your spiritual-mindfulness journey and hop on your own adventure!