7 Very Important Reasons to Meditate

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All day long our mind spins stories about our work, our health, our finances, our family, or that funny look the store clerk gave us. Often we’re not even conscious of the internal soundtrack unspooling in our mind and yet it is the greatest source of stress in our lives. Although the mind is capable of creating life-affirming stories, it has what neuroscientists refer to as a negativity bias, a tendency to pay more attention to negative experiences than to positive ones.
The negativity bias evolved as a survival instinct millions of years ago, as our ancestors focused much more attention on avoiding potential threats than on rewards. Stopping to savor a delicious meal or admire a Paleolithic sunset would have used valuable attentional resources, leaving our ancient ancestors more vulnerable to attack by a predator. Those who survived to pass on their genes paid a lot of attention to danger. The legacy for our ancestors has left us with genes passed on to pay a lot of attention to danger.  Our brain is primed to focus on negative experiences and has a tendency to get stuck in conditioned patterns of thinking, returning again and again to thoughts of anxiety, depression, and limitation.

Meditation has Healing Benefits
Meditation is one of the best tools we have to counter the brain’s negativity bias, release accumulated stress, foster positive experiences and intentions, and enjoy the peace of present moment awareness. A large body of research has established that having a regular meditation practice produces tangible benefits for mental and physical health, including:
• Decreased blood pressure and hypertension
• Lowered cholesterol levels
• Reduced production of “stress hormones,” including cortisol and adrenaline
• More efficient oxygen use by the body
• Increased production of the anti-aging hormone DHEA
• Improved immune function
• Decreased anxiety, depression, and insomnia

Meditation Reduces Stress
Chronic, unmanaged stress can make you sick and accelerate aging. Scientific studies have found that prolonged stress can contribute to high blood pressure, heart disease, stomach ulcers, autoimmune diseases, anxiety, cancer, insomnia, chronic fatigue, obesity, depression, and accelerated aging.
In meditation, your body releases stress and reverses the effects of the flight-or-fight response—that ancient instinct we all have to either run from perceived danger or take it on in battle. Intended as a short-term protection mechanism, fight or flight causes our body to speed up our heart rate, increase our blood sugar, suppress our immune system, reduce insulin production, pump out stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, and reduce the blood supply to our digestive organs. All of these reactions happen so that our body can focus on either running away as fast as it can—or staying to fight.  Many of us live in a prolonged state of fight or flight, generating stress in response to bad traffic, criticism from a spouse, or a disagreement.
Regular meditation dissipates accumulated stress and cultivates a state of restful alertness.

Meditation Enhances Your Concentration, Memory, and Ability to Learn
Meditation can help your brain to focus, learn, and adapt.   The brain has a quality known as plasticity, enabling it to grow new neurons and transform throughout our lives. Meditation is a powerful tool for awakening new neural connections and even transforming regions of the brain.  Recent studies have shown that after only eight weeks of meditation,participants  experienced beneficial growth in the brain areas associated with memory, learning, empathy, self-awareness, and stress regulation (the insula, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex). In addition, the meditators reported decreased feelings of anxiety and greater feelings of calm. This study adds to the expanding body of research about the brain’s amazing plasticity and ability to change habitual stress patterns.
Many other studies have proved that meditation helps improve our ability to stay focused in a world filled with increasing distractions and demands on our attention.

Meditation Helps You Create More Loving and Harmonious Relationships
When you’re feeling balanced and centered, it’s much easier to respond with awareness rather than react  or say something that creates toxicity in your relationships. Meditation cultivates equanimity and compassion, allowing you to be present with a loved one, client or co-worker and really listen to what they are saying and what they may need.
As you meditate on a regular basis, you develop what is known as “witnessing awareness”—the ability to calmly and objectively observe a situation, notice when you are being triggered, and consciously choose how you want to respond. The ability to be present and aware is extremely valuable in every relationship.

Meditation Improves Your Creativity and Problem-Solving Skills
We each have an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day—unfortunately, many of them are the same thoughts we had yesterday, last week, and last year. The mind tends to get stuck in repetitive thought loops that squeeze out the possibility for new ideas and inspiration. Meditation is a powerful practice for going beyond habitual, conditioned thought patterns into a state of expanded awareness. We connect to what is known as the field of infinite possibilities or pure potentiality, and we open to new insights, intuition, and ideas.
This state is described as “being in the flow,” in other words, being in the right place at the right time, or a state of grace. Time seems to stand still and instead of struggling and trying to force things to happen, everything you need comes naturally to you. You do less and accomplish more. You aren’t burdened by the past or worried about the future; you’re flowing in the ever present eternal now. This higher state of consciousness is the birthplace of all creativity. The mind is in an open, receptive state and is able to receive flashes of insight and fresh perspectives.

Meditation Decreases Anxiety, Depression, and Insomnia
The emotional effects of sitting quietly and going within are profound. The deep state of rest produced by meditation triggers the brain to release neurotransmitters, including dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. Each of these naturally occurring brain chemicals has been linked to different aspects of happiness:
• Dopamine plays a key role in the brain’s ability to experience pleasure, feel rewarded, and maintain focus.
• Serotonin has a calming effect. It eases tension and helps us feel less stressed and more relaxed and focused. Low levels of this neurotransmitter have been linked to migraines, anxiety, bipolar disorder, apathy, feelings of worthlessness, fatigue, and insomnia.
• Oxytocin (the same chemical whose levels rise during sexual arousal and breastfeeding), is a pleasure hormone. It creates feelings of calm, contentment, and security, while reducing fear and anxiety.
• Endorphins are neurotransmitters that play many roles related to wellbeing, including decreasing feelings of pain and reducing the side effects of stress.
Meditation causes the release of these neurotransmitters without side effects. Meditation and mindfulness alleviates depression, anxiety, and other mood-related disorders.  Meditation will help people to be less depressed, anxious, and stressed, while also experiencing greater compassion and awareness of others’ feelings.
Meditation also can benefit people suffering from chronic pain, potentially decreasing or eliminating the need for medication.

Meditation Enhances Happiness
The greatest gift of meditation is the sense of calm and inner peace it brings into your daily life. When you meditate, you go beyond the mind’s noisy chatter into an entirely different place: the silence of a mind that is not imprisoned by the past or the future. This is important because silence is the birthplace of happiness.
Silence is where we get our bursts of inspiration, our tender feelings of compassion and empathy, and our sense of love.  When you discover the silence in your mind, you no longer have to pay undue attention to all the random images that trigger worry, anger, and pain. When you meditate on a regular basis, all of your thoughts, actions, and reactions are infused with a little more love and mindful attention. The result is a deeper appreciation and a profound awareness of the divine quality of existence.

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Kahren Young

Kahren's passion for Health & Wellness motivated her to found Forever Natural Wellness to share advise, tips, products and more with people who want to follow a healthy lifestyle, full of joy and happiness and who want to accomplish everything they want in life. Live Healthy & Be Happy!

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