How does meditation work?

When people hear word meditation most of them consider meditation as a worship or prayer. But they could not be more wrong. The word meditation take its roots in two Latin words: meditari(to think) and mederi (to heal).

 Meditation could be defined as a self-directed practice for relaxing the body and the mind. But we could say that it work with the mind and have its effects on both, body and mind. The purpose of meditation is to make our bodies transcend the real world and connect with the non-physical world. That is possible when all the activity of the mind is reduced to one. And what you should definitely memorize is the sentence that meditation is a state of awareness.

Most meditative techniques originally have come from East and to West through eastern religions. Meditation is mostly practiced in religions from India, China and Japan, but you could find some kind of meditation in many different religions through the world. In the beginning, purpose of meditation was mostly religious but when people noticed benefits on health and reducing stress it also became a non- religious matter.

 

 
Why you should meditate?

These are some of the main reasons why you should meditate:

1. To improve your concentration - clear mind makes you feel better and makes you productive.
2. Less bothered by meaningless things – our mind frequently magnify small things into serious problems. Meditation here can help. Through meditation we learn how to see a bigger picture and how to divide important thing from those which are not.
3. Better Health – meditation reduces stress levels and alleviates anxiety. It is more than obvious that life without stress and anxiety is much more quality and also healthier.
4. Knowledge of Yourself –meditation enables you better knowing of your inner force and shows you how to use it better.

Generally meditation can be grouped in two main groups:

1.      Concentrative meditation and

2.      Mindfulness meditation.

 

Focuses our thoughts on breathing or on some particular image or even sound (mantra).This allows us to be aware and focus our attention on just one thing. This process can be explained like zoom lens in camera, we focus our awareness on selected field.

This way of meditation looks like this: find peaceful place and sit quietly and focus on breathing. Many people believe that there is a big correlation between your state of the mind and between your breathing. When we are anxious or nervous our breathing is shallow, rapid and when we are calm and peaceful our breathing is deep and regular. Considering this link between mind and body your meditation can lead to deep breathing and that makes your body tranquil and peaceful.

The one who meditates sits still in quiet environment and just let the mind do whatever it goes through without any involving. That means no thoughts, feelings, images. This can lead you to calm mind that does not react at any way. In concentrative meditation your awareness is focused on selected object but in mindfulness meditation you will be aware of the whole area.

 

The first thing you should know when talking about how meditation works is the fact that meditation works differently with everyone .But generally we could say that meditation is like resting. When you work hard physically your body need to take a break. Same thing is with mind. During the day your mind is receiving different kind of information like smells, sounds, feelings and it is more than obvious that it needs to get some rest. Sleep can rest your mind and its main goal is to do that. But sometimes we are so stressed that our mind can not completely rest even when sleep. That is the moment when meditation can help us. Meditation is going right into the difficult, stressed or unpleasant mind areas and it’s not trying to find solution to these problems but to change the attitude to them. People who practice meditation have the fall in metabolic rate right after start meditation. Proof for this is huge drop in level of oxygen used; this oxygen consumption can fell up to twenty percent below normal. These people take one litre air less in one minute and their heart beats are less than normal. Blood pressure is also lower. Meditation decrease nervous system activity.

 

 

If you have something that we call normal life than for sure you know what word stress means and how stress looks like. Stress is a natural way that our body copes with things that occur in our environment. It is not so bad if it lasts for sort period of time, but if you are mostly stressed than you could have dangerous health issues. Everyone should learn how to reduce stress and real blessing is meditation. But you have to learn how to meditate.

1. Making an atmosphere
Making a peaceful atmosphere is the most important part of your meditation process. You should do whatever it takes to make the quietest place possible (make sure your phone is off), if you want you could turn down the lights or find yourself some calming music. Choose the music that makes you peaceful.

2. Preparing your accessories
While you are creating quiet atmosphere you have to find certain accessories for better meditation. It’s not obligate to have it, but many people said that it can be very helpful. For example yoga mats are great accessories for meditation. Or you can find anything that is easy to sit on for you. Because the most important thing while practicing meditation is to feel calm and comfortable. If some certain things make you feel like that you should definitely have it right next to you. Many people find the sound of running water calming, or they have candles to make the environment as peaceful as possible.

3. Wear Comfortable
Wear comfortable clothes because you have to feel comfortable. There are people who feel comfortable when naked, so if you are one of them just go for it. Take off your clothe and start practicing meditation.

 

Benefits of meditation

 The most common benefits are:

-increase in patience

-enjoying in life and feelin calm and peaceful

-becoming more sensitive to certain forms of lighting (fluorescent)

-dealing with repressed memories

There is a chart that shows certain benefits of meditation:

Deep relaxation	Inner calm	Solving problems	Developing insight
Better concentration	Releasing anger	Easing stress, grief, and fear	Accessing creative potential
Healing	Better breathing	Inner guidance	Contacting Higher Forces

Many studies showed that meditation has great health benefits. It can help decrease stress-related problems, like chronic pain, anxiety, PMS, sleeping problems, headaches. For example, 20 of 22 volunteers participate in a study of anxiety and it showed remarkable improvement after having an eight weeks class in meditation. Also it showed certain improvement in patients that have painful headaches. We will describe some health conditions that are benefited by meditation:

Drug Addiction

Meditation has proven to be a successful strategy in treating drug addiction, acting on  psycho-neuro-immunology (PNI).It affect on immune system, and it definitely decrease stress and pain level.

Stress Control

People mostly decide to practice meditation because of its beneficial on stress. We get stressed on daily bases from family, work, illness and this constant stress can lead to anxiety, hypertension, and heart disease. How we cope with the stress is the way of how stress can affect on our health. Reduction of stress directly reduces anxiety and tension.

 

Pain Control

There are a huge number of people who suffer from chronic pain which can make your quality of life very low. Traditional medicine has different ways of treating chronic pain, but it is often more complicated than prescribing medication. There are studies that showed that people with chronic pain achieved at 33 percent reduction after having eight weeks of meditation. Also well known example that one kind of meditation can decrease pain level is deep breathing exercises to minimize the pain of labor.

It’s more than obvious that when you feel less anxious and nervous you are more in control. And that is how you can deal with repressed memories. Memories on any kind of traumas can suddenly take your awareness and can make you temporary anxious until you deal with these traumas. Meditation is a tool of mind control and can help you find. Many studies have shown that people who practice meditationare more self confident and more connected with other people. And that is just the right way to cope with depression. And it’s also good prevention.

When talking about meditation nothing is too much and nothing is too less. There are some religious monks and nuns whose whole life is meditation. On the other hand we have those one-minute meditations which also can help. But twenty or thirty minutes is mostly accepted as time that should be spent on meditation. Important thing to point out is individuality of meditation. That means that every person who practice mediation will do the sessions as frequently as needed and in duration that is the most suitable for them.