Partaking in the survival loop of modern world, which primarily includes long working hours, stressful lifestyle and difficult competitive society, attaining mental peace has become more obsolete. Calm and serenity are blessings that come to a person very occasionally, increasing the need for it even more.

There is a wide veracity in the forms of meditation. The most used methods of meditation are Guided Imagery, Progressive Muscle Relaxation, Hypnosis, Mindfulness Meditation and Focused breathing. But the common thread between all of them is to attain inner peace and relaxation through focusing on one’s mind for a time period. All types of meditating activities combine four elements: Open attitude, focusing attention, comfortable posture and a quiet location. These therapies are easy to perform and can be performed by anyone.

Some people believe that practicing meditation activity in a group can be more beneficial and better rewarding. Through years of research, it has been proven that meditation can give you a state of mind that nothing else could. Meditating can help in various ways, some of them are listed as below

1. Regulating negative thoughts and anxiety

Meditation can help control and streamline emotions like anger, fear, anxiety. It can decrease the effect of such emotions as well as the peak of it. There have been studies where sets of people who practice meditation and who don’t, were asked to relieve moments where they felt anger or fear. The results showed that people who didn’t practice meditation depicted more fluctuations in heart rates, blood pressure and breathing rate as compared to meditation practitioners. Meditation helped them tackle emotions in a calmer way.

2. Reduce depression and stress

Mindful meditation can help bring peace to a person. Depression and stress is at an all-time high in today’s generation. Meditation can act as a medication for such people. Religious meditation for same period each day can be most effective for such mental issues. Studies show that stress can bring in various diseases like allergies and even decrease immunity.Dealing with stress can help improve not only mental health but also physical health of a person.

3. Better concentration and focus

Meditation, besides healing, also strengthens the mind muscles. It transcends the problem of distracted mind and lack of focus. With meditation, it has been seen that a person is able to concentrate on what he is doing for a longer duration of time. This helps get the work completed at a faster rate and in a better-quality manner, thus making the person more satisfied. This in turn not only improves the overall happiness for one but also strengthens his mind.

4. Better understanding of oneself

Meditation has the power to reach corners of our conscience that we never knew existed. It can help one reflect internally and can offer new approach to life. It heals wounds that time never could. One can feel energy seep into the sub conscious mind. Regular meditation can answer questions about oneself and help discover one’s true amazing potential.

5. Improved brain functioning

Left side, frontal brain activity which is responsible for the positive mood swing in a person is improved through meditation. Interestingly enough, this increase in left brain activity also strengthens the immune system. With a regular meditating activity, immune system is obliged to improve and remain consistent.

With a longer religious following of meditation, scientists have noticed that the grey matter in the right orbital-frontal cortex increases. This area of the brain is responsible for regulating emotions. With a stable mental health, a person is more likely to be happier.

Meditation also affects ageing. With age, our cortex usually undergoes thinning resulting into dementia. Meditation helps keep the thickness of cortex over a longer life span, thus preventing early onset of age-related mental issues.

People who are exposed to incidents of stress and fear have denser layer of amygdala. Amygdala is responsible and an integral part of the brain which processes emotions like fear and stress and anxiety.Meditation also helps in reducing the density of amygdala.

6. Increased brain ability to process

With numerous studies conducted, it has been shown that people who practice meditation regularly have more folds in the outer layer of the brain. This process is called gyrification. It has been proved that with gyrification, a person’s ability to process information increases exponentially.

7. Reduce pain

There have been multiple studies to understand how meditation affects a person’s ability to resist and tolerate pain. The results have been mixed. However, some of these studies show that with mindful meditation, the brain reduces its dependency on naturally occurring opiates to control pain. Yoga and meditation have many benefits. They manage and heal chronic pain. This shows that meditation can become a substitute, to a certain extent, for pain medications.

8. Improved sleep pattern

A sound and consistent sleep is essential to avoid irritation. Cleansing and rebuilding of our body happens during the sleep cycle. With a disturbed sleep cycle, all kind of negative emotions creep in and affect the daily routine. Meditation has proven to improve sleep pattern as well as the quality of sleep, giving the body exactly the amount of sleep that it needs.

It is always better to have a healthy lifestyle than stepping into the dire need of medications. Mental health is aggressively improved through meditation but there are other practices that one can follow for our overall well bring.

With so many benefits of meditation, clinicians have started recommending meditation for patients suffering from pain, stress, depression, anxiety, bowel irritation, blood pressure, lack of focus amongst many other.

What is important to note is that with so many vivid benefits of meditation, there isn’t any side effect or adverse effect of meditation on human health. It has the power to affect all parts of the human body from brain to the bowel movement. With every better functioning organ, the mental satisfaction, happiness and health of a person improves. Mental health is extremely important to retain, especially in the kind of society where we live in.