MEDITATION

Benefits of Meditation

Because practicing meditation helps you to slow your breath, quiet your mind, and find peace, it can be beneficial physically, mentally, and emotionally. Meditation is now commonly used to supplement the treatment for trauma responses, mental health disorders, addiction, and everyday stress, as well as to heal physical ailments and promote better sleep.

Physical Benefits

1. Stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system, or the branch of your peripheral nervous system that helps your body return to a calm, relaxed state after the perceived threat of danger or daily stress has passed. When this branch is activated, your body can naturally rejuvenate, repair, and rebuild itself.
2. Clears your mind for better quality sleep.
3. Improves athletic performance by refining your ability to focus on a goal or situation (another term for meditation used in this way is visualization).
4. Slows your respiration for longer, deeper breaths.
5. Boosts your immune system by slowing the production of the stress hormone cortisol.

Mental and Emotional Benefits

1. Allows you to make better decisions and improve critical thinking by increasing oxygen into your body and brain.
2. Breaks unhealthy habits by helping you detach emotions associated with an action from the action itself.
3. Improves communication with yourself. When you better understand your thought processes, you have more control over what you think.
4. Helps you stay in the present moment (known as Mindfulness). When you let go of focusing on the past and/or the future, you live 100 percent in the now, which affects all aspects of your life and relationships.