Benefits of Meditation

Many of our yoga students are interested in both yoga and meditation. These are practices that often go hand in hand, and for many they are an inseparable couple. In this blog post, we want to share a few thoughts on what meditation is and how we can benefit from having a regular meditation practice.

Foundations for Meditation

There are multiple different types of meditation and ways to practice. Some common elements are:

• Practising in quiet surroundings and minimising external distractions
• A specific posture or movement that supports the mental practice (sitting, lying down, walking etc.)
• Focus of attention (object, breath, word, mantra etc.)
• Open, non-judging attitude (allowing thoughts and distractions come and go without judgement or attachment)

If you’re familiar with yoga, you might find all these elements existing in your yoga practice too. This is why it’s sometimes difficult to draw a line where yoga ends and meditation begins, and vice versa. To us, these practices can happily co-exist and intertwine. Meditation can be part of our yoga practice.

Benefits of meditation

Just like regular yoga practice, meditation offers great health benefits when practised regularly. Research around mediation and mindfulness practices is still quite young but the current findings are promising.

Research studies suggest that:

• Meditation may slow down or reverse the effects of ageing on brain
• Meditation may reduce experienced pain (mixed results)
• Meditation may improve our ability to pay attention and solve problems, and reduce ‘mind-wandering’
• Meditation may lessen rumination about ourselves and the world around us
• Meditation may help us be less reactive to stressors and recover faster when we encounter stressors
• Meditation may increase positive feelings, such as love and empathy towards others

Interestingly, some studies show that with practice we can induce trait-like changes, meaning that we’re creating positive, long-lasting changes in who we are and how we behave through meditation.

It is, of course, important to remember that we’re all different individuals and not all forms of meditation suit everyone. If you don’t find comfort in seated meditation, maybe you can get the same benefits from your yoga practice – a moving meditation!

We close with an old Zen saying;

“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day — unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour.”

Sources:

www.nccih.nih.gov

www.mindful.org

Photo credit:

1st picture – Hilltop Wellness Resort

2nd picture – Pixabay at pexels.com