Meditation As Medication Medication Meditation
Take a deep breath…
Inhale deeply and really feel the air filling your lungs, expanding your abdomen…
Let your exhale be relaxed and slow…
How did that feel? If you noticed your shoulders dropping or your face muscles releasing, you’ve already began to reap the fruits of meditation.
We all know that sitting down, being silent, and breathing deeply can calm the mind. Nonetheless, investigation shows that meditation can also powerfully improve physical health. In a West Virginia University study on “mindfulness” – the meditative practice of bringing attention to the present moment – participants experienced an average 54 percent drop in psychological distress, and a 46 percent decrease in medical symptoms. Meditation can increase blood flow, slow heart rate, normalize blood pressure, boost sleep, and increase immunity. It is even been shown to boost serotonin levels (which relieve depression), and to slow the progression of HIV. How is this probable? What specifically is happening in a body that meditates?
In meditation, healthy breathing is both a indicates and an end.
A lot of of us hold our breath or breathe shallowly when we’re stressed. Breath-holding deprives us of oxygen, a key player in the body’s production of ATP energy – the fuel we require to function in daily life. With out sufficient oxygen, we physically can’t create energy.
Breathing also feeds our muscles and clears out carbon dioxide. Basically by resting our awareness on breathing, a meditator can regulate and slow the respiratory rate and give cells a plentiful supply of the air they will need. As it calms the body and mind, meditation helps de-activate the sympathetic, “fight or flight” nervous system. The sympathetic mode is triggered by danger or stress. It doesn’t care if we’re becoming chased by a tiger or rushing to meet a deadline it literally gets us prepared to run. It pumps out adrenaline, speeds heart rate and breathing, raises blood pressure, and shuts down digestion and reproduction.
Since of our stress, a lot of of us are stuck in perpetual fight-or-flight overdrive – producing ourselves candidates for adrenal exhaustion, insomnia, infertility, stroke, and heart attack.
Meditation gives us a break from stress and makes it possible for the parasympathetic, “rest and digest” program to take its turn. Meditation also has the power to alter brain chemistry. Neuroscientist Richard Davidson conducted brain scan tests on Tibetan monks who had been long-term meditators, and discovered “unusually effective gamma waves” connected with greater levels of focus, memory and understanding capability. “Longtime practitioners (of meditation) showed brain activation on a scale we have never seen before,” said Davidson, who detected a high level of activity in the monks’ left prefrontal cortex – the brain region related with happiness and positive emotions. “Their mental practice is having an impact on the brain in the very same way golf or tennis practice will improve performance… the trained mind, or brain, is physically different from the untrained 1.
Meditation shines a light on the body and its sensations.
“The objective of mindfulness is for you to be far more conscious, much more in touch with life and whatever is happening in your own body and mind at the time it is happening – that is, the present moment,” explains psychologist Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the Tension Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center. Meditators are a lot more most likely to notice what’s happening in their bodies and far more aware of illness as soon as it appears. Over time, meditation also assists to ease the fears and anxieties that tend to feed on illness, so a meditator might be able to manage illness and aging with far more stability and calm. Regardless of whether our meditation rests on awareness of breathing, yogic movement, or visualizations of golden light, we are creating an investment in our physical well-being. So take another deep breath. Consider it a deposit into your lengthy-term well being savings!
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