Meditation is a form a relaxation that helps you “de-concentrate” your thoughts. Instead of focusing on twenty different things that you have to do, meditation encourages a thoughtless state of mind. Simply being in a thought-free state of mind can yield major benefits. Check out the infographic from The Art of Living on the benefits of meditating.
There is a lot that can come from the practice of being still, controlling your thoughts and meditating! If the benefits above don’t convince you to start meditating, we are sharing 7 reasons why you need to start meditating on a consistent basis!
#1: It’s Free
One of the best reasons to start meditating immediately is that it costs you nothing! Why not take 10-15 minutes out of your day to just mentally check-out? If it really does provide all of the benefits shown above, and it costs nothing, you’d be silly not to at least give it a try.
#2: It Helps Brain Functionality
Enhanced brain functionality leads to creativity, and ultimately success! A recent Harvard Medical School study found that meditation helps alter your brain waves, which helps increase your brain’s functionality.
#3: It Helps Reduce Stress
It’s hard to stay positive all the time. When life throws us curveballs, the natural reaction is to over-think and stress out about them. Meditation helps reduce stress because it allows you to take yourself out of the negative situation by ending all thoughts. When your thoughts aren’t drowning in negativity, it’s easier to see that you can get through it.
#4: It’s Been Proven to Prevent Over-eating
This reason to meditate may be just as good (if not better) than meditation being free! According to Mindful.org, “researchers at UC San Francisco studied a group of women to test if meditating could prevent overeating.
The scientists didn’t prescribe any diet, but instead taught mindful eating, and had participants meditate for thirty minutes a day. What happened? The treatment participants maintained their weights, plus lowered their cortisol levels. Higher reductions in cortisol and stress also showed higher reductions in abdominal fat.”
#5: It Increases Happiness
When you stress less, you are happy more. Meditating actually increases the thickness of your prefrontal cortex, the area of your brain associated with self-awareness and attention to detail. When you improve this area, you become more aware of yourself and less focused on the outside things that you can’t control.
#6: It Promotes Gratitude
Meditation allows you to become mindful of where you are and what you are doing. When you take the time to focus on that, you stop worrying about where you’ve come from and where you still need to go. Meditating helps you appreciate life and forces you to live in the present – which is the only time we can control.
#7: It Helps you Sleep
If it’s hard for you to sleep at night, or you suffer from insomnia, meditation may help. During a study of sufferers of chronic insomnia, after eight weeks, it was determined that those in the meditation training had less total wake time during the night, were more relaxed before going to bed, and reduced the severity of their sleep problems.
Meditation is wonderful for all sorts of reasons, and we hope this article inspired you to check-out of your own thoughts for a little bit! Do you meditate? What benefits do you get from meditating? We want to hear your experiences with meditation, so post a reply comment below to share!
