I’ve been meditating for more than three decades. I’m not a marathoner but rather a daily sprinter. Most days, I have butt in the chair for 17 minutes, an arbitrary number that evolved over time. As I recall, twenty minutes felt too long and fifteen too short 🤷.
I discovered meditation when my kids were small. As a young mom juggling all the things who barely had time to pee and was definitely never alone, I was a bit resistant.
I went to a yoga class with a friend who was nursing a broken heart and looking for a soft place to land. The instructor suggested meditation and gave a little impromptu class on how to do it.
When I tried, my very busy mind became loud. My grocery list popped into my mind, and my ‘to-do’ list took up permanent residence. When I was even a little bit successful at quieting the noise, I promptly fell asleep.
I kept trying. Something about it seemed important. After a couple of months, I started to have little pockets of peace. In my constantly chaotic life, those pockets were little oases that pulled me through, and the practice stuck.
I’ve never had any desire to go on a days—or weeks-long meditation retreat. I do sprinkle in longer sessions now and then. Mostly, it’s a cornerstone of self-care because it makes me feel calmer and more in control. I had no idea the research (well, to be fair, most of it hadn’t been conducted yet) supported so many positive benefits.
As my friends will attest to, even when I’m away from home, I take the time to plunk myself down whether it’s on the carpet next to my bed, in the sand at the beach, or in the corner{er curve }of my friends living room to meditate. It’s a connection I’ve cultivated over the years that keeps me centered and grounded.
🧘Research shows meditation offers a smorgasbord of benefits for energetic, mental, and physical health. Here are some of the key areas where meditation has been found to be beneficial:
Energetic Health Benefits
- Energetic Flow: Meditation helps keep the flow of energy moving. Allowing for awareness of when a lower frequency is present.
- Centering: Regular meditation can help keep you centered and connected to your unique, energetic flow, enhancing your ability to detect disturbances before they become bigger problems.
- Interactions: Our energy interacts with both internal and external environments. Internally, it influences physiological processes and emotional states. Externally, it interacts with other energy fields, such as those of other people or the environment. Being aware of these interactions helps mitigate disturbances.
Mental Health Benefits
- Stress: Meditation is best known for its ability to reduce stress. Research has shown that meditation can decrease levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, resulting in a calmer state of being.
- Emotional Well-being: Meditation practices can improve overall emotional well-being. Quieting your mind and tuning in to your inner oasis helps increase positive emotions and decrease negative ones. This also improves emotional regulation and resilience.
- Focus and Attention: Meditation has been shown to enhance attention and concentration. Practices like mindfulness meditation help move our attention from the past or the future to the present moment. This improves our ability to focus on the task at hand and builds our attention span over time.
Physical Health Benefits
- Pain Management: Some forms of meditation have been found to help with pain management. Pain after the acute phase has a component of learned physiological responses, using meditation to interrupt that response helps to reduce the perception of pain.
- Immune Function: Recent studies suggest that meditation may be linked to a boost in immune function, potentially reducing the risk of illness.
- Sleep: Meditation is often attributed to improved sleep quality and reduced symptoms of insomnia. Its primary benefit is a calming effect on the mind, making it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep.
Cognitive Benefits
- Memory and Learning: Research is linking regular meditation and increased grey matter in the frontal lobe of the brain, areas associated with memory and learning. The amount of meditation practiced in the studies is more than the average person practices, but it is a metric to watch.
- Aging Process: Meditation has been linked to increased telomere length, which is associated with slower biological aging. Telomeres are protective caps on the ends of chromosomes, and their length is a marker of cellular aging.
- Creativity: Meditation’s calming effect also improves creative thinking. A relaxed mind is more receptive to insights, innovation, and creative flow.
Spiritual and Personal Growth
- Self-awareness: Meditation helps develop a deeper understanding of ourselves, our thoughts, our energy flow, and our emotions. This self-awareness helps us to grow and adjust in areas where we are not functioning as well as we might like.
- Compassion and Empathy: The general calming associated with meditation can soften our inner critic. Compassion-focused meditation, like Loving-kindness meditation, can increase feelings of empathy and compassion both internally and externally.
- Sense of Purpose and Meaning: Meditation can help us turn inward, connecting with Oneness and a sense of purpose and meaning in life. This often leads to a greater sense of fulfillment and satisfaction.
It’s important to note that some of the research studied expert meditators who spent more time butt-in-chair than the average person could reasonably fit into everyday life. This list is extensive, and not all people experience all of these potential benefits.
A simple meditation can have excellent benefits. The pockets of peace that sold me or any of the other benefits warrant a try. I always recommend starting small, five or ten minutes. If your mind is busy, try using a mantra with each inhale or exhale.
I would love to hear what your experience with meditation has been.
Thanks for reading
