An introduction to meditation: Anxiety and beyond

Meditation is a practice that’s been around for thousands of years but still there is about what really meditation is and how is a Boone to mental health. Most people to associate meditation with a monk sitting on the top of the mountain staring into the horizon but in reality it is something that everyone can practice and get its benefit to mental as well as physical health. There are even hundreds of studies to prove that meditation helps to calm down anxiety. Let’s understand the depth of meditation and its benefits.

What is meditation?

Meditation is a practice which has to be concentrated focus upon sound, visualization, the breath or the attention itself in order to increase awareness of the present moment or to promote relaxation or to reduce anxiety and to enhance personal or spiritual growth.

It is an engagement of the process intended to be inclusive of several different possibilities, with the attention of attaining an enhanced mental state.

Connection between anxiety and meditation

Firstly understanding our anxiety is important and its first step is to manage it. By knowing its erratic nature by understanding it we can obtain a better sense of its triggering situations and how our anxiety operates us and that’s were meditation comes in. through meditation we familiarize ourselves with anxiety inducing thoughts, we learn to see and sit with them and then let them go.

Types of meditations

Experienced meditators would agree that a daily practice of meditation can have significant benefits on physical and mental health both. But one thing they won’t agree on? i.e. which is the most effective type of meditation and that’s simply because it’s different for everyone. There are literally hundred types of meditation techniques. There’s not a universally best or the most effective type of meditation rather it is an individual preference that helps to choose the ones that works best for him. Here’s the breakdown of most popular types of meditation technique.

Guided vs. unguided meditation

Choosing between guided and unguided meditation is often the first step to start practicing meditation. In guided meditation the teacher or guru guides you through the basics steps of the practice. And then suggest you to integrate this technique into your everyday life.

In unguided meditation it involves simply sitting in a quite focusing to the body and thoughts for a set period of time. It is also called silent meditation.

Progressive relaxation

This form of meditation encourages an individual to scan and focus on their body for any areas where tension could exist. This meditation identifies the tension in the body and allows them to release. This meditation is also known as body scan meditation.

Love-kindness meditation.

This meditation helps us to have a full sense of emotional strength that balances our thoughts and action and it helps to increase focus and attention and self compassion. The practitioner should open their mind while breathing deeply , there should be some positive message to the world, to the loved ones or to a specific person or to self. This message is to be repeated as many times a possible until the practitioner starts to feel the flow of love and kindness. This meditation is also known as metta meditation.

Zen meditation

Zen meditation is a Buddhist meditation which is also known as zazen meditation. The purpose of this meditation is to stop the mind rushing in an aimless or purposeful stream of thoughts. The practice for this meditation involves sitting upright and following the breath and letting the mind just be.

Mantra meditation

This meditation is a focused attention meditation. Instead of focusing the breath we have to focus on a mantra, which could be a syllable, word or a phrase. Repeat the mantra until you feel positive change. It will increase compassion for others and may boost self confidence.

How meditation helps to reduce anxiety.

For anxiety meditation is a great help.  When you sit down to meditate you focus on your breath. For example, you focus on how you inhale the air through your nose and you try to feel the sensation of the cool air how it enters in your nose. And this way you will try to ignore all your distraction or negative thoughts and try to bring back your focus on your breath. Deep breathing increases supply of oxygen into the brain. And stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, and it helps to promote a state of calmness and helps you feel connected to your body and it brings your awareness and calms your mind.

Benefits of meditation

For thousands of years people have been practicing meditation for spiritual, emotional and physical wellbeing. But what are the other benefits of meditation. It has been seen that brain scans see increased activity in regions and directly correlated with decreased anxiety and depression along with increases pain tolerance. The default mode network, in particular is activated when one’s mind is at rest and not focusing on the outside world, and has been found to improve memory and self awareness and goal setting. During several researches it has been found that Meditators have higher level of Alpha waves which has been shown to reduce feelings of negative mood, tension and sadness and anger, and this helps to change our brain shape and size. Studies found out that after some weeks of a meditation program, the gray matter was denser in areas associated with learning, memory processing and emotion regulation and the amygdale, that deals with stress, blood pressure and fear had decreased gray matter. Meditation is a way of exercising your brain with extra health benefits.