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Why You Should Practice Mindfulness Meditation

Saving your day the mindful way 🧘🏾‍♂️

By The Breatharian BloggerPublished 4 years ago 3 min read
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Why You Should Practice Mindfulness Meditation
Photo by Lesly Juarez on Unsplash

Meditation has been around for centuries and is of several types but a growing body of research today has focused on studying mindfulness meditation and its benefits on our health. Advances in technology have made it possible to map brain patterns and observe structural changes in the brain that weren’t previously observable.

Mindfulness meditation gives priority to conscious living through mind-body awareness. The focus is to objectively observe your emotions and thoughts in a nonjudgemental manner without unconsciously reacting to their content. This leads to a heightened state of awareness of the self and the world around. Mindfulness meditation offers several physical as well as psychological health benefits, such as:

It reduces stress and anxiety

Mindfulness meditation can reduce stress and anxiety by lowering the body’s level of the stress hormone, cortisol. It also improves plasticity of the brain and increases activity in the brain’s left anterior lobe. This promotes resilience and adaptive coping in response to stressful events. It also improves the regulation of emotions in dealing with stressors and allows people to adopt approach based coping techniques rather than avoidance based coping. Since stress is also a big factor contributing to diseases like heart disease, practicing mindfulness meditation can be a great way to reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, and other illnesses.

By Erik Brolin on Unsplash

It improves cognition

Mindfulness meditation plays an important role in improving overall cognitive functioning. It has been found to raise activity levels in the brain’s cerebral cortex, thereby impacting the processing of visual and auditory details. It can lower fatigue, improve visuospatial processing, executive functions, as well as working memory. It leads to higher sustained attention, concentration, and focus, all of which have a significant impact on various aspects of life, whether personal or professional.

It boosts immune responses

The body’s immune system is meant to protect us from antigens that threaten our health. Several pro and anti-inflammatory proteins, natural killer cells, T-cells, immunoglobulins, and neutrophils protect us by fighting off disease. Practicing mindfulness can increase the immune cell activity in the body, making it possible for them to fight antigens much more quickly and effectively. The boost in immune responses by the body offers us greater protection from diseases.

It can prevent cellular aging

Cellular aging is a process that naturally occurs with the division of cells over their lifespan or as a result of illness. The enzyme, telomerase increases cell longevity and prevents cellular aging. Practicing mindfulness meditation helps to raise the activity of the enzyme, telomerase which in turn, reduces the occurrence of age related diseases and cell death.

It leads to greater satisfaction with your body

Practicing mindfulness meditation has been found to improve satisfaction with one’s body. Research shows that those who practiced mindfulness meditation experienced lower levels of body shame, dissatisfaction, and appearance based self-worth measures. They were also more appreciative and confident of their bodies and practiced more self-compassion.

It can alleviate depression symptoms

Mindfulness meditation has been found to be a powerful tool to prevent relapse in patients suffering from recurrent depression. It is also an excellent tool that can reduce the manifestation of several symptoms of depression in depressed patients. The process of mindfulness meditation helps in re-evaluating negative appraisals, increases feelings of positive emotions, improves mood, and reduces stress and emotional reactivity, all of which have a positive impact on the experience and display of depression symptoms.

By JD Mason on Unsplash

It can be used for effective pain control

Mindfulness meditation can impact regions of the brain responsible for the experience of pain. Several studies conducted on the use of mindfulness meditation for patients suffering from chronic pain have shown that it can significantly reduce pain experienced and help with better pain control.

It can improve sleep

Practicing mindfulness meditation can relax your body and mind, allowing you to fall asleep faster and helping you get good quality sleep. It can give your mind space to do a brain dump of all the worries and stress of the day. Creating more room internally for you to enjoy a good nights rest.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this and would like more inspiration, check out my newest book on Amazon! 🙏🏾

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About the Creator

The Breatharian Blogger

Here to inspire you on your journey. ✊🏾

Connect with me on IG @jromeshaw

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