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Meditation is about reeling in your wandering mind and targeting your thoughts. It can take many forms - it can involve activities like breathing techniques, repetition of sounds, or even casual observations to promote a sense of calm. Meditation can be used to reduce stress, enhance self-awareness, improve concentration, and promote emotional health and relaxation

Benefits at a Glance

• Improve attention, memory, and concentration
• Reduce symptoms of stress and anxiety
• May reduce sleep disturbances

The Science Behind It

Reduced Stress: Meditation can help regulate the autonomic nervous system – the part that controls the involuntary physiological functions. These are things like heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and digestion. With meditation, one of the areas of focus is controlling your breathing patterns. The speed, depth, and pattern of breathing you perform sends signals to the brain about your physical, emotional, and cognitive state. This helps regulate your nervous system allowing for a sense of relaxation.

Improved attention: Meditation has been shown to strengthen the connection made in the brain related to focus, attention, and reactions to stress. As you continue to practice these skills, connections are made in your brain called neural synapses. These connections grow stronger as you build resiliency with this skill.

Improved Sleep: Meditation may improve sleep, as it targets several different cognitive processes that contribute to sleep disturbances. For example, one practice of meditation is mindfulness. This practice focuses on attention to the present moment without judgment, which has been shown to improve emotional reactivity–a common cause for sleep disturbance. While improved sleep is not a guarantee, it may be achieved with the skills gained from meditative practice.

Try It Out!

Different meditation techniques have been shown to have different effects. Repeating a mantra for example can reduce anxiety, depression, and post traumatic stress. While relaxation has been successful addressing insomnia. With this umbrella term, it can be challenging to know where to start and what to expect. Let’s break down the elements and benefits of starting (and sticking with) meditation!

Most meditation practices have four elements in common:

• A specific, yet comfortable posture like sitting or lying down;
• A quiet location with few distractions;
• A focus or target to center your attention; and
• An open attitude of letting thoughts come and go naturally.

In practice this may look like:

• Lying outside in the grass in a park or backyard
• Turning off your phone and closing your eyes
• Focusing on the sounds of nature
• And being non judgemental about the thoughts you have around these sensations

Oftentimes, meditation involves centering around your breath, or being conscious of your breathing patterns. Try taking a deep breath in through your nose, and out through your mouth, and being aware of this pattern.

The Main Takeaway

Whatever your preference is of how you meditate, the reason may be similar. Meditation has been shown to help people deal with anxiety, depression or mood disturbance disorders. Physically, it has also been shown to slow your breathing and heart rate– a welcomed response to stressful situations! It doesn’t have to be long, it can be a few minutes. Try setting aside some time to meditate, center yourself, and feel the benefits of opening your mind to new experiences!