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"The gift of learning to meditate is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this life."
- Sogyal Rinpoche
The benefits of meditation can be divided
into four parts: medical, concentrative,
spiritual and emotional.
Medically, meditation may improve your
physical health and it does this in two main ways:-
1. It
helps the body to relax; and
2. It
helps to calm the mind.
This helps to restore the body to a state
of balance. Stress affects every system
in the body in a negative way, for example high blood pressure can lead to
heart disease. The immune system also
weakens under stress, making you more susceptible to various illnesses.
Meditation can lower blood pressure, calm
the nervous system, reduce muscle tension, lower cortisol levels in the body (a
hormone associated with stress) and strengthen the immune system. Serotonin is known to increase by meditating
(a neurotransmitter that helps regulate mood, appetite and sleep).
Being calmer in body helps us to be more
mentally, spiritually and emotionally peaceful too. Studies have also been done which suggest
that meditation may also help manage chronic pain and assist (as an adjunct to
treatment) in healing various illnesses.
There have been several studies that
suggest that meditation may also slow the ageing process.
Meditation can help to increase your
powers of concentration, a mental skill that’s useful in all areas of life,
especially in areas of study, career and sport, where an increased ability to
focus can improve your performance and help you to become more successful at
what you do.
Spiritually, it can help you live in the
present moment (making the most of what you have) and give your more clarity,
insight and self awareness. It can also
help to increase your powers of intuition, which is useful for making the right
decisions in your life.
Emotionally it may help you to be more
balanced and give you more happiness, calm and inner peace.
Remember, consistent regularity is the key
to gain the benefits of meditation. But
the good news is, once a routine is established, meditation can become
pleasantly addictive.
An important tip for beginners: it’s best to start off slow. Rather than trying to meditate for half an
hour to an hour, start off with five to fifteen minutes, then gradually
increase the time as you get more comfortable with it (if you wish to do
so). If you start off with too long a
meditating period, you might find it too much of a chore, and that might
discourage you from continuing on with your practice.
As a general rule of thumb, aim to
meditate for a minimum of ten to fifteen minutes a day. As your concentration improves, you might
find yourself naturally wanting to extend this time.
Another good book on meditation I can
recommend is “The Meditation Experience” by Madonna Gauding. It includes a meditation CD and journal to
record notes, meditation and mindfulness excercises and techniques and a
section on combining meditation with yoga, walking, Tai chi and Chi kung. Click on this link to check it out at Amazon
bookstore.
For further reading on the many benefits
of meditation, check out these books:
Do you want to meditate? by Eric Harrison
Hurry up and meditate by David Michie
Working with meditation by Madonna Gauding
How to meditate by Paul Roland
Meditation for wimps by Miriam Austin
