More and more people are turning to meditation. Considering the emphasis that western society puts on achievements and constant activity, it sometimes can take a health crisis or severe anxiety before we are ready to turn to meditation as a solution. Though we may initially turn to mediation for health reasons or to learn to relax we ultimately find greater benefits than we had imagined. Here a just a few of the benefits from regular meditation.

Meditation Provides Health Benefits

The Mayo Clinic, Harvard, Yale, just to name have a few have done studies verifying the health benefits of meditation. Heart patients, those with chronic pain, cancer patients, even those with orthopedic type injuries and diseases have been helped by mediation. I'll be talking about that more in a later post. It has been said that fully 90% of illness is either caused by stress or worsened by stress. Now new studies are being conducted that show we can actually change our cell structure through a combination of meditation and visualization. See the post on neuroplasticity .

Meditation Teaches Us Healthy Detachment

There are always going to be small and large irritations in life. Traffic, waiting in line, feeling we've been overcharged or otherwise not treated fairly; you get the gist. We can't avoid these problems. They are a part of life. As a result of meditation we begin to gain a new perspective and these irritations just don't seem like a big deal anymore.

Meditation Teaches Us to Have Control over Our Thoughts

Humankind has faced innumerable challenges and as a result has continued to create and invent. But when it comes to our own thoughts we often feel as though we are at the mercy of a mind that focuses on the negative and we consistently barrage ourselves and each other with "catastrophizing". Of course we may feel there are some things we have to plan for most of what we worry about are things that are either never going to happen or that we have no control over anyway. Meditation teaches us to control our thoughts and achieve peace of mind.  Changing our thoughts changes our emotions.  We actually become more efficient when we are able to focus our minds.

Meditation Reduces Stress

This is probably the best known and most talked about benefit. Quieting our minds allows us to learn to turn off the myriad of voices in our head. You know the ones. The ones that are telling us we need to move faster, get more done, pick up the kids, finish the report, the boss isn't fair and my mother-in-law hates me to name just a few; and these voices all talk at once and we react to the messages from our brains with flight or fright; in other words with stress. Millions of people turn to medication rather than meditation. As a result our health continues to suffer and we never learn to use our natural abilities to switch off our worries.

Meditation Fulfills a Human Longing

In spite of all our activity, as spiritual beings we all feel a need for silence; a time to quiet our minds. There is an innate fundamental idea inside each of us that seeks inner peace and a connection to something we usually can't quite define. It is only when we make a habit of regularly making that connection we begin to know what we have been missing..

If it sounds as if I have been trying to convince you to begin meditating, well you're right. Finding a new way of thinking and living and relating to others has the potential to have a profound effect on ourselves and the world.

A good resource for meditation CD's or downloads can be found here:
meditation for beginners , guided meditations