Meditation can give you a sense of calm, peace and balance that can benefit your emotional well-being and your overall health. You also can use it to relax and cope with stress by focusing on something that calms you. Meditation can help you learn to stay centered and keep inner peace.
These benefits don’t end when your meditation session ends. Meditation can help take you more calmly through your day. And meditation may help you manage symptoms of some medical conditions.
Meditation and emotional and physical well-being
When you meditate, you may clear away the information overload that builds up every day and contributes to your stress. The emotional and physical benefits of meditation can include:
- Giving you a new way to look at things that cause stress.
- Building skills to manage your stress.
- Making you more self-aware.
- Focusing on the present.
- Reducing negative feelings.
- Helping you be more creative.
- Helping you be more patient.
- Lowering resting heart rate.
- Lowering resting blood pressure.
- Helping you sleep better.
Ways to meditate can include:
- Guided meditation. This is sometimes called guided imagery or visualization. With this method of meditation, you form mental images of places or things that help you relax. You try to use as many senses as you can. These include things you can smell, see, hear and feel. You may be led through this process by a guide or teacher.
- Mantra meditation. In this type of meditation, you repeat a calming word, thought or phrase to keep out unwanted thoughts.
- Mindfulness meditation.This type of meditation is based on being mindful. This means being more aware of the present.
In mindfulness meditation, you focus on one thing, such as the flow of your breath. You can notice your thoughts and feelings. But let them pass without judging them. - Qigong. This practice most often combines meditation, relaxation, movement and breathing exercises to restore and maintain balance. Qigong (CHEE-gung) is part of Chinese medicine.
- Tai chi. This is a form of gentle Chinese martial arts training. In tai chi (TIE-CHEE), you do a series of postures or movements in a slow, graceful way. And you do deep breathing with the movements.
- Yoga. You do a series of postures with controlled breathing. This helps give you a more flexible body and a calm mind. To do the poses, you need to balance and focus. That helps you to focus less on your busy day and more on the moment.