A regular meditation practice trains you to be happy and feel a sense of well being. Meditation practices strengthen your brain’s ability to focus and think calmly under pressure.
The results from a study who practiced “compassion meditation”, in which they learned to turn negative emotions and thoughts into positive ones with the goal of alleviating suffering for yourself and others.
These individuals also had reduced amygdala activity in response to positive and neutral images, but heightened activity upon viewing images of human suffering, presumably because they had become more attuned to others’ needs through their compassion training. Importantly, despite an uptick in amygdala activity showing they were highly attentive to images of human suffering, the compassionate meditators had lower depression scoresafter viewing the images.
This finding suggests that increased compassion toward others may increase your sense of well-being even in the presence of a strong and possibly negative emotional response.
Meditation for Stress and Anxiety Relief
Studies suggests that meditation may help practitioners deal well with stress by honing their ability to “detach” emotionally from a difficult situation while maintaining attention to the matter, thus allowing the problem-solving brain to work toward resolution of the problem scenario without the distracting emotional fallout.
Meditation and Depression
A number of studies demonstrate the beneficial effect of meditation on symptoms of depression, in particular by improving social behavior and reducing emotional reactivity.
Meditation and Substance Abuse
An important example of this effect is seen in the research on recovery from substance abuse. An unwillingness or inability to endure unpleasant thoughts or experiences is considered a major component of addictive behavior, and excess stress and anxiety exacerbate reliance on drugs and alcohol for stress-relief.
Mindfulness meditation helps the practitioner develop better stress-coping strategiesso that they don’t have to turn to harmful substances to do the trick.
What Does This Mean For Every Day Life?
All of this is not to say that you have to sit in meditation every day for hours on end to see results! In fact, one of the incredible things about meditation is how little of it you have to do to see big results. Even for someone who has never meditated, as little as ten to twenty minutes a day for five days can measurably reduce your anxiety, anger, and depression.
If you would like to learn more about meditation and how to meditate, join in our free monthly Group Healing Meditation. Click HERE to sign up for these free sessions.