At the beginning of the week, a good friend came to visit the city and we went for a walk.
After half an hour of walking, I felt that my head was heavy and aching. I didn’t have a moment of peace during the day.
I worked from morning until the moment I met her, there were many emails, calls and meetings and by the end of the day my head was already exploding.
I shared with her how I was feeling and asked if she would agree to let us sit for a moment to meditate (or in other words, stop for a moment). She immediately agreed, and we sat down on the beach.
Ten minutes of disconnection, closing our eyes and tranquility completely eliminated all the unpleasant feelings and allowed the evening and the conversation to continue.
A decade ago, a good and wise friend suggested that we go take a Transcendental Meditation course. He was always ten steps ahead of everyone else, at the time no one talked to me about meditation.
It didn’t speak to me, so I read a little and discovered a connection between meditation and improving sleep and between meditation and lowering inflammation levels in the body.
I’m a very practical person. During the course, the instructor explained that meditation is like a gym for the brain, you don’t have to believe or be spiritual, just sit and repeat the mantra.
A mantra is a syllable, word or sentence, said repeatedly in order to influence the mind.
And so began my journey with meditation. A time in the day when I sit, disconnect, and do a gym for my brain.
In a world full of background noise, news, networks, politics, people, series, programs, music and so on. A person can spend most of their life without being alone or with themselves for a single moment. This is not a situation that serves us.
When we are constantly distracted, we do not have time to process emotions, to discover what we want, what bothers us and what interests us.
A person who is distracted cannot discover his or her calling.
Meditation has changed my life in so many ways, and only the experience, sitting with myself, will begin to show me what the potential is.
Everyone knows that stress damages the immune system. When the immune system is damaged, every organ in the body can be damaged, inflammation levels in the body increase and our functioning is impaired.
Stress accelerates aging, harms sleep, digestion and our state of mind.
And who does not experience stress in the reality we live in?
So if stress creates illness, what is the opposite of stress?
Meditation has become a tool studied by science in the last decade, and there is no doubt, both from my personal experience, from the testimonies of people around the world and in studies
Meditation has the ability to lower stress levels and thus allow the body to do its job faithfully, to relax, recover, rest and heal itself.
Scientific article on the positive effects of Transcendental Meditation on cardiovascular diseases
Article on the effects of mindfulness on the immune system
Our body is made up of a huge number of systems that communicate and work together in harmony to ward off diseases while maintaining balance. And meditation works in several pathways that lead to better health, mental and physical. It has been shown to reduce specific signs of inflammation, increase cell-mediated immunity and even slow down biological aging.
I would like to use this article to draw your attention to four significant benefits of meditation:
- Meditation can improve anxiety, depression, and stress
Meditation helps alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression. In a meta-analysis that examined 209 studies and over 12,000 participants, meditation was shown to be effective in treating anxiety and depression, and this improvement was maintained at follow-up.
But how does it work?
Meditation triggers a host of changes and responses in the brain. A 2013 study showed that a single meditation session can increase a neurotransmitter that promotes inhibition in the cerebral cortex, which improves cognitive abilities and emotional regulation.
Meditation practice has also shown the ability to reshape the brain through a process known as neuroplasticity. In one study, meditation was correlated with a decrease in gray matter in the right amygdala, which may explain why people who practice meditation experience a reduced stress response!
- It can improve immune function and reduce inflammation
Inflammation is a complex defense system, and while it is a necessary and useful acute defense against pathogens and essential for wound healing, chronic inflammation can lead to serious tissue damage.
In a recent study conducted by the Department of Psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center, researchers measured inflammatory proteins in a group of people, then gave some of them a meditation routine. Those who practiced meditation showed large decreases in two markers of inflammation, while those who did not practice meditation showed modest increases in the same markers.
- It may slow the rate of aging
Inflammation can shorten telomeres, and shorter telomeres impair our ability to defend against the ravages of aging. This includes protecting against chronic diseases like cancer and degenerative conditions, as well as accelerated skin aging. Longer telomeres have also been linked to a larger volume of the hippocampus, the brain’s vulnerable memory center.
- It can help break bad habits
With all the benefits meditation provides to our executive function, involving self-control, planning, and decision-making, it’s no surprise that meditation can help break long-standing bad habits.
In a randomized controlled trial, prison inmates who practiced Transcendental Meditation for 4 months had a 47% reduction in all symptoms of trauma, including anxiety, depression, dissociation, sleep disturbances, and stress, compared to those who didn’t meditate.
What about a worse and more common habit, like smoking? In a small but interesting study, smokers who underwent meditation training experienced a decrease in their urge to smoke and showed increased activation in brain regions associated with self-control. What’s cool about the study is that the smokers weren’t told that they were going to be monitored for their smoking – they thought they were signing up for the study to test the effect of meditation on reducing stress, and ended up naturally reducing their cigarette consumption by 60%.
How to start practicing?
It’s recommended to take a course, or attend a workshop, an open class to get into things the right way.
Keep in mind that it takes time to feel the results and it’s really uncomfortable at first – but it’s really worth the perseverance…
