Benefits of Meditation-1000 reasons to meditate.

1000 Reasons why you should meditate? Here are the benefits of meditation.

There is no doubt that you must have heard of meditating. It is the most trending phenomenon in the world right now. If you search Google trends for the word meditation the score is the highest you can get. There is a reason for it. People are not happy. They are distressed and constantly searching for answers to get inner peace of mind. So sooner or later you are bound to reach the wall and find meditation as ultimate answer. When Buddha left palace and gave up materialistic world in search of everlasting inner peace of spiritual world he found himself meditation as an answer to his query that pressed him from within. So meditation is a tool well founded which dates back to 2500 years back when Buddha first discovered it and was later named as Vipassana meditation.So are you in the course of searching inner peace yourself? If so, give a pat at the back of your own because diagnosis is the first step towards finding solution. And if you have come across this word “meditation” then give yourself double thumbs up. You are on the right path. There are many benefits of meditation.

If you are thinking of starting meditation and have never tried before do not worry, I will share some of my own experience and some commonly practiced methods to begin with.

There are basically thousands of ways to meditate and initially you may be overwhelmed. But often if not always simple things are always made complicated unnecessarily. All you have to do is for few minutes of your life just do not think of anything else and relax. Set aside 10 minutes of your life in the morning and close your eyes. Do not think of your duties, jobs and responsibilities for a while and just focus within yourself.

If this is your first times trying then do not worry, relax and feel comfortable. You can get all the inspiration you need at first. As the saying goes first inspiration then aspiration. You need to inspire yourself first. You can make your environment that way. It may be your room or altar or even living room where you are planning to meditate. Surround yourself with spiritual thing like a picture of a guru you follow or some inspiring life quotes. Even you can put things like singing bowl, Buddha statues in the corner of your room or in front of your altar. You can burn incense and even play a soft music if you like. This will set the tone and build your mood to relax and concentrate.

You may be thinking how do I do that? Well just focus on your most essential task that is to simply live. For that the very basic thing you need to do is breathe. Just concentrate on breathe in and out process, relax and let go of your clinging of outside world. At least try to do this. This is what we are practicing. When you breathe in air will go inside your nose and your belly will rise and when you breathe out air will go out of your body and belly will shrink. Just focus on your belly as it shrinks and expands. This is the very basic thing you need to. Just repeat this process for few times. You will realize that it is not easy to keep focusing on this process. Your mind will wander. You will remember past memories, current responsibilities and future plans. Key is to just realize it not to fight it. Realize that you are having such thoughts. Realize that you are having such pictures. Realize that you are having such imaginations. Just realizing is the first step towards success. Just like diagnosing a problem in order to find solution to it here you need to realize your problem too.

Maybe you are having past memories that may be associated with feelings like happiness, sad, laughter, crying, and jealousy, anger etc. all the human common feelings. Key is to realize that you are having such thoughts and feeling and deciding that you will not continue to flow in this stream of imaginations and feeling. Deciding to not go with the flow and not fueling anymore to the thoughts and imagination the process will end itself in due course of time and the flow will stop. Nothing is permanent everything is temporary. This is the key message universe in trying to give us. Nothing, even your current thoughts and imaginations are permanent. It is just that you have to realize it and decide not to go in flow with it.

In repeating the process you will be meditating and your concentration level will increase in due time as you practice more and more. So much can be said about it, but doing it yourself and experiencing it yourself is the key to success and wonderful experience. Starting by focusing on breathing and being mindful in the process to realize and let thoughts and imagination pass by objectively without dwelling or fueling more in it and most importantly not judging the feelings. Just realize that such and such thoughts and feelings are coming right now and not react to it. Realize that it will go away or pass by because it is also not permanent. Know and realize the law of impermanence applies anywhere and everywhere.

Do not try to run take it slow. Take one step at a time. Your knees will hurt, your body will ache, and you will have sensations within your body. But know and realize the pain is also temporary and will go away. If you just watch and not react to it and tolerate it for a while it will go away. This is the main essence of meditation. Be it while sitting meditation or in your daily life activities the law is the same. Rule of impermanence applies to all. Not only spiritually you will benefit mentally and physically as well.

Meditation isn’t hard to practice in small doses. If you commit to a little bit each day, and slowly work your way from there, you’ll soon be experiencing the many benefits of meditation. Some of the direct benefits of meditation are as follows:

Reduced Mental Stress

You will gain peaceful mental health. When you meditate, the calming nature of the process helps you to cool down and reduce the cortisol level of your body. Cortisol is a hormone that your body produces when you’re stressed out. Inflammation caused by cortisol creates lot of negative energy that affects our health. So meditation ultimately helps you to reduce stress levels and improve your overall health.

Reduced Anxiety

In the same way that it lowers stress, meditation can also lower anxiety. Mindfulness meditation often has a calming effect, and many believe that anxiety is related to bottled up emotions. Mindfulness helps release some of that built-up emotions, ultimately reducing anxiety.

Improved Concentration Span

Meditation is an excellent way to improve your attention-span.  Now that you know that by practicing meditation your concentration level increases. The more you meditate, the better you get at it. Starting with 2-5 mins people do develop their mental capabilities and increase there concentrating time span for hours. Needless to say better concentration level increases you brain capability and which in turn helps in every aspect of your life.

Improved Sleep

Too much of stress and anxiety hinders your sleep. This in turns ruins your health mentally and physically. As we already discussed above how meditation helps reduce cortisol dump and subsequent stress and anxiety levels. With the reduction of this stress and anxieties naturally one tends to sleep well because these disturbing factors have gone So meditation will have overall positive effect on our sleep.

As stated above, stress and anxiety affect people from all walks a life. The key to controlling it is about knowing how to do so. If you choose and apply the best suggestions given to you in the above article, you will surely find your way towards living a stress free happy life from within.

Check here if you want to get inspired by inspirational quotes by Guru Rinpoches. And check here for a meditating Buddha Statue posture.

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