Visualisation Meditation helps to….

Lower blood pressure, release stress, improve sleep, be happy

ANALYSIS/OPINION

With your earlier 2017 New Years resolutions, I hope you have managed to change habits and ways of thinking that has helped to reduce chronic stress and anxieties in your life with a goal to increase happiness and overall life satisfaction?

Meditation is an easy practice that can help us focus, eliminate negative thoughts, worries, anxiety, as well as other factors that can cause havoc with our overall health and well-being. Proven many times the practice of meditation, carried out on a regular basis, will mitigate the symptoms of stress and anxiety—and support beneficial health!

Everyone can do it – and benefits can be seen in the first session.

About The Health Benefits of Meditation

Many are still asking what is meditation? Well in a nutshell, meditation is all about calming your mind. Meditation is when we stop thinking about all the worries of the world around you, bringing you back right into this very moment and focus on being still once again in order to achieve a relaxed state of being, inner peace, and balance. It isn’t about not having thoughts; it is about not being attached to your thoughts and letting them rule you.

There are many different kinds of meditation as it is a very generic term being used. A catchall term for the many ways we can achieve mental and physical relaxation.

Most share these ways of setting up the space for meditation;

• A quiet location with minimal distractions is helpful
• A comfortable position can be lying down, in your home, garden or favorite chair and focus on being still
• Focusing on a word, an object, your breathing, the birds singing, the leaves rustling in the breeze, the warmth of the sun on your skin or listing to the meditation I have shared in this article.
• There are also forms of moving meditation, such as yoga or tai chi that incorporate gentle movements and exercise

Can the practise of meditation help me with reducing my stress levels? Absolutely! As we know stress can wreak havoc on our mind, body, and spirit if it is not properly managed. With the chaos that is created within us, it interferes with our enjoyment of life, relationships, and our work.

It has been proven that meditation decreases the release of stress hormones—adrenaline and cortisol—and changes the frequency and amplitude of our brain waves. As I have been pracitising meditation for many years now, I do find that meditation helps me to provide perspective and calm. Most of all aiding against the storms of life on the outside from coming within me. In doing so, this has a number of health benefits.

Over the years, I have found that the regular practice of meditation does the following;

• Decreases blood pressure. The American Heart Association has released a statement that meditation may be considered in clinical practice to lower blood pressure

• Definitely sleeping better and deeper. In a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, participants who underwent a six-week program on mindfulness meditation had greater improvements in sleep quality and fewer symptoms of insomnia compared to those who were taught standard ways to improve their sleep hygiene.

• Reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety and in some cases students over the years have been healed from these ailments.
In 2014, researchers from Johns Hopkins found that 30 minutes of meditation a day can improve some symptoms of anxiety and depression in patients with mild disease to the same extent as antidepressant medications. This effect likely stems from meditation’s effects on our brain waves, brain cell connections, actual structures (thickening some areas while making others less dense), and even molecules that send signals.

• Dealing with chronic pain. While it is not clear how meditation decreases the suffering of people who experience chronic pain, it is believed that it alters pain perception.

• Improved immune function. When our body is relaxed, our immune system is able to prepare for battle against germs, foreign invaders, and cancer.

• Another great benefit I have found is how it improves both focus and memory. Studies have found that meditation training helped workers concentrate better, remember more of their work details, and stay energized and experience less negative moods.

Thank you to the students who have joined me at my Visualisation course from Wareemba.

With the growing evidence to show that meditation can make you healthier and happier, my vision is that you will practice it regularly. Enjoy – as your meditation silences the noise and opens a healthy pathway to awareness and understanding of what needs to addressed for a healthier and happier you! Looking forward to having you all join me at the next meditation course starting on the 5th September 2017.