Meditation can do wonders for your health

Meditation is more than just measured breathing.

Keri Stanley, a women’s leadership coach who has done meditation for 7 years, says that it can be extraordinarily helpful when it comes to dealing with the fast-moving world around us.

“We usually operate in a way where we’re reactive to everything that’s happening. So when you can actually utilize meditation in your life, you operate from your core, kind of like when you’re working out, you will strengthen your core to support the rest of you.”

There are also different types of meditation, though according to Janice Mayer, an adult psychiatric and mental health nurse practitioner at Mosaic Life Care, those that she is familiar with tend to have the same goal.

“I think the overall general goal is to be more at peace, to lessen anxiety and to be more calm and compassionate,” Mayer says.

Mindfulness meditation, in particular, is all about changing how you view things and, according to Mayer, has been shown to reduce chemicals in our brain that cause us to feel anxious or stressed. Brain imaging proves this, showing that the areas of the brain that have to do with empathy are more active. It’s also proven to be helpful in lowering blood pressure and treating depression.

“Mindfulness is … paying attention in a particular way,” Mayer says. “It’s purposeful, but it’s in the present and it’s nonjudgmental. So it’s not about liking (something) or not liking it, or thinking it’s good or bad. It just is.”

That lack of judgment is important, Mayer says, as we attach judgment to nearly everything in our lives. In this way, meditation helps us to reduce our emotional intensity and problem-solve better by detaching ourselves from the actual problem and looking at it through a different lens.

Stanley, herself, began with guided meditation; having someone lead you through your thought processes in order to clear your mind of distractions. Like Mayer, Stanley agrees that the new perspective that meditation offers can be invaluable.

“And when I allow myself just five minutes of quiet time, it allows me to tune in to what it is that I really need, open myself up to receiving the answers that I really need, and so instead of living on the outside and reacting, doing that makes you focus inward,” Stanley says.

She explains that meditation can happen virtually anywhere, as long as you’re willing to put the time into it.

“And we have this illusion that meditation is me sitting out in a field or on a rock for an hour’s time, but really even a minute a day can make a massive difference in just allowing yourself to get calm and breathe,” Stanley says.

There are even some smartphone apps that offer guided meditation or help with breathing techniques. And while it may seem odd that one of the most distracting objects that you own can actually help you to relax, Stanley says that, under certain conditions, meditation applications can be extraordinarily helpful.

“I have learned to set boundaries with my phone, because it can become a distraction and take up too much space in our life and it can be all-consuming because we get dopamine hits from it,” Stanley says. “So understanding that I can use it to serve me rather than drain me is really important. We get to choose how we are using it.”

She recommends turning off text notifications and sound in order to get the full benefits of these applications. Moreover, they reinforce an idea that Mayer believes to be an important aspect of meditation: practice.

“This has to be practiced daily, whether or not you’re anxious or not, so your brain knows how to respond when you begin to be in an anxious state,” Mayer says. “These are skills that need to be developed.”

Stanley agrees, saying that giving yourself a moment to relax and breathe for a few minutes each day will benefit you greatly in the long run.

“Remember meditation is really just being fully present in the moment,” Stanley says. “That’s where life’s happening.”

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