I have heard so many great things about meditation recently and how important it is to meditate on a daily basis! I’m excited to have Alek here to tell us why we should meditate every day!
Reasons to Meditate Every Day
by Alek Sabin
If you are looking for healthy habits that you can work on, every day, then you definitely want to consider getting into meditation. We live in a time where chaos and distraction are the norms. There’s scarcely a moment when at least a dozen different things are vying for our attention, making it increasingly difficult to calm our minds and wind down. Meditation is an activity that can help be a check on all of the messy things that fill your life. Here are a handful of different reasons why it’s beneficial to meditate, every day…
Helps mental disorders
Meditation is a practice that benefits the mind and the body. For individuals who suffer from different types of mental disorders, meditation is able to to help the mind calm down and help the practitioner gain a sense of control over what they are doing. For this reason, disorders like depression, schizophrenia, PTSD, and ADHD can all be helped, to some degree, by carefully practiced meditation. Indeed, meditation is particularly beneficial for mental disorders that cause behavioral problems, which is why it is a common technique used in addiction recovery.
Reduces the effects of stress
Nothing is able to bring a person down like a great degree of stress. When we let stress take over our lives, it destroys us mentally and physically, to the point where it can even impact your skin and your physical appearance. However, efficient meditation requires that you eliminate the distractions around you and simply focus on very tangible things about yourself, such as your breathing. Being able to empty your mind and refresh yourself is a helpful tool for battling stress. If you are suffering from an unimaginably large degree of stress, taking a little bit of time out of your day to practice meditation can go a long way.
Relaxes the mind
When our minds become overactive, it can be easy to feel a large surplus of anxiety, which can lead to a host of other problems. Meditation helps you keep control over the pace of your mind and the contents of your thoughts, and prevents you from giving into irrational emotions that drive your decisions. The reason meditation is able to help accomplish this is because it puts you outside of yourself and makes you focus on simple things around you. When all you are thinking about is your breathing, it enables you to clear your head and come back to your situation with fresh eyes and an open mind.
Helps produce dopamine
Dopamine is the chemical that enables your brain to feel pleasurable emotions. It gives you energy and lets you feel happiness. It even helps reduce pain! Meditation is able to help your body remain in a steady balance, which helps it produce even more dopamine. When you are feeling especially depressed, the dopamine boost that is created from mediation can help reduce the effects of depression, and can put you in a state of peaceful bliss that lets you recharge to tackle more of life’s problems.
Improves physical health
As stated above, meditation is an activity that is good for your body and your mind. This isn’t just some niche nonsense! Carefully practiced meditation can actually help to boost your metabolism, enabling your body to produce more energy. With this added energy, you can spend more time doing physical activities that make you feel good, and improve your physical health.
It’s free
Lastly, meditation isn’t some ridiculous activity where someone is trying to sell you something that you don’t need. All you need to start daily doses of meditation is a quiet place and a little bit of research. Sure, meditation is an activity that takes practice, and it might even be worthwhile to get advice from somebody who is already good at it. However, at its core, meditation is free for everyone, and is something that you can do practically anywhere, no matter where you are living.
