Train your brain with meditation

Benefits of meditation

Meditation is one of the most powerful activities that you can do.

Everyone knows about it but not everyone does it. Only some people practice meditation regularly. 

The current population is roughly around 7.8 billion. Only 200 to 500 million people meditate. This means that only 2-6% of people in the world practice meditation.

There are a lot of benefits of doing meditation.

Through meditation, a person can control the world’s powerful tool. That is nothing but their brain.

You are not controlling your brain. Your brain is controlling you.

You can do anything with your belief system.

Mental benefits of meditation

1. Slows down the aging process

2. Relieves stress and chronic anxiety

3. Builds self-esteem

4. Treats and prevents depression

5. Increases attention span

Mediation is good for your brain.

1. Mediation slows the aging process 

As you age, your body gets slower and you start to lose your edge.

Meditation can actually slow down the aging process in your brain.

This comes from a 2015 study from UCLA that found that people who meditate have healthier and younger brains than people who don't.

Even the researchers were shocked by their findings!

They expected a small difference, if any, in the size of their brains.

Instead, they found significant changes in brain volume.

By meditating regularly, these people developed more gray matter. Their brain volume stayed far more consistent.

In other words, meditation held back many of the most detrimental effects of aging in the brain.

This awarded them a healthier and more productive mind for years to come.

Meditation keeps your brain young.

2. Meditation relieves stress and chronic anxiety

By learning how to meditate, you significantly reduce your stress without having to make any other major changes to your lifestyle.

The more positive lifestyle changes that you make, the better. The point is that meditation on its own is a very powerful tool.

 

Sitting in silence for 10 or 15 minutes has such a huge impact on your life.

When we're stressed about repaying student loans or giving a big presentation, our bodies produce a hormone called cortisol.

Cortisol is responsible for most of the common negative side effects associated with stress.

Cortisol can impair your memory and increase your blood pressure. It can disrupt your sleep. These things make you feel fatigued and unmotivated.

Cortisol can also lead to depression and chronic anxiety. This can bring your productive lifestyle to a crashing halt.

Luckily, a 2013 study found that meditation (specifically mindfulness meditation) effectively deals with stress by decreasing the negative side effects of cortisol production.

Another study that examined over 1,200 participants found that regular meditation lowered stress more than any medical treatment on the market.

In both of these studies the results were consistent for people of all ages and experience levels. 

No matter whom you are or how much you know about meditation, it can be an incredibly effective way to reduce your stress.

Mediation reduces stress and anxiety.

3. Meditation builds self-esteem

Self-confidence is something that almost everyone struggles with on a daily basis. 

In a world filled with critics and bullies, it can be really difficult to develop and maintain a lasting positive self-image.

Without a strong self-image, you may be struggling every day just to avoid another period of depression.

If this sounds like you, mindfulness meditation can help you build a kind of self-esteem that won't fall apart the next time that something doesn't go your way.

Mindfulness meditation is actually a pretty simple concept. To practice mindfulness all you need to do is bring your complete attention to the present moment.

By focusing exclusively on where you are and who you are; mindfulness can help you stay calm, relaxed and aware.

It can also reduce your anxiety while allowing you to think clearly and rationally.

The ultimate goal of mindfulness meditation is to get you in touch with your senses and emotions. This gives you a deeper understanding of yourself.

A 2005 study showed that this deeper understanding results in the development of positive self-esteem.

In this study researchers had a group of individuals diagnosed with breast cancer practice mindfulness meditation exercises for 12 weeks.

At the start of the study, each participant was tested and showed very low levels of self-esteem but after 12 weeks of meditation, the entire group showed dramatic improvements despite their chronic illness.

While mindfulness meditation does help build self-esteem it's even more effective at stopping your self-esteem from decreasing.

When you experience failure or social rejection you might start having cyclical negative thoughts which can quickly destroy all of the self-esteem that you built up.

These harmful thoughts discourage you from doing the things that make you happy so it's incredibly important to address them before they get out of control.

Mindfulness meditation is a great way to do just that because it offers you the opportunity to bring your attention to the negative thoughts or habits and find ways to correct them.

Improve your self-image.

4. Meditation helps you to avoid depression

Mindfulness meditation has been used as a form of therapy for individuals struggling with depression. 

Not only does it reduce the production of chemicals in our brains associated with depression, but meditation also fosters a more stable emotional mindset by decreasing the presence of unhealthy behaviors.

Brooding, for example, is common among individuals with depression allowing for negative emotions like sadness, anger and self-criticism.

A study by the University of Exeter looked for this kind of behavior in two groups of people who were recovering from depression. 

The first group used only depression medication while the second group practiced mindfulness meditation at least once every day.

The researchers found that about half of the medication group ended up relapsing because of unhealthy behaviors like brooding which prevented the medication from doing its job.

On the other hand, those who practiced meditation were significantly less likely to relapse because they were less likely to engage in any of these depressive behaviors.

If you're hoping to improve your emotional health, mindfulness meditation can be a safe and effective way to cut depression off at the source.

Meditation helps with depression.

5. Meditation increases your attention span

Most people are not able to concentrate on their work for a long amount of time without drifting off. 

Mindfulness meditation can help you to build your attention span.

At first, you will find it harder to concentrate while meditating.

As soon as you have learnt this important skill, you’ll find it so much easier to concentrate on any type of mental work.

The hardest thing about meditation is keeping your mind from wandering.

You're so used to constantly thinking about your work and all of your responsibilities that it can be hard to focus on something simple like your breath or the present moment.

But by practicing this kind of concentration, you're actually increasing your attention span so that you'll be more clear-headed and productive. 

Meditation improves mental output.

Check out more articles from Sparkle Purpose:

16 benefits of laughing

4 miracles of rubbing hands

41 remedies to treat acne scars

Use your subconscious mind to change your life

Your brain is a powerful tool.

We humans have a gifted organ called the brain. The brain is about 15 cm long. It weighs around 1400 grams. 

Some people aren't too sure about the difference between the subconscious and the conscious mind, so I will clarify the difference between the two.

The difference between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind

The physical brain

The physical brain is an organ with no actual muscle tissue (except for the muscle tissue in the middle layer of the arteries that carry blood to the brain).

A new perspective on mental rest

Current research reveals that the brain never stops working. It is active for all 24 hours of the day. 

You might have heard people say, “Let me give my brain some rest” or "take a mental break".

That doesn’t mean that you are asking your brain to sleep or stop working. It simply switches from prioritizing some functions over others. There are many parts of the brain and regular 'mental breaks' help us to keep all of them in good shape.

One part of your brain is active when you look at a beautiful sunset. Another is active when you hold a conversation. Another part of your brain works harder when you think about making a decision or calculate numbers.

We are actually giving certain parts of the brain a period of rest (less activity), instead of complete silence, so that it functions properly in the long term.

Our brain can be divided into two parts: the conscious and the subconscious mind. The brain is only one but the mind is two.

There can often be contradictions.

The subconscious mind has the power to heal your body

There is a strange phenomenon called the placebo effect. This is when people feel better after taking a certain medication, regardless of whether the medication actually helped or not. In these cases, it was actually the subconscious mind that improved the person's health - not the medication itself.

What is the subconscious mind?

Whenever you sleep, walk, talk, eat, drink, laugh, write or breathe; your subconscious mind controls the actions that need to be taken without needing much thought or effort. 

Have you ever wondered whether you could die of suffocation because you forget to breathe? Thankfully, your subconscious mind does all of these repetitive tasks for you. 

Your conscious mind isn't in control of these actions (unless you focus on your breathing like during meditation). These things happen without your need to focus on them because your subconscious is in control of it.

There are some important bodily functions that the subconscious mind handles exclusively (you can't take conscious control of them). Think of your heart beat and what you dream about as good examples.

The subconscious is unseen, but powerful.

What is the conscious mind?

Conscious mind is responsible for deliberate thoughts and actions. It's the little voice that you hear inside your head whenever you think of something.

If I decide to go to the bathroom, my conscious mind decides to initiate the action. My subconscious mind then takes over because I don't need to focus on putting one foot in front of the other in order to get there.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t control your subconscious brain. You can control it. The subconscious mind is, in fact, a powerful tool that you can use to improve your life drastically.

You can use your brain like a tool.

How to control your subconscious mind

1. Meditation
2. Affirmations
3. Believe in yourself
4. Eliminate negative thoughts
5. Avoid words like don’t, no or never

1. Meditation

Meditation is calming, relaxing, peaceful and strangely energizing. Almost everybody has heard about how good mediation is for your mental and physical health, but very few have actually given it a good try. 

You can meditate at almost any place, any time of the day. It has amazing health benefits as well.

2. Listen to positive affirmations (or create some of your own)

Affirmations are designed to train your brain to think along certain pathways. Listening to positive affirmations is a very powerful and easy way to take control of your subconscious mind. It brings positivity and a sense of accomplishment to your mind and helps you to think along the lines of whatever you want to achieve.

3. Believe in yourself

After reading the power of your subconscious mind, what I’ve realized is that unless you believe in yourself; you won’t be good at something. To achieve anything you should have blind faith in yourself - and in your subconscious brain's ability to complete the task.

4. Eliminate negative thoughts

You might have seen people saying that they don’t like do this or that they don’t like that. Have you ever noticed that people who don't like something seem to struggle with that very same thing?

If you don't like people who raise their voice, you will notice more people doing it. If we focus on the negative, we open our mental eyes up that that negativity and will start to see it everywhere. If you tell yourself that you are tired, you will become even more tired because things get bigger when you focus on them.

5. Try to avoid negative words like don’t, no or never

Don't think of ice cream!

Did you think of ice cream? If you wanted to avoid thinking of ice cream, try thinking about your favorite fruit instead.

As soon as you try to avoid something mentally, your brain will fixate on it because it perceives that as a danger. If you say an affirmation like 'I am not tired. I am not tired. I am not tired', you will feel more tired. 'Tired' is the keyword that goes into your subconscious. Try a positive variation like 'energized' instead.

Invest in your brain.

Closing comments

I'd like to thank SA Spotters readers and Saguren Redyrs for reading my words. I hope that this information has helped you. Wishing for your good health:

Utkarsh Sharma:

Director of Sparkle Purpose

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