Mindfulness meditation bring multiple benefits to mental health

Mindfulness meditation brings a variety of benefits to our mental health. Scientific research confirmed that it creates immediate changes as well as long term benefits to our brain and physical health. Let’s look at how all this works and see what are the practical benefits of practicing mindfulness and meditation to our brain, body, and spirit.

Mindfulness meditation improves Concentration

Regular meditation improves concentration and attention

The practice of Mindfulness meditation involves bringing your attention repeatedly to the same object of attention, which is usually the breath or the body. This simple practice acts as mental training, improving our ability to stay focused over a period of time. It’s training that allows you to resist the automatic negative intrusive thoughts and decide where you want your attention to go.

When any thoughts arise, the goal is to gently acknowledge them and re-direct the attention back to the breath. Whenever we become aware of thought crossing our mind, we are being mindful because we are consciously aware that the mind stopped focusing on the breath and is thinking about something else. This process creates a balance in our mental state. (1)

Dr. Kabbat Zinn introduced the practice of Mindfulness Meditation in North America. He started teaching meditation to the patients experiencing chronic pain at the Massachusetts hospital. Due to the success achieved with this practice, it spread towards other departments and is now taught in hospitals all across North America, to patients who suffer anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders for its demonstrated benefits.

Read about anxiety in children.

Dr. Kabbat Zinn describes the benefits that mindfulness meditation brings to the brain in this short video.

Mindfulness meditation is good for your Mental Health

As you meditate, each time you redirect your wondering mind to your breath, you are strengthening your “brain muscle”, in a similar way that doing weights tones your arms muscles.

A healthy brain has the power to decide where to focus on. On the other hand, a weak mind can wander with no control and take the wanderer to unwanted places that leave them feeling negative, sad, and frustrated. Not being in control of where our thoughts go, bring numerous difficulties, from time management problems to social problems and mental health problems.

All mental health disorders have roots in our thoughts. Thoughts that people cannot control and can become the default ones, can become obsessions or distorted ways of thinking.

Mindfulness meditation is an excellent complement to psychotherapy because in therapy clients learn ways to challenge the unhelpful thoughts that create their suffering and meditation help them train their mind to be more aware and in control of their thoughts and to decide where they want to focus their mind when the unwanted thoughts pop up.

The regular practice of meditation produces actual changes in the structure of the brain as it correlates with higher attention, concentration, and memory.

This video by Scientific American describes the changes that happen in the brain.

Mindfulness brings inner peace and relaxation

Meditation teaches practitioners to think, feel, and act more compassionately towards oneself and others. It promotes the idea of openness, creating chances in how your experience relates to others. Most people start to become aware of events as they are occurring, and able to experience being in the present moment. This brings an attitude of acceptance and the ability to embrace our own reality. As we become more aware of our thoughts and more in control of our attention, we are more mindful of how we relate to others.

A new space for reflection starts to open up and it gives us a pause to stop the automatic reactions. Instead of our tendency to judge situations or people, we develop a new response and the tendency to feel compassion for others. As we practice, we learn to be gentle with ourselves each time our mind has wandered. This repeated kindness and acceptance towards ourselves creates a sense of safety and relaxation. After practicing for a few minutes, people tend to achieve a state of relaxation. However, some days we are more restless than others and that is normal. Is part of life to experience different emotional and mental states. It is interesting to observe with an attitude of curiosity what unfolds as we practice meditation. You may notice that one day, the meditation practice seems to “flow.”

However, other days it feels difficult to keep the concentration. A stream of thoughts seems to continue to come and is difficult to have them stop. This is natural. In order to practice meditation, you don’t need to be in a special state. You will just observe as if you were a researcher trying to better understand the human brain. So you will observe without judgment what you see happening as you practice. (2)

Types of meditation practices

a.There are different types of meditation practices. One type is the Concentration Meditation which focuses on a specific object typically the breath (Vipassana). There are also practices that focus on the body (body scan) and practices that focus on bringing loving-kindness feelings into the heart. This decreases the heart rate, metabolism, and lowers blood pressure promoting a relaxation response that makes any stress evaporate from the body and heart. These practices can be done sitting or lying down. (1)

b.There are other practices that involve movements, such as mindful walking and mindful movement.

In these practices, we bring attention to our body as well as to our breath. We will notify the mechanics of our body, internal sensations, and develop an awareness of all the steps that are involved in making each little movement.

c. Since mindfulness meditation started to be used in Western cultures, and in order to facilitate the practice, several meditations with visualization emerged. These meditations tend to help people better understand what are we trying to do with our thoughts during meditation. Examples of these practices are imagining that your thoughts are taken by the flow of a river, or fly like leaves. The research found that the visualization approach to meditation increase self-awareness, mindfulness, and decreases anxiety. (3)

There are also visualizations that can be used once the person is in a meditative state to connect with their inner wisdom and inner peace.

How can I start practicing meditation?

If you want to start practicing meditation, since it will be a new habit, it helps to plan a series of small daily steps. You can start by practicing just a few minutes a day until you feel that you are too distracted to continue. As you practice a few minutes each day, you will start to feel more at ease with the process and your ability to focus will increase as well. The most important thing to do is to plan to do it daily, regardless of how long it will be. This will create a routine and you will know that at this time of the day, is your time to meditate. As your capacity for concentration increases, your periods of time for meditation will increase too.

Research shows that 12-20 minutes of meditation practice a day are enough to experience its benefits. You can practice meditation at home, at work, while you are on the bus, or in nature. Any place is good to just close your eyes and focus on your breath. This will create a pause in your busy day and allow you to stop running on automatic pilot.

Just a few minutes a day can make a difference in making you feel more grounded and present as your days go by and as the night comes, you will not feel as tired or exhausted if you took the time to pause and meditate or to bring mindfulness into your actions.

Additional Reading:

References:

1.Neale, M.I. (2007). Mindfulness meditation: An integration of perspectives from Buddhism, science and clinical psychology
2. Dibert, F. (2009). Mindfulness, compassion, and the nature of the self: A study of vipassana meditation in the context
3.Margolin, I., Pierce, J., & Wiley, A. (2011). “Wellness through a creative lens: Meditation and visualization”: Erratum. Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought, 30(4), 422

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