Top 5 Benefits of Meditation & Mindfulness
HPC Health & Wellness Blog
Top 5 Benefits of Meditation & Mindfulness
Some might surprise you…
by Dr. Drew Shelton, 12/04/2024
Meditation used to invoke images that went a little something like this: a Buddhist Monk, sitting cross-legged on a rock, for hours, in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. Not anymore!
Meditation is no longer just for the monks, it’s for the masses, and it might not look like what you think.
Let’s take a walk down mindfulness lane, and explore some of the key benefits of meditation. It may be just the change of pace your body and mind need.
Here are the Top 5 Benefits of mindfulness meditation:
1) Reduce Stress
Stress is more than just a buzzword.
It’s a very real physiological response in the body to both short-term and chronic stressors.
Stress can be measured in the body.
Cortisol goes up. Blood pressure goes up. Blood sugar increases. Sleep quality goes down. Pain levels increase. The list goes on.
A 2017 review of almost 50 independent studies suggests a daily mindfulness / meditation practice helps decrease the physiological markers of stress in the body.
2) Helps Control Pain
Chiropractic isn’t the only way you can start to navigate away from pain.
Research continues to emerge showing meditation and mindfulness can help lower chronic pain levels.
Pain isn’t tangible. You can’t put it on a digital scale and measure how much it weighs.
Pain doesn’t become real until the brain processes the pain signal. Training your brain can help the brain learn how to better process pain signals.
3) Improves Sleep
Who doesn’t want a good night’s sleep?
Better sleep has been shown to offer a host of far ranging benefits. From lowering stress hormones to improving mood, a good night’s sleep is often just what the doctor ordered.
Meditation can help us manage our “monkey mind”. Racing thoughts and the inability to settle our brain can often lead to delayed onset of sleep, and dreaded pre-sleep pillow time. Meditation can help soothe a busy mind, ultimately improving our transition into dream land.
If you find yourself starting at the ceiling, trying to sort through all of life’s problems, consider adding meditation to your daily self-care routine.
4) Helps Manage Addiction
Addiction is a complex process. Meditation alone isn’t necessarily the solution. However, meditation has shown positive benefits to those recovering from addiction (or those still considering squashing their addictive tendencies).
Addiction is a brain based phenomenon. While part of addiction lives in the body, it’s often flawed thought patterns that continue leading us back to the hot stove of addiction. Maybe this time it won’t burn me? Ow! Nope, still hot.
Meditation helps to settle the mind, and offer clarity of thought. A daily meditation practice can be foundational to long term recovery.
5) Controls Anxiety
Modern life is a beehive of anxiety. Finances. Taxes. Car insurance. Mortgage payments. Flashing screen. Diets. Social engagements. What my in-laws think of my parenting practices.
So many things can induce anxiety.
Melting away the anxiety of modern life may just call for an old-school remedy. Ancient philosophers and the likes of Jesus himself both knew what quiet mindfulness and contemplation could offer (aka meditation).
Meditation has been shown to lower anxiety scores in individuals suffering from anxiety.
While so many facets of life are fleeting and chaotic, you can always come back to your breath.
Nature is a great place to practice mindfulness/meditate.
Up Next: “I tried meditating, it’s not for me…”
A commonly expressed opinion surrounding meditation is that it, “didn’t work for me,” or, “my mind is too busy to meditate”.
That’s like saying I’m not flexible enough to stretch, or I’m too out of shape to go to the gym! Start small. You may be too stiff to do certain stretches, or you may be too ‘out of shape’ to do certain exercises at the gym. Rome was not built in a day. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. “Insert other proverb here”.
Over time you can build a meditation practice just like flexibility or strength. The more you put in, the more you get out. Don’t let fear keep you from walking toward a better version of yourself.
In our next post, we dive deeper into strategies to make meditation more accessible, sustainable, and effective.