September 25, 2019
How do we balance the pressures of life while maintaining a meaningful, healthy connection with ourselves? It’s a tough question, and one that a meditation practice, focusing on mindfulness, could help to answer. So, how can adding Mindfulness Meditation to your routine benefit you?
Sleep
We hear it often – we’re not getting enough sleep. If you struggle with this, Mindfulness Meditation can help. According to a 2015 study by the American Medical Association, adults who had been diagnosed with sleep disturbances found that practicing meditation had a significant short-term improvement in their sleep quality. This leads to “reducing sleep-related daytime impairment that has implications for quality of life.”
Focus
Mindfulness meditation includes practices and techniques that cultivate focused attention, awareness of present moment, and a calm understanding of the mind.
Researchers at Science Direct show that even four consecutive days of brief meditation led to improved ability to sustain attention, improvements in working memory and function as well as reduction in anxiety and fatigue.
A Science Daily study found that even a single, 1-hour session has be proven to help reduce anxiety.
Pain Management
For those suffering with chronic pain, Mindfulness Meditation can be an important tool to improving daily life. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), a therapy that combines mindfulness meditation and yoga, has been found to result in significant improvements in pain, anxiety, well-being and ability to participate in daily activities.
The University of Massachusetts Medical School has been studying MBSR and states “Our work over the past thirty-five years has shown consistent, reliable, and reproducible demonstrations of major and clinically relevant reductions in medical and psychological symptoms across a wide range of medical diagnoses, including many different chronic pain conditions, other medical diagnoses and in medical patients with a secondary diagnosis of anxiety and/or panic, over the eight weeks of the MBSR intervention, and maintenance of these changes in some cases for up to four years of follow-up.”
Meditation has many benefits, including helping to address physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual imbalances. Soon, SmartHealth for will be providing Mindfulness Meditation resources that you can use to improve your daily life.
Come and explore the ancient tradition of cultivating awareness. A more mindful life requires only that you practice.
Resources:
https://www.umassmed.edu/cfm/mindfulness-based-programs/mbsr-courses/about-mbsr/history-of-mbsr/
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2110998
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810010000681
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180423135048.htm
https://psychcentral.com/blog/10-surprising-health-benefits-of-mindfulness-meditation/
