If you’re new to the idea of meditation, it can be a good idea to educate yourself about its many benefits. Read on to learn about 7 reasons to start practicing meditation.
1. Health benefits
It has been proven that practicing meditation has lots of health benefits. Studies reveal that meditation can help improve both physical and mental health. Many people claim that meditation is a great way to help reduce stress. Reduced stress levels helps lower your blood pressure and helps reduce your risk of suffering from other physical health problems, e.g heart disease. It’s also known to help improve mental health problems like depression and anxiety.
2. An increased sense of self-awareness
Meditation allows you to have an increased sense of self-awareness. It helps you discover a bit more about who you really are. In a way, it’s about being aware of what you’re really about. When you’ve discovered your real self, you’ll then begin to understand more about your purpose in life.
3. Inner peace
Nowadays, most people live very busy lives. This makes it almost impossible for anyone to experience peace and quiet. The good news is that practicing meditation can help you experience periods of real inner peace. Meditation helps you learn how to calm your mind, and find peace within yourself. This rarely happens straight away, but with practice you’ll begin to enjoy some peaceful experiences.
4. Happiness
Meditation helps you connect with who you really are. When you’ve got to know yourself better, you’ll enjoy your own company more and be closer to experiencing true happiness. Practicing meditation allows you to experience peace and happiness without having to constantly rely on external people or conditions.
5. Helps simplify your life
Practicing meditation helps you learn how to simplify your life. Most importantly, it helps you understand that you can experience pure joy and happiness out of living a simple life.
According to one spiritual master Chinmoy Kumar Ghose, also known as Sri Chinmoy, “Meditation simplifies our outer life and energizes our inner life. Meditation gives us a natural and spontaneous life, a life that becomes so natural and spontaneous that we cannot breathe without being conscious of our own divinity.”
6. Live in and appreciate the present moment
Many people’s minds are filled with thoughts about the past or the future. You may often find yourself dwelling on the past or worried about the future. It’s important to understand that when your mind is on the past or the future it stops you you from engaging with, and appreciating your life as it’s happening right now. Meditation helps you appreciate and give importance to what’s in the ‘here and now’. It teaches you to live your life in the present moment, and let go of habitual worries and fears.
7. Improved relationships
Often, relationship problems arise from petty misunderstandings. Some people dwell on small issues, which may only lead to bigger conflicts and unhappiness. Meditation allows you to notice more about what’s good, instead of dwelling on minor faults. It helps you develop a sense of real connection, and teaches you how to nurture your relationships. Most importantly, it helps you learn how to give less importance to small issues and focus more on building better relationships instead.
It’s useful to learn about the many other benefits of meditation, as reminders for you to make the time to do some. Keep in mind that meditation is a skill to be learned and mastered. Like any useful skill it’s better to find good teachers to learn from. With an experienced guide you’ll get more of the benefits from meditation more quickly than fumbling through the learning process on your own.
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