Meditation's Health Benefits
Meditation can have big health benefits. Sitting alone in a quiet room might give you more than a peaceful moment to yourself. That pause in your day could also help you reduce stress, ease anxiety, lower blood pressure, improve immune function or lift your mood. Such health changes may be possible through meditation, a centuries-old spiritual practice that's gaining attention in the 21st century for tangible, not mystical, reasons.
Although science and spirit seem unlikely partners, Western medicine is increasingly considering the benefits of using meditation in conjunction with traditional drugs or other therapies to heal modern woes.
"A lot of hospitals have programs now as a complementary treatment for conditions," says researcher Kimberly Williams, PhD, assistant professor in community medicine at West Virginia University in Morgantown. Studies have found positive results for meditation's use to support treatment for both physical and psychological ills, she adds.
Yet meditation is no quick fix. It takes time to develop the technique, and you have to practice regularly.
What's more, there are different types of meditation. All share certain traits, such as taking a comfortable position, focusing attention and ignoring distractions. Among the various meditation approaches, the practice known as mindfulness meditation—sometimes simply called "mindfulness"—has emerged as the method gaining the most notice for helping to improve health.
Achieving mindfulness
When we think of meditation, many of us still envision people meditating while repetitively murmuring a word like "om." This mantra, or specific focus, is at the core of concentration meditations. In these modes, distractions are mentally pushed away.
In mindfulness, or insight meditation, meditators focus awareness on their present experience without judging or ignoring distractions. They note their breathing and physical sensations as well as random sounds, feelings and thoughts. "You just watch what arises...stay with it as long as it is there and let it go," Dr. Williams says. "The meditator can watch and keep that witnessing perspective."
