What Is Meditation?
“Meditate” comes to us from the Latin word meditari, which means “to think about or consider”. Med is the root of this word and means “to take appropriate measures”. In the dictionary, the word meditation means to reflect
To me, meditation means to turn inwards. You are fully awake and focused but your mind is not focused on the external world, it is focused on the inside. It is focused on your inside world.
Meditation is the act of becoming present. Focusing on the present moment and fully being aware of the present moment. Not letting your thoughts think about what you have to do today, just focusing on right now.
Meditation is not stopping and controlling your thoughts, that is impossible, because we think 70,000 thoughts a day, the point of meditation is to stop allowing your thoughts to control you.
This is the key to true enlightenment
How Do You Meditate?
Beginner Meditation
1.Get Comfortable
2.Sit in a chair with your back as straight as it can be
3. Count from 100 to 0. Then from 50 to 0
4. While counting, if thoughts that take you off course pop into your head, just let it go like a passing cloud.
Advanced Meditation
1.Get Comfortable
2. Sit in a chair with your back as straight as you can be. (You can lay down but I do not recommend it because you might fall asleep.)
3. Focus on each of your body parts one by one, starting from your feet all the way up to the top of your head.(Taking at least 10 seconds on each body part, trying to relaxing it, as much as you can)
4. Then focus on your breath, coming in and out of your body. Focus on the breath in and the breath out.
PRO TIP: I recommend doing the meditation the whole time while breathing not from your chest but from your diagram(stomach)
If you are new to meditation then start out just doing it for 5 minutes and then every day increasing it by one minute. I like to meditate every morning for 30 minutes. That is enough time for me.
Every famous person in history practices some type of meditation because they realize how powerful it is.
Here’s the benefits of meditation:
1.Reduced Stress
When you first start to meditate, you will feel like things that normally stressed you out, no longer do anymore. Meditating keeps you at a more calm relaxed state, things don’t bother you as much anymore.
Your stress is reduced because your grey matter and cortical thickness increases
2. Reduced Anxiety
Meditation decreases the size of your amygdala. Amygdala is known as the “fight or flight” center, where anxious and fearful emotions stem from, decreases in brain cell volume after meditation.
You will be able to control your anxiety much better. I started over a year ago practicing meditation because of my anxiety. Having high anxiety was a new feeling for me, so my first response was to trying to get rid of it and at least decrease it. So my good friend recommended to me, that I start meditating. After the first couple times of meditation, I didn’t notice any real benefits, but it wasn’t until I started to meditate daily, when I felt the real benefits.
A lot of people have generalized anxiety, where you are just anxious about being anxious, so when you meditate, you tap in this and get down to the real why you are anxious in the first place. When you are able to sit with your emotions without distracting yourself, that is when real progressed is made.
If I could rate how anxious I feel from 1-10 before I started meditating, I would say it was a 9. I was always just anxious about being anxious. Now it’s probably at a 1 or 2 at most. Meditation will decrease your anxiety or even get rid of it for good.
3. Increased Awareness
Your awareness keeps growing and growing through meditation. You will become to see things for what they really are. This truly puts you in an advantage against everyone who doesn’t meditate.
You will begin to see pass all the lies you were told and all things that people do. Meditation really does open your third eye. Your awareness will be so raw that it will feels like you do have a third eye to help you see things better. Also it helps you see pass all the bullsh*t
4. Increased Focus, Mental Clarity, & Memory
You will feel more focused when performing a task. Also when you are performing a task, you will have more mental clarity, for becoming able to come up with clear decisions.
Also if you are a student and are taking a test, you will be able to recall things from your long term and short memory for taking an exam. When taking an exam, students can’t remember a lot of what they studied because they aren’t thinking clear. Their brain is too clouded, so when you clear up these clouds and start thinking clear, that is when you are able to recall things from your memory, that you encoded while studying. Even at work, you feel much more focused on the task at hand.
5. Improved Sleep
The improved sleep is correlated with the reduced anxiety, a lot of people who can’t fall asleep at night is because they have a lot of anxiety and late night anxious thought patterns. Meditation helps you allow you to have less anxious thoughts, helping you fall asleep and stay asleep.
Meditation improves the most important of the brain region for sleep. There is a dreamtime chemical called “Pons” and meditation builds up a big and strong sleep center “Pons”
Many doctors have said that meditation is the all-in-one remedy for fighting insomnia and even overcoming insomnia.
So now that your sleep is better, you will wake up feeling much more refreshed and energized.
6. Improved Mood & Happiness
Meditation can lower the amount of cortisol in the body. Cortisol is known as the stress hormone. Less cortisol, less stress, more happiness.
Researchers showed that people who meditate are able to lower their amount of daydreaming. When we do too much daydreaming, we tend to worry more and come up with “what if” scenarios in our heads. This then creates a lot of worrying for you. When you don’t daydream as much, you tend to be more happier because you are more present. Being present is the key to happiness.
Meditation also relieve symptoms of depression, very similar to antidepressants. Less depression, less worry, so more happiness and peace.
7. Fights Addictions
It helps you experience, observe, and detach from your addiction cravings without acting it the cravings.
I used to be addicted to caffeine, I would take caffeine pills and energy drinks everyday but when I started to meditate, I didn’t feel the cravings as much.
I also used to be addicted to video games, but I slowly quit without reason. I just became to observe my life and what is holding me back from achieving higher levels in life, and I figured out what was holding me back from fully immersing in my career and dreams.
A lot of people who are addicted to things, it is because there was high stress levels that kicked off their addiction. For an example, people who are addicted to alcohol is probably because they were stressed or depressed, so they turned to alcohol to relieve that negative feeling. They used alcohol as a coping tool, so a person who meditates will be able to handle stress much better.
8. Control Of Emotions
Here’s the best thing about meditation, it forces you to be with your emotions. A lot people try and run away from their emotions. Causing the emotions to come back even stronger then before. When you sit with your emotions with no distractions, you really can come to grip with your emotions. When you do this, you either realize that these emotions you feel are just figments of your imagination or you realize how you can solve the problem that is causing the emotions, relieving you from that emotion.
Sitting in silence with your emotion with no judgement of thought, that is when you overcome these emotions. Trying to avoid these emotions will only make them worse. Most of the time when you sit with these emotions long enough, you will realize that YOU are the main factor that caused your emotions. No one can make you feel a certain way but you. People can try to induce these feelings but you are the one responsible for the way you feel.
9. Reduce Of Anger & Aggression
All of these benefits complement each other. Controlling your emotions will help you feel less angry and aggressive towards things that you can’t control. Also feeling less stressed and at peace, you will feel less angry and impulsive and randomly lashing out.
When someone cuts you off in traffic, you won’t feel the urge to slam on the horn and give that person the bird. You will feel less impulsive when normally in that same situation, you would be lashing out.
When you meditate, it reduces symptoms that normally make people angry, like blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing rate, these will all be at a low, relaxed level. Meditation will help you always be calm and relaxed.
Now, you still may get angry at times because we are human, but you won’t be getting angry for no reason.
10. Increased Creativity & Imagination
Here’s the thing, everything you think about and say is just things you heard and seen from someone else. The only way new ideas and inventions come into play is when the mind is still and the easiest way to get you mind to be still is practicing meditation.
Walt Disney Company uses meditation in the workplace, they noticed an increase of creativity after employees meditated.
Daily meditation enhances your psychological resilience(ability to bounce back from difficult experiences), enabling you to have less stress, regulate your emotions, and have a more positive outlook so that you can bounce back from setbacks.
Creative juices is a “whole brain” function. Albert Einstein was a creative genius right? Well according to Dr. Joseph E. Bogen, when scientist looks at his brain surface they found his corpus callosum(the 200 million nerve fibers connecting the right and left brain hemispheres together) was thick and well connected. Meditating helps to strengthen and upgrade your corpus callosum. It makes it bigger, and stronger, just like Albert Einstein’s.
Meditation helps you tap into your creativity.
Meditating every single day will change your life, you will get to experience these 10 benefits and many more. These are the ones that are worth to mention and will have the most impact on your life.
Start today, it won’t cost you a single dime.
Wolf Wisdom Empire 