How Does Meditation Help With Stress?

Stress can be understood as the state of mental tension that people experience when facing default situations. It is a natural response meant to help people respond promptly to threats and challenges that characterize our lives. Therefore, everyone experiences some degree of stress from time to time. Short bursts of stress can be helpful since they can help you tackle your challenges more swiftly. However, stress, if not managed properly, can be harmful to your health, especially if lasts for an extended period.

The good news is that there are many ways of managing and relieving stress, meditation being one of the most popular ones. Here is everything you need to know about how meditation reduces stress.

How Meditation Helps with Stress

In extremely dangerous situations, stress can be helpful since it prepares your body to fight or run. However, as mentioned above, a prolonged state of mental and physical tension can be detrimental to your overall health. On the other hand, meditation has the effect of triggering the body's relaxation response. Indeed, meditation is quite effective in calming the body, repairing it, and protecting it from further damage after a burst of stress. In a nutshell, practicing meditation can help you:

• Enhance self-awareness

• Reduce negative emotions

• Get a new perspective on the issue that is causing your stress

• Focus of the present

• Sleep better

• Improve your stress management skills

Types of Meditation

Meditation is a collection of techniques used to achieve a relaxed mental state. Some of the most common types of meditation include:

Guided Meditation

In this kind of meditation, you have to create mental images of the situations or places you find relaxing. You will have to use senses, such as smell, texture, sights, and sounds, in doing so. You may need to be led by a teacher or a guide.

Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness meditation is based on increasing your awareness of yourself and your surroundings and accepting to live in the present moment. Although you can observe your emotions and thoughts, you will be required to let them pass without judgment.

Mantra Meditation

This kind of meditation involves silently repeating a given phrase, thought, or word to prevent thoughts that can distract you.

Yoga

Yoga essentially involves practicing a series of postures and breathing exercises with the aim of calming your mind in addition to making your body more flexible.

Qi Gong

Qi Gong is a gentle Chinese healing art that involves performing a series of movements and postures slowly and gracefully while taking deep, controlled breaths.

How to Practice Meditation Every Day

Meditating the right way may look like an intimidating task. However, you should never allow the urge to meditate in a particular way to prevent you from meditating at all. While there is nothing wrong with attending meditation groups or classes, you can practice meditation on your own or with the help of some mobile applications. Here is a rundown of how you can practice meditation on your own.

Breathing Deeply

Breathing is a simple meditation technique since breathing is a natural process and anyone can do it without any training or guidance. You just have to breathe slowly and deeply as you concentrate on the sound and feeling of air passing through the nostrils. When your thoughts wander, you should gently focus back on your breathing.

Meditating While Walking

You can also practice meditation when walking. You just have to stop thinking about your destination and focus on every movement your legs make. You can then match the movements with words such as lifting, moving, and placing. Alternatively, you can focus on the sights, smells, and sounds around you.

Reading and Reflecting

Reading poems and sacred texts and taking time to think about their meaning can also go a long way in helping the mind and body to relax, meaning that it can also be an effective meditation technique. It is similar to listening to relaxing music or spoken word.

Scanning Your Body

This meditation method essentially involves focusing your thoughts on your whole body or some parts of the body. This should allow you to become more aware of your body's sensations, including warmth, pain, relaxation, or tension. As you scan your body, you can breathe deeply and imagine inhaling relaxation into the various parts of your body.

The Bottom Line

As you can see, meditation is an effective tool for fighting stress. Indeed, ten minutes of meditation daily will go a long way in helping you relieve stress and prevent the damage chronic stress can cause to your body.