Listen to “Meditation as a Solution for Anxiety and Depression”.
Just 30 minutes of meditation a day can improve symptoms of anxiety and depression, according to a new Johns Hopkins analysis of previously published research.
Meditation helps to reduce stress and fatigue and is helpful for people who suffer from chronic anxiety, insomnia and generalized anxiety disorder.
When used properly, meditation allows you to slow down and observe the world without judgment. If you live with generalized anxiety disorder, meditation can also help you to stay balanced, calm and focused, while relieving the stress caused by worry.
A common misconception people have is that meditation means merely sitting down and doing nothing. This is far from true. In reality, meditation is an active training of the mind aimed at increasing awareness, and different meditation programs approach this in different ways.
One of the earliest methods for learning how to follow our thoughts is mindfulness training. This is the act of sitting calmly and concentrating on your breathing. Once you have mindful awareness of what your thoughts are, you will then be able to observe what they are without reacting to them.
Mindfulness meditation is based on the idea of paying attention to your inner experiences. These can be thoughts, sensations or emotions. Anything that passes through the mind is the internal stimuli that you’re paying attention to.
“My thoughts are not myself.”
Ideally, with enough practice, you’ll learn to create a space between negative thoughts and your reactions and see them as distinct objects from yourself. This will allow you to develop a layer of separation that will give you more freedom to respond to thoughts and better deal with them.
How to start practising meditation?
Here are some easy steps to follow to start meditation today:
- Sit upright in a chair and place your feet flat on the floor.
- Start paying close attention to your breath. Don’t try to change how you’re breathing; just observe your body as you inhale and exhale.
- You might feel compelled to shift your focus elsewhere. Resist this urge and continue to focus on your breathing.
- Anxious thoughts may pass through your mind. This is completely natural. Acknowledge them, but then bring attention back to your breathing.
- Continue this quiet, nonjudgmental observation for about 10 minutes.
- Open your eyes and notice how you feel. Don’t evaluate, just observe.
Meditation will help you to observe the world around you from a distance. Gradually, as you notice yourself observing rather than reacting to stressful situations or fears, you’ll see the real impact mediation can have on your life.
This meditative practise may soon spill into other areas of your life.
If you find it difficult to meditate without any support, you can try DeepH App Meditations. The app has a specially designed section to help you access meditative states through the transformative power of sound.
