One of the reasons why meditation has gotten so popular these days is that more and more successful people are talking about how meditation is a part of their success. As it becomes more popular, there are more scientists that are inspired to find out the science behind meditation and its effect on your mind and body. Previously in another blog post, I have focused on how meditation can change your brain. In this blog post, I will talk more broadly and cover meditation’s effect on your body.
Meditation Helps Relax Your Mind, Which Relaxes Your Body
The tension in your body has a lot to do with the emotional state you are at. If you are feeling very stressful, it is no surprise to find your shoulders and neck really tight. Meditation is a great tool for make your mind clear. By making your mind clear, it is a natural result that your mind will be more relaxed because, with a clear mind, you will no longer see problems bigger than they really are. There is also a special type of meditation called body scan meditation that may even help you relax your body’s tension more. Yet, I actually find that both breath meditation and mantra meditation are pretty effective in relaxing my body and preventing my body from getting tension.
Meditation Improve Your Breathing
For those of you that practice breath meditation, there is a good chance that you are improving your breath without yourself actually noticing it. By improving your breathing, I simply mean that your breath will get smoother and deeper. That just comes from the observing of your own breath when you meditate. For people who practice mantra meditation like myself, I don’t think I would enjoy this nice bonus benefit of meditation.
The Sense of Touch is Improved by Regular Meditation
There are studies that show the sense of touch is improved by practicing meditation regularly. Your sense of touch may affects the way you play the piano or do other things that require accurate finger movements.
Lower Risk of Heart Stroke or Heart Attack
There are studies that show that there is a correlation between meditation and the chance of having heart stroke. The studies show that there is a tendency for meditators to have a lower risk of suffering heart stroke or heart attack. This may be an indirect result of the way meditation can help you reduce your stress.
Mediation Can Improve Your Immune System
Studies show that meditation can improve your immune system due to the fact that it allows you to be in a calmer state. What meditation does to me and many other is that it can avoid me from getting too high or too low emotionally. Some people may have something to say about the not getting too high part. Doesn’t it take away some of the fun in life if meditate avoid you too get too excited. I would argue that excitement is not the highest form of happiness. The peace and sense of fulfilment that meditation can bring to you can make you a lot of more happier. It is a different form of happiness. This is a more long-lasting and consistent kind of happiness that are reversed for the calm and peaceful people.
The Placebo Effect
Since this blog post is about meditation and your body, it is really worth mentioning something that has been studied and proved yet not everyone hears it believe its existence. That controversial theory is the called the placebo effect. It’s hard to describe what placebo effect is without providing an example. Let’s assume that there is a patient that suffers a type of serious illness. If the doctor tells him that he is going to let him try a new expensive medicine that has just heeled his previous patient, the patient has a good chance to recover better, even if the pills the doctor gave the patient are just Vitamin pills. In other words, if your mind think that you are doing something that works, it will work. It almost suggests that your mind have a little bit of power to control the healing of your body.
Irony Caused by The Placebo Effect & Meditation
From the earlier part of this piece of writing, I have already list out some ways that meditation can help our bodies. I would argue that those effects are mainly results of a clear and calm mind which causes us to reduce stress. Some people, on the other hand, may argue that this whole thing is placebo effect. In order words, since we believe that meditation can help our health, our mind our believe comes true. Although I am not a supporter of this argument, I think that it is as possible as my believed version. I don’t think science can soon gives us all the answers we want about meditation in near future, but whether meditation improves our health due to stress reduction or placebo effect really don’t matter that much, as long as it works somehow. In fact, even if meditation has zero effect on our body and health, it doesn’t matter too. Being able to have a clear mind due to meditation is already a very nice benefit.
Meditation & Survivor’s Bias
Since I have touched on placebo effect already, I think some of you may be interested in a similarly interesting topic. Some people think that meditation is labelled as something very good and useful due to survivor’s bias. For example, while there is one successful entrepreneur that says meditation is a big part of his or her success, there can be ten failed entrepreneurs that says they have practiced meditations and it is useless. We would of course only be able to hear about the story about the successful entrepreneur because he or she is the one that got all the interviews. There is probably even tons of books written about the secret tips of their success. I think that’s actually how I learn about meditation the first time. Of course, right now, I am at a point where I have practiced years of meditation and I can objectively see my mind being more clear and calm. I am just making this point so that you can see that many things said about meditation can easily be false.