‘Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.’ This is a very true saying as quoted by Confucius. It seems stress has become a daily trauma, which does not allow us to enjoy the small joys of life and leaves us drained out completely, by the end of the day. Mental stress is the leading cause of ailments in today’s world. According to statistics, more than 40% of psychosomatic diseases are related to stress. So how do you find an effective way to bring down these stress levels in your life? Meditation is the answer. There cannot be a simpler and faster way to reduces stress than meditating.

Photo by Moyan Brenn, CC BY 2.0

How does Meditation Work?

Whenever our mind and body are subjected to a great amount of stress or we are confronted with a threatening situation, there is a physiological ‘fight or flight response’. This means that there is release of certain hormones that shoot up our blood pressure, pulse rate and heart rate. If you notice, you will realize that you are breathing faster with a pounding heart and sweating. Your muscles will also be tighter. Meditation is a practice that makes our bodies ready to fight back this reaction. It is a relaxation procedure that one can master through daily practice. It trains our body and mind to keep calm during stressful circumstances. As a result, stress of a hectic and demanding lifestyle will be unable to harm to your body in a longer run.

Practicing meditation

Lifestyle stress rises to enormous amounts these days, enough to drive us to insanity sometimes. Meditation is the simple way of staying sane. We cannot stop the stress from arising. As we live in this world, there are social concepts of family, work, employment, relationships and many more that we have to follow. Too many desires with too little time to fulfill them lead to stress. Practice meditation on a regular basis. As little as 10 minutes of daily meditation is also good to reduce anxiety and stress levels by a great deal. There are various methods of meditation propagated by experts. It is as simple as ‘Sitting up straight, closing your eyes and concentrating on a positive mantra recitation or focusing on a distant point source of light or anything as chosen by the practitioner’. Distractions have to be felt like clouds passing by, floating but leaving you untouched. It is all about practice. Anyone can master this art and feel the mind becoming empty gradually. It is very rightly quoted by Osho Maharaj about meditation- ‘As you become more and more deeply rooted about witnessing your own mind as a watcher, thoughts start disappearing; You are, but your mind is utterly empty’. That state of mind leaves you relaxed and purified.

Why is it so important to meditate?

It is necessary to break the cycle of stress and anxiety. As stress increases, it accelerates anxiety levels, and as anxiety scales up, it brings in more stress. Imagine yourself entangled in a tense situation, where you are required to live up to high work pressure, completing deadlines and getting newer deadlines each day. This kind of working completely disrupts your inner peace and you do not even have the time to heal your traumatized mind. Ultimately, our body gives way to such intense and vigorous mental tortures and small micro-trauma accumulates growing into a bigger health issue one day.

Meditation is the perfect secret to overcome such stress-related problems. It is very unnerving and relaxing. On the plus side, it has other advantages like; it doesn’t need any specialized equipment. It neither is expensive at all. You can meditate almost anywhere and everywhere. Isn’t that amazing and tempting at the same time? What it calls for is just a short daily practice session that will help your mind to tread in the right direction.

Meditation gives you a chance to sit back and watch your thought processes as an outsider. It spreads a sense of tranquility throughout the body. Every step you take while meditation, a new flower blooms and a new wind blows. It makes you see the beauty of this world. Emotionally meditation has its own benefits like:

• Bringing in positivity in thought process
• Improving tolerance to stress
• Better self realization
• Fighting back anxiety and related fears

Medically, meditation has been shown to help out a lot of patients suffering from the so-called ‘lifestyle disorders’ like hypertension, diabetes, psychiatric illnesses like depression and others. So, start meditation right there and you will be one happy person in this stressful world.