Over the past three decades, meditation has been proven to help in everything from high blood pressure to pain management to immune function, etc. Meditation is currently taught in hospitals, when companies waste, in churches, at school and, of course, in all educational institutions of yoga and martial arts.
Just in case, you are not convinced that you will try, this is a list of the latest meditation studies. All listed studies were published only last year. You can find theses of these studies in the database of the National Institute of Health PubMed. In many of these theses, meditation is called MBSR - the reduction of stress based on awareness. Although this term encompasses many methods of meditation, the most common are deep breathing and the repetition of a soothing word or phrase.
So, without further ado, you should meditate IF:
You need help managing your stress. - Meditation was repeatedly confirmed to reveal the relaxation reaction. - the physiological opposite of the stress response. In a recent survey of studies conducted by the Johns Hopkins Medical Center to develop guidelines for practicing nurses, meditation has proven effective in reducing stress in almost all patients. Moreover, another study by the University of New Mexico suggests that meditation is better than other cognitive approaches to stress management by several counts.
You suffer from chronic back pain - Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh conducted a study for older people with chronic back pain and found that meditation helped reduce their pain, improve sleep, and improve their quality of life.
You, like your mind, should be more controlled and effective. - If you suffer from an excessive spontaneous reaction (medical talk for a busy mind), meditation is for you. Emory University researchers found that Zen meditation practitioners were able to perform certain tasks with less neural activity and better cope with their mental response to stimuli.
You want to improve your immune function. “Researchers at Loyola University have taught meditation to women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer — obviously, a source of great stress. They found that, compared with the control group, the immune functions of the meditator stabilized and recovered much faster after surgery.
You suffer from headaches, especially migraine - In a study conducted at the University of Massachusetts, researchers taught four different types of meditation to migraine sufferers. As was shown in previous studies, a decrease in the frequency and severity of headache was observed in all four groups. An interesting aspect of this study is that it was designed to compare spiritual and secular meditation, and spiritual meditation was more effective — a conclusion that I will probably consider in more detail in a future post.
Are you infected with HIV - A study conducted on HIV + patients at UCLA suggests that meditation helps buffer the decline in lymphocytes most associated with HIV success.
You wanted to feel more sense of well-being - Separate studies at Santa Clara University and the University of Massachusetts have shown that meditation cultivates mindfulness, which, in turn, provides a more complete self-assessment of a sense of well-being.
You suffer from anxiety - A research survey conducted at the Psychology Research Lab in Verbania, Italy, reviewed 10 years of work on the effectiveness of meditation to combat chronic anxiety and found that it is statistically effective.
You have trouble sleeping - A study at Stanford University combined meditation with cognitive approaches to the treatment of insomnia and found a common program effective.
You are ADHD - A feasibility study at UCLA for adults and adolescents with ADHD showed that meditation increased their attention and cognitive abilities, as well as decreased anxiety and depression.
You suffer from bipolar disorder - A preliminary study at Oxford University showed that meditation helped reduce anxiety and depressive symptoms in bipolar patients.
You want to increase your compassion for others. “A study at the University of Wisconsin found that people engaged in regular compassion meditation experienced long-term changes in their nerve functions, which made them more susceptible to other emotions and more sensitive in general.
Do you have high blood pressure - Many studies have linked meditation to lower blood pressure. One of the latest from the University of Kentucky found that one type of meditation, Transcendental Meditation, helps to reduce systolic and diabolic pressure. In another study using other methods of meditation and relaxation, similar results were obtained.
Do you have diabetes - A study in Thailand suggests that meditation helps control the glycemic level and blood pressure in patients with type 2 diabetes.
And finally, you should meditate if:
Do you like it! I do not have research for this, but many people experience a great world and great joy in meditation. Perhaps not all the time, but enough to make it a regular part of their lives. And, of course, meditation was and is part of almost all spiritual traditions that humankind has ever invented. What you experience when you calm your mind cannot always be measured or explained by even the best team of researchers.
