Reach Health Nirvana

By Jackie Kolgraf 

In today’s hectic world, it may come as no surprise that regularly taking time to clear your mind through meditation can have a positive impact on your overall health.  

Proven by both scientific research and millennia of implementation, using meditation to lower stress levels sets off a chain of positive reactions in your body. High stress is connected to mental health problems like anxiety and depression, physical health problems like high blood pressure, digestive problems, and a weakened immune system, and even an increase in mistakes at work and motor vehicle accidents. Meditation is a simple way to reduce stress that leads to improved health outcomes all the way down to the cellular level. 

If a few minutes of introspection a day can have such a large impact on your well-being, don’t wait to start meditating. Read on to learn about the roots of meditation, its specific health benefits, and how easy it is to incorporate into your daily life. 

Meditation Is Ancient History 

Although meditation may sound like a new-age approach to relaxation, it’s actually an ancient practice dating back thousands of years across many different religions, most notably Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. The earliest documented records of meditation were found in early Hindu texts from 1500 BCE, but meditation is widely believed to have originated in India around 5,000–3,000 BCE. 

“The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali,” a foundational text compiled in the early centuries CE to turn hundreds of years of teachings into a coherent guide for achieving salvation through controlling the mind and body, valued meditation as critical to the eight limbs of yoga. Similarly, meditation is a crucial element of the “Bhagavad Gita,” a foundational Hindu scripture that explores core themes of duty, the soul, and paths to liberation. 

Meditation can also be found in the Bible and used in Western religions like Christianity and Judaism. These religions use meditation to dedicate time to deeply focus on God’s teachings and other spiritual concepts. 

Despite its ancient religious roots, meditation does not have to carry intense spiritual meaning or a quest for enlightenment for it to be beneficial to your modern-day life and longevity. 

3 Basic Types of Meditation 

Meditation was long believed to fall into two buckets: focused attention and open monitoring. A research paper published in 2010, which sought to organize meditations from Vedic, Buddhist, and Chinese traditions through neuroscience, added automatic self-transcending as a third bucket by using electroencephalography (EEG) to record brain waves during different types of meditation.  

The researchers assigned an EEG wave pattern to each of the three buckets and then sorted different types of meditations into each bucket based on the brain waves they created: 

>> Automatic Self-Transcending 

According to the paper, automatic self-transcending meditation from Vedic and Chinese traditions is characterized by alpha1 EEG activity and includes techniques designed to transcend the practitioner’s own activity. It is marked by the absence of both focus and individual control or effort to transcend the active, thinking mind and reach a different state of consciousness. 

The most well-known type of automatic self-transcending meditation is Transcendental Meditation, taught by the Maharishi Foundation. 

>> Focused Attention Meditation 

Focused attention meditation from Tibetan Buddhist, Buddhist, and Chinese traditions is characterized by beta/gamma activity and keeps voluntary and sustained attention on a chosen object. 

Types of focused attention meditation include breath awareness (focusing on your breathing), mantra (focusing on a specific sound, word, or phrase), and external point (focusing on an object).  

>> Open Monitoring Meditation 

Open monitoring meditation from Buddhist, Chinese, and Vedic traditions, characterized by theta activity, involves non-reactive monitoring of the moment-to-moment content of experience.  

Types of open monitoring meditation include Vipassana and Zazen. The key characteristics include a focus on the present moment and non-judgmental awareness of thoughts and emotions. 

Benefits of Meditation 

Don’t let a mental image of elite yogis at expensive mindfulness retreats deter you from starting to practice meditation. It only takes a few minutes a day, can be done anywhere by anyone, and doesn’t have to cost anything. The myriad health benefits of meditation are worth it for your quality of life. 

>> Relaxation and Stress Relief 

In a fast-paced world of nonstop notifications and the 24-hour news cycle, stress and anxiety levels seem universally high today. Taking the time to meditate forces you to slow down, focus on the present, and work through your problems. You’ll be amazed at the things your mind can achieve when you temporarily shut out the rest of the world and gaze inward. 

>> Increased Attention Span 

Thanks to online algorithms full of quick and ever-changing content, our attention spans feel shorter than ever. Meditation practice helps you teach your mind to block out distractions and reach a deeper plane of focus to stay on task. Lower stress levels also lead to improved attention. 

>> Lower Blood Pressure and Resting Heart Rate 

Improved mental health through meditation can also result in improved physical health. Meditating can decrease your body’s production of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline while moving your sympathetic nervous system out of “fight or flight” mode. This can help with high blood pressure and a high resting heart rate, both of which are bad indicators of long-term health. 

>> Better Sleep 

A busy mind at bedtime can result in a longer latency period before falling asleep and interrupted sleep throughout the night. As you practice meditation and improve your ability to quiet your thoughts, you may also improve the time it takes you to fall and stay asleep. Plus, a combination of all the above benefits – lower stress levels, blood pressure, and heart rate – can lead to higher quality sleep at night. 

>> Protection Against Cellular Aging 

The benefits of meditation combine to benefit your telomeres, the protective “caps” made up of repetitive DNA and proteins at the ends of your chromosomes that help prevent them from fraying or fusing.  

Telomeres give your chromosomes protection and stability, but they shorten as cells divide and age and may be linked to age-related diseases and cancer. Some studies have shown that meditation can increase your body’s production of telomerase, an enzyme that adds nucleotides to rebuild and lengthen your telomeres. 

How to Start 

Now that you know meditation has thousands of years of successful history around the world, a low barrier to entry, and many long- and short-term health benefits, how do you begin incorporating meditation into your daily life? 

Thankfully, you don’t need to invest a ton of money into building an in-home “zen” studio or joining a top-tier facility to meditate. The only two things basic meditation requires are an open mind and a quiet, comfortable setting.  

As your brain learns and adapts to this new practice, it’s important to allow thoughts to enter and exit without judgment. Finding a place where you can limit distractions and interruptions may require some creativity, but don’t let it deter you. If there isn’t a place like that in your home, try sitting in your parked car somewhere or taking a walk. The more you practice, the more outside noise you’ll be able to block out. 

Once you’ve established when and where you’ll meditate, it’s important to work toward creating a meditation routine that you can stick to. Insisting you’ll meditate every single day at the same time for an extended period could lead you to giving up on the habit if you fail. Instead, set a goal of meditating a certain number of times per week or month that feels manageable. Start with just a few minutes and increase the time spent meditating gradually. Use a tracking system and build on (and celebrate!) your success. 

Try Guided Meditation 

Guided meditation is a great first step in your mindfulness journey.  

Whether in person or through a recording, guided meditation involves a trained practitioner who guides you verbally through meditative practices. They may tell you how to position your body, how to breathe, or what to focus on. You’ll also know exactly how much time you need to dedicate to your meditation that day based on how long the guided meditation is. 

The easiest way to choose a type of guided meditation is to base it on a goal. If you want to meditate to fall asleep, body scan meditation – which involves shifting your focus along different areas of the body – can help quiet your mind and promote rest. Guided meditation that focuses on your breathing patterns can provide quick relief of anxiety symptoms. Promote mindfulness and mental well-being with guided forgiveness and compassion meditation, or increase your sense of confidence, peace, and safety with guided mantra meditation. 

As you become more comfortable with the tools of guided meditation, you may be able to start incorporating unguided meditation into your daily life. For example, if you’re struggling to fall asleep but listening to a guided meditation would disrupt your partner, guide yourself through the same body scan steps as the practitioner usually would. If you’re in a public place and feeling anxious, guide yourself through a structured breathing pattern. The meditative practices you learn through guided meditation can become important health tools you reach for in times of need.  

The “Right” Way to Meditate 

Because of meditation’s innately vague qualities, it’s easy to get hung up on whether you’re doing it “right.” And quieting an active mind in modern society can feel like an impossible task. It’s important to keep your expectations of meditation realistic so you’re more likely to stick with it, make it a habit, and see results.  

Unlike the Buddha, the goal of your meditation isn’t to reach Nirvana. Taking any amount of time out of your day to try and calm down and relax is a good thing for your overall health and longevity.