How can Meditation help in relieving Stress?

Stress has a lot to do with the state of your mind and the control you have over your emotions. There are a number of factors that can get us worked up but no matter what the cause of your stress is, one sure way to combat stress is through meditation.

What is Meditation?
Meditation is a process that helps to align the thoughts in your brain and prevents it from wandering. Our brain is extremely strong and with its sheer power, human beings can overcome a lot of medical and psychological problems.

Over a period of time, our attention gets diverted in many directions and our concentration span reduces leading to a lack of control over our thoughts and hence our actions. Meditation helps to improve our level of concentration by gently enabling the mind to focus on just one object, emotion or thought or sometime to certain music or recitation.

How can Meditation help with Stress?
Meditation empowers you to take the responsibility of your thoughts and feelings. A lot of times you just feel stressed or depressed even if you do not want to, this is because you do not have control over your mental state.

Meditation helps to eliminate the unnecessary thoughts, which are like weeds in a garden. When you prune your thoughts and concentrate on only the things that matter, you create a state of mindfulness. You are much aware of your conscience, thoughts and feelings.

Once you are aware and can better understand your internal activities, your mind is no more in a confused state. Being in control over your inner self helps you to actively control your actions and this is why people who meditate are at a better position to tackle negative outcomes and feelings.

Another theory that supports the notion that meditation helps to reduce stress is based on the fact that meditating can led to cortical thickening of the prefrontal cortex. Prefrontal cortex is in charge of inhibiting the negative emotions generated by the brain’s emotional centre and the thicker the cortices, lesser would be the depressing thoughts.

How to Meditate
There are different techniques and phases of meditation. The simplest way is to sit upright on a flat surface in an Indian style and keep your palms facing up on your knees. Now touch the nail of your index finger with the pad of your thumb and try to loosen your body and relax. You can either concentrate on a specific thought or chant a mantra. ‘OM’ is the most common mantra and chanting OM creates a vibration within the body, which helps to align the seven chakras or wheels within the body to help ward off negative energy.

Is Meditation better than Therapy?
Meditation is good for your overall well-being and is more of a preventive rather than curative measure. Although, therapy and anti-depressant medications are effective and almost instantaneous, meditating is a completely natural procedure and sans any harmful side effects or dependency on material stress reducing equipments.