March at Beauty Expert has been all about balancing your life, de-stressing and relaxing our busy minds. We’re big believers in making time for you, and with research suggesting that by 2020 the top 4 diseases will be stress related, we want to focus on making enough time for our well-being. Whether it’s struggling to sleep, or finding it hard to relax, research suggests that all of these issues are interlinked. Further research also suggests that 1 in 2 women in the UK are not taking the time to look after their health, and that’s something incredibly concerning.
That's why this month, we want to focus on meditation. Regular mindfulness is not only an effective treatment for stress and worries, it’s also great for being more focused, improving relationships and helping with addictions too. Here are some of the many benefits of meditation…
The benefits of Meditation
Stress
If practised for as few as 10 minutes each day, meditation can help you control stress by activating the “rest and digest” part of our nervous system. What this essentially means, is that meditation helps to soothe our nervous system. It does this by helping to slow our heart rate, slowing our respiration and helping to reduce our blood pressure.
Creativity
Research suggests that meditation promotes “divergent thinking” which is a type of thinking that allows new ideas to be generated. Even if you don’t think your job is the most creative, living life to the full is a creative act in itself, so it's great for helping you to take advantage of new opportunities!
Focus
Research carried out by Headspace (2015), suggests that “those trained in meditation stayed on tasks longer and made fewer task switches, as well as reporting less negative feedback after task performance”. The reason for this, is that meditation can improve our ability to sustain attention by improving our breathing for longer periods of time. Our ability to focus under pressure is also improved, which is great for when we found ourselves in those stressful situations.
Anxiety
If you suffer with worries and anxiety, meditation is something that can certainly help when it comes to anxiety management and “turning down” the worries. Research has found that those with clinical levels of anxiety, experienced a 90% reduction as a result of meditation, so if you’re looking to treat anxiety naturally, this is a great place to start. The Transcendental Meditation (MD) technique has also been proven to produce a deep state of relaxation in the body, as well as contributing to inner calm and peacefulness.
Relationships
Regular meditation is great for helping you focus on challenging situations and any ongoing issues you have. Through its calming & focussing techniques, meditation can help you become a better parent, a better sister, a better friend and a better all-around person. Essentially, meditation does this by helping you work on yourself. The more respect you have for yourself, the better your relationships with others. If practised regularly, it won’t take long before you’ll see the benefits in your personal life.
