Benefits of Mindfulness Meditation
People that practice mindfulness appear to have greater awareness, understanding and acceptance of situations, circumstances, events, people and general surroundings. This is further complimented by the acceptance which extends to a more heightened awareness of their emotions resulting from the challenges experienced in life and they appear to recover from the negative moods much quicker than the average population.
They appear to have much less negative thoughts and appear to release them more efficiently. They experience less psychological distress, including anxiety and depression. They are reported to be less neurotic, more positive oriented with their thinking, resulting in a much greater wellbeing, happier and a more fulfilling lifestyle. They experience a more stable self esteem which is very much less dependant on external factors compared to those who do not practice mindfulness.
The benefits then flow exponentially. People who practice mindfulness appear to have much greater satisfying and rewarding relationships with family members, loved ones, peers, friends and people in general. Evidence based research indicates that these people are less likely to think negatively in a conflict situation or circumstance. It has been shown that people who are mindful are less likely to act defensively and aggressively when they are threatened.
Mindfulness correlates strongly with emotional intelligence (recognised today more than previously as a more reliable predictor of future success later in life), which therefore is associated with improved social skills, an ability to cooperate with others, increased ability to be able to understand and appreciate another person’s perspective.
Numerous research projects have shown that mindfulness appears to increase self-awareness, and as a positive result, is then associated with greater energy levels and vitality.
Mindfulness appears to offer more in the ability to control behaviour and as a result these people are more flexible naturally, they generally appear to override stress or change, the odd internal negative thought or feeling, and as a result this leads to an increased ability to resist impulsive behaviour.
Health benefits of mindfulness are numerous and for example include…
- Increased blood flow to important and significant organs of the body.
- Reduced blood pressure, thus protecting against our greatest predisposing killers (hypertension). These benefits alone result in many side effect health benefits that overall reduce morbidity and mortality.
- An overview of numerous hospital records have suggested that people that meditate have fewer hospital admissions for heart disease, cancer and infectious diseases.
In the relative new field of neuro science, research and neuroplasticity (by new neuro connections), has shown that mindfulness training has a significant impact on how the way the brain is shaped, activated and wired. The benefits here are profound. They are many and varied.
- Increased happiness and wellbeing.
- Increase of working memory capacity, assisting people to retain, store, remember and release the information.