Did you know the benefits you can achieve from meditating for just 10 minutes a day? Meditation has been practiced since ancient times, but the first studies on it date back to the early years of the second half of the 20th century.
Most of these initial medical documentation attempts were unfortunately less precise and successful compared to current studies. Today, scientists have conducted thousands of scientific studies, leading to credible, positive, and undeniable effects and results of meditation on the human body, which we will present below.
But let's start from the beginning:
What is meditation?
To properly read and understand this article, it's important to know what lies behind the term "meditation."
From Latin meditatio – it means deep thinking, contemplation, and reflection.
The term "meditation" refers to various practices such as concentration, visualization, movement meditation, chanting mantras, and mindfulness meditation, which we will explore in detail in this article.
Benefits of Mindfulness Meditation
Mindfulness, or awareness, is its core element, comprising two complementary aspects: maintaining attention on direct experience and adopting an accepting attitude toward that experience.
Source: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?journal=Clin+Psychol&title=Mindfulness:+A+proposed+operational+definition&author=SR+Bishop&volume=11&publication_year=2004&pages=230-241&
Below, you can see the growing number of medical publications on mindfulness, increasing year by year. The graph shows the number of publications from 1980 to 2018, highlighting the rising interest in mindfulness and the benefits of meditation.
What are the positive benefits of meditation on the brain?
1) Meditation works like an antidepressant.
There is evidence that mindfulness-based therapy reduces the risk of relapse in individuals who have had depressive episodes but are currently feeling well.
It is comparable to antidepressant medications.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471247/2) Meditation improves concentration, attention, and task performance.
According to studies, while performing a task, our mind is often distracted by unrelated thoughts. This indicates that we spend half our time thinking about the future, past, daily worries, memories, etc., instead of focusing on the task at hand. Effective use of meditation can help minimize these distractions, significantly improving our efficiency and reducing the time needed to complete tasks.
What happens when we aren't focused on a specific task? Our thoughts wander without restraint, leading to distraction. One thought follows another, often resulting in a negative internal dialogue.
In 2007, Marcus Raichle published a description of the Default Mode Network (DMN) in the journal Neuroimage. The DMN includes areas such as the medial prefrontal cortex, precuneus in the cerebrum, posterior cingulate, and bilateral parietal lobes, which decrease their activity when a person is focused on goal-oriented or attention-demanding tasks. Different DMN regions are responsible for processes like introspective or self-referential thoughts, negative experiences, and external environment monitoring. Dysfunction in the DMN can cause functional deficits. Improper DMN activation during attention-demanding tasks can impair mental effort, leading to distraction and poorer behavioral performance.
Mindfulness meditation can reduce the activity of brain areas associated with the Default Mode Network (DMN). According to a study by A. Brewer, experienced meditators and non-meditators were observed under various mindfulness meditation conditions (e.g., loving-kindness meditation, focused attention). The study found that the two main DMN nodes (PCC and mPFC) were less active in regular meditators. These results support the hypothesis that changes in the DMN are associated with reduced mind-wandering.
Source: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.02.041
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11209064
http://neuropsychologia.org/gdzie-b%C5%82%C4%85dz%C4%85-my%C5%9Bli-nowa-metoda-badania-aktywno%C5%9Bci-uk%C5%82adu-stanu-spoczynkowego
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250176/
3) Meditation reduces stress
For many years, meditation has been attracting increasing interest from the medical community. The concept of mindfulness has drawn attention in basic emotion research, clinical sciences, and socio-cognitive-affective neuroscience. There is growing interest in mindfulness-based meditations and practices in clinical contexts for anxiety and depressive disorders, as well as other clinical issues.
In the United States, the most studied form of mindfulness training is Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a structured mindfulness training program developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn.
MBSR consists of various forms of mindfulness practice, including techniques derived from Hatha Yoga. These practices include breath-focused meditation, body scanning, awareness of the transient nature of sensory experience, shifting attention to different sensory modalities, open monitoring of moment-to-moment experience, walking meditation, and eating meditation.
In our experience and practice at our Temple, we recommend or suggest specific meditation practices based on the individual needs of those who come for massage and seek personal or spiritual development. These practices may focus on mindfulness, presence, or activating other aspects such as emotionality or emptiness, depending on the specific areas the person wants to work on for self-improvement.
Different practices within MBSR enhance the ability to observe the transient nature of thoughts, various emotional states, physical sensations, memories, and other mental images that arise in the practitioner's mind.
Meditation practices focused on concentration (including yoga), mindfulness, and presence reduce the uncontrolled tendency to emotionally react to fleeting thoughts and physical sensations. This, in turn, leads to a decreased propensity for impulsive reactions to various internal and external stimuli.
It has been proven that meditation significantly reduces stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms. It modifies distorted self-perception patterns, increases self-esteem, improves behavioral self-regulation, enhances focused attention on present activities, and strengthens immune system functioning.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4203918/
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2008.0495
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5843960/
4) Meditation improves women's sexual quality of life
Over a decade ago, scientists discovered the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation practices on female sexual disorders. Older studies noted clear effects on women's sexuality but couldn't definitively confirm the underlying physical-chemical mechanisms.
In 2017, a study involving 451 women was conducted. Half of the participants were taught how to meditate and were advised to do so regularly, while the other half were asked to observe their sexual lives without engaging in meditation practices.
The study results suggest that meditation is linked to better sexual function and increased sexual interest. Women with meditation experience scored higher in arousal, lubrication, ease of reaching orgasm, and desire compared to those without this experience. The women who practiced meditation did so regularly, either daily or weekly, for a minimum of 4 years.
Source:
Brotto, L. A.,Basson,R., & Luria,M. (2008a). Amindfulness-based group
psychoeducational intervention targeting sexual arousal disorder in
women.JournalofSexualMedicine,5, 1646–1659. doi:10.1111/j.1743-
6109.2008.00850.x
Brotto, L. A., Heiman, J. R., Goff, B., Greer, B., Lentz, G.M., Swisher, E.,… Van Blaricom, A. (2008c). A psychoeducational intervention for sexual dysfunction in women with gynecologic cancer. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 37, 317–329. doi:10.1007/s10508-007-9196-x
Brotto,L.A.,Seal,B.N.,&Rellini,A. (2012b).Pilot studyofa briefcognitive
behavioral versus mindfulness-based intervention for women with
sexual distress and a history of childhood sexual abuse. Journal of
SexandMaritalTherapy,38, 1–27. doi:10.1080/0092623X.2011.56
9636
https://med-fom-brotto.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2019/03/Iulia-Dascalu-Lori-A.-Brotto-2018-Sexual-Functioning.pdf5) Meditation significantly helps in quitting smoking
Judson A. Brewer and his team conducted a study to determine if mindfulness meditation could aid individuals trying to quit smoking. Eighty-eight adults addicted to nicotine, smoking an average of 20 cigarettes a day, were randomly assigned to two treatment groups:
- One group received mindfulness meditation therapy.
- The other group received the American Lung Association's Freedom From Smoking (FFS) therapy.
Compared to the FFS group, those in the mindfulness meditation group showed a greater reduction in cigarette use during treatment and maintained these gains during follow-ups.
After 17 weeks, 36% of the mindfulness group maintained abstinence, compared to only 6% in the FFS group.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3191261/Learn more about the benefits of meditation before a tantric massage
At Anahata Tantra Temple, you can experience meditation before every tantric massage, as it is a key stage before the session. The masseur connects with the recipient on three levels, discussed in a previous article: Why Meditation is Performed Before a Tantric Massage?.
Before every tantric massage at Anahata Tantra Temple, you can experience meditation, as it is one of the key stages before the massage begins. The person giving the massage (read more about us) connects with the recipient on three levels, which you can read about in our earlier article: Why is meditation performed before a tantric massage?.
If you're interested in learning tantric massage, visit our Tantra Workshop page for more information.
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