Meditation for Reducing Stress

Understanding what meditation is and how it works will help you work through whatever mental, physical, and even emotional wall you have come to. Meditation can play a significant role in even the smallest day-to-day tasks. This is when meditation for reducing stress comes into play. Meditation and stress relief go hand in hand.

Understanding How Meditation Helps Reduce Stress

It is important to understand exactly how meditation helps reduce and fight stress in your life. Let’s explore how important meditation is to a healthy lifestyle.

What is Meditation?

So what is meditation? Meditation is a method to familiarize our minds with virtue. The more familiar our mind is with virtue, the calmer and more peaceful it becomes.

When our mind is peaceful, we are free from worries and mental discomfort, and we experience true happiness. If we train our minds to become peaceful, we will be happy all the time, even in the most adverse conditions.

But if our mind is not peaceful, even if we have the most pleasant external conditions, we will not be happy. Therefore, it is important to train our minds through meditation.

Why You Should Meditate

• Improved Concentration
• Less Bothered by Little Things
• Better Health
• Deeper Knowledge of Self
• Stress Relief

And so much more!

Ways to Reduce Stress in Our Everyday Lives

Now that you see how meditation works and a few of the reasons that you should incorporate meditation into your everyday routine, you will be able to figure out the ways that work best for you to channel your inner Zen.

Here are a few ways that meditation works as a stress relief for me.

Move Your Body

Your body is designed to move and be active. You’re meant to walk, run, bend, twist, extend, reach, jump, and squat. It’s only been in recent history that people have become more and more sedentary.

Spending large portions of the day sitting not only contributes to serious health conditions, but also robs you of energy.

One of the surest and fastest ways to increase your energy is to simply get up and move.

No matter what activity you choose—walking, light mobility or calisthenics, dancing, body-weight exercises, a light jog, or moving your body through a yoga sequence—your energy levels will increase from even the slightest amount of physical activity.

As you get up and move, your heart pumps harder and faster, recirculating the blood that was pooling in your lower extremities. This helps to carry more oxygen through your system and to your brain, helping you feel an increase in awareness & energy.

The movement of your arms and legs also increases the circulation of lymph, hormones, and neurotransmitters throughout your body, regulating and balancing your mind-body system and further enhancing your energetic output.

Breathing Meditation

The next time it feels like you’re running on empty, notice your breathing. Chances are your breathing will be slow and shallow. This is due to the fact that you consume less oxygen as your mind and body become tired and dull.

But just as the state of your mind and body can influence your breathing, your breathing can conversely influence the state of your body and mind.

Therefore, if slow and shallow breathing is a byproduct of low mind-body energy, rapid and deep breathing can swing your energy gauge in the opposite direction.

You don’t have to be a trained yogi to benefit from this. Simply take full, deep breaths whenever you feel low on energy and notice how even just a few minutes of practice will help you to feel more awake.

Commit to your health. Try doing a moving meditation vs deep breathing?

Tell me which one works for you? If you want to read more articles on meditation, here are some other great ones.

• How to Use Meditation for Mindful Eating
• The Morning Habit That Has Changed My Life
• Create Happiness For Yourself In 3 Easy Steps

Let’s Talk About Meditation for Reducing Stress

I hope you learned how meditation helps reduce stress and anxiety. I would love to hear if you have tried to incorporate meditation to help with stress relief into your daily life.

You can also connect with me @EatYourNutrition on Instagram. I love seeing your photos. #EatYourNutrition #LauraVillanueva

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