Top 11 benefits of meditation
When tinnitus first came into my life I was coming into 3rd year of my studies. Not only did I struggle to concentrate, but I was also exhausted and struggled to get to sleep early. I was terrified it would keep getting worse and felt desperate and helpless.
This is when I began to give myself space to meditate every evening before bed, and believe me I longed for the time when I didn’t have tinnitus, as I thought it would be so much easier without it. But the truth is that without T, I don’t think I would have persevered as much. Over time, the results have proven to be long lasting and hugely beneficial. Not only has it helped me to deal with tinnitus, but it has also helped me to improve my relationship with my whole self and life. Although there is still so much to learn, I have never felt stronger for it.
Below, I share with you some of the top benefits that I have experienced that demonstrate that meditation can profoundly change your life for the better. These are just a few of the benefits that appear naturally through consistent sitting with yourself.
1. Stronger focus:
Our greatest power as humans is the minds focus. Strengthening our focus gives us more power over where we direct our attention. Tinnitus can take a lot of our attention- this is one of the biggest issues we have with it. It can make it difficult to concentrate on things like reading and being present with what we are working on. It can even make it seem like we won’t be able to meditate because of it, but this is not true. Through meditation we strengthen our focus which makes it easier to concentrate on other things, helping tinnitus to fall away to the back of our awareness.
Meditation practice actually gives us something productive to focus on. It enables us to help ourselves when we are suffering, through discovering that there are ways of using our focus that can help us to move towards balance. Strengthening our focus has lots of other benefits too, as it generally strengthens the mind.
2. Relaxation and sleep:
Meditation teaches you to relax the mind and body, no matter what is going on externally or what tinnitus is doing. I cannot stress the significance of this skill enough. Anxiety and stress contribute to physical imbalances and can make tinnitus worse, so a big way we can help ourselves is to train the body to relax. The ability to induce deep relaxation is also the key to falling asleep with greater ease.
The techniques are simple but very effective, for example; slowing and deepening the breath slows down your heart rate, counteracts the bodies stress response and helps to quieten the mind. The practise of sitting with your breath in this way is very effective and is a good practise to start with in meditation.
3. Increases your ability to be with yourself:
Tinnitus can feel awfully uncomfortable, and the feeling of no escape can make it difficult to be at peace with ourselves, making us restless and anxious. Although it can sometimes help to distract ourselves, meditation gives us the longer lasting benefit of increasing your ability to be with yourself in your discomfort, and then transforming the discomfort into peace.
It is natural for feelings to trigger thoughts. Our thoughts are a response to our state of seeing the world, they come from our place of current feeling. When we have uncomfortable feelings, the thoughts that can be triggered can cause more suffering on top of the primary source of discomfort and cause us to spiral.
We make things much harder for ourselves in how the mind responds to uncomfortable feelings. For example, when it judges our experience based on fear: ‘I’m stuck, things won’t change, I will never be able to be happy or peaceful.’ And how it fully identifies with the experience, feeling like it defines your being: ‘I am a failure, I am weak, I am undeserving, the shame…. Etc…
Through meditation we begin to observe the cause and effects that occur through our thought processes. We can also see what place of feeling within us that our thoughts are coming from. Maybe we are in fear or pain, which we can acknowledge, but we don’t need to believe and act upon every thought that springs from our fear, which is just fear, not truth! We can begin to decipher between truthful and untruthful thoughts, and become less affected by our untruthful fear based thoughts because we know that they are untrue, it is just our fear speaking. Through a clearer mind, and connecting in with our heart, we begin to develop wisdom which helps us to act in nurturing ways which help to increase balance and reduce suffering. This is the way to inner peace.
4. Less anxiety:
Meditation brings you to dwell in the present moment, and because anxiety often comes from focusing on fear of future outcomes, letting ourselves know that the present moment is all we actually ever have to deal with can help. If we can relate well with the present, we will have no problem as time goes on! If the anxiety is physically in the body, through our presence we can have a soothing conversation with our self, breathing deep into the heart and assure ourselves that we will be okay through a little faith. Connecting in with our heart helps to transform the energy of the fear.
Through the practice of soothing ourselves, we can train ourselves to relax in situations that would normally induce a fear response. For example, when tinnitus peaks we may become tense and panic. Knowing that this type of response actually feeds tinnitus and doesn’t help, we can respond in a more helpful way through breathing deep, clearing the mind and inducing a deep relaxation, which will assist the noise to calm down as soon as possible. Through training the mind to become more still, this allows us to let go of agitation and resistance and calms and balances the entire body, which has profound health benefits!
5. Prevents spiralling into fear states such as despair, and helps you to pull yourself out if you have already spiralled:
Meditation gives you an anchor and a vehicle to connect with a sense of your true being of pure, peaceful awareness. With a quieter mind, you are more easily able to connect to your wisdom such as knowing that your fear is not the truth, and gradually it does not have to take such a strong hold on your being. We can also connect to the medicine in the heart that brings a sense of faith and patience. Meditation helps to bring us down from our mind and head area and into our body and heart. Our mental faculty is only an aspect of our being, there are powerful sources of wisdom to tap into through connecting with the heart and body. The qualities of connecting with our hearts essence and giving fear less power combine and help to keep us afloat.
Observing your internal processes helps you to detach from being completely involved with your thoughts. You learn that you are not your thoughts or your feelings, they are just a part of your state of being, and working with that is what this is all about. When you begin to see the cause and effect going on between your thoughts and state of being, you can begin to intercept the process of spiralling by bringing your focus elsewhere. You will draw towards yourself the result of having a more heart based perspective, which will strengthen the more you practice.
6. Balances and energises the physical body:
The stress response causes tension and releases stress hormones into the blood stream, which over time restricts our energy and causes fatigue. On the other hand, deep relaxation causes a state of coherence within the body which brings a greater flow of energy.
Through your clear focus and simply bringing your awareness into the body during meditation, you can relax tension and draw towards yourself vital energy which helps to rejuvenate your body.
Thoughts have a great deal of influence over our energy levels- Energy follows thought. Through meditation we become able to reduce our reaction to negative thoughts and not engage with them as strongly. A clear mind and positive thoughts will energise your entire being.
7. Connects you to your source of internal power:
Whether this is your will power, your inner light, or your unchangeable pure awareness, once you begin to connect with this pure part of your being, you know you can always come back to it. This is how meditation can become a great anchor during times of difficulty.
A greater connection to your own will power allows you to bring more direction focused towards the light which will help you to move beyond suffering and towards healing. Great amounts of light are always available to us all, all you have to do is make space for it internally and invite it to enter you with thanks.
8. Helps us to change habitual thought patterns:
Although it is natural for the mind to create habits and patterns, it also has neuroplasticity. It has a great potential to change and for new connections and patterns to be made through new learning and updating our beliefs.
Meditation only helps this process. Through observation we can see what is going on and through stillness there is more space. When we are present, we gain more choice in how we respond because the part of our brain where conscious thinking takes place becomes more active. We become able to see that we have more options in how to respond to situations, rather than letting our conditioning take over the show. Without this practise, our reactions are mostly unconscious and can be unhelpful, but through this practise, we connect with our internal power to positively influence our life.
9. Allows negativity to have less power in your life:
Normally we may respond to our ailments, pain and suffering with negative thoughts and fear. Meditation opens the doorway to respond differently than the way we have been conditioned. This brings us freedom to be less affected by challenges and allows us to let go. Our life is in our hands through how we respond to experiences. Meditation helps us to become more response-able, as we realise our power to positively influence our life. Consistent practise will help us to heal our hearts and grow compassion and wisdom which can help us to overcome all obstacles.
10. Helps you to tune into your body’s needs, intuition and internal guidance:
Often symptoms can symbolise a want for change in our lives. We have not been leading balanced lives and they are an invitation to tune into the wisdom of the body by listening to the signals we receive internally. This is about self-care. Often, we reside so much in the mind we do not listen to the body at all, we just keep pushing it to its limit. It is the body which allows us to live our experience of life, we must learn to be kind and love the body! Meditation will also strengthen our connection with the heart and intuition which will give us a greater sense of our needs and the right direction to go in.
11. Gain true understanding of the mind and the power of thoughts:
When we begin to watch our thoughts instead of being completely involved in them, we can observe how they affect our feelings, energy levels and actions. The fact is that we fill our minds up with a lot of junk, untruths, fears, thoughts that are not helpful to ourselves or to others. Once we see this, we can begin a process of purifying our mind because we see that our life will benefit from this, we see that we don’t need to suffer as much as we do.
Much of the junk stems from false beliefs… so why not evaluate where our thoughts come from and seek the truth! All the junk is doing is draining us of energy and cutting us off from love. When we see the cause and effects going on between our thoughts and feelings, we can then begin to choose not to grow down certain routes of thinking, because we know that they are not needed, not true and will only make us feel down!