Free Essay Sample on Meditation for Mental and Emotional Stability

Introduction

In health care, meditation is an act where an individual utilizes a technique like mindfulness on a specific thought, object, or activity and trains attention and awareness in order to achieve a mentally sound and emotionally stable state. Meditation entails several approaches that need an individual to focus attention and regulate his body is the same with an altered consciousness state. In meditation, the brain does not become extremely suggestible, but instead, attention is focused mainly on God or religious ideas. Meditation naturally reduces an individual’s breathing, pressure, and heart rate. Therefore, meditation is a natural technique used to relax an individual body. Using prayer and meditation over a long period is associated with lesser stress and better psychological functioning. The practice of meditation gives a body relaxation response, which also gives the body a deep rest, which is deeper than the rest obtained through sleep (Horowitz, 2010). Therefore, regular meditation enables the body to build up deep rest, which is more intense than the rest from sleep. The more profound rest obtained from meditation reduces stress. The paper will focus mainly on the health benefit of meditation, researchers thought on meditation, how meditation work, the extent to which meditation is used as an intervention with other treatments, and wraps up with a conclusion.

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Benefits of Meditation

The health benefit of meditation is that it reduces high blood pressure. Regular practice of meditation will lower blood pressure and hence reduce an individual’s dependence on medication. The relaxation response in meditation practices increases the formation of a compound in the body, which opens up blood vessels hence lowering the blood pressure (Goldstein et al., 2012). The meditation approach has increasingly popular practices that are used to reduce high blood pressure. Practicing a transcendental meditation lowers high blood pressure since the technique stimulates genes that produce telomerase, an enzyme that is connected with reduced mortality and blood pressure (Parati, & Steptoe, 2004).

Meditation practice also enhances the individual’s immune system. Meditation is among the approaches to involve in restorative activities, which can give relief for our immune systems, and ease the daily stress of the body, hence leading to healthier aging.

Meditation reduces stress. Most people meditate in order to get rid of stress. Physical and mental stress cause alarming levels of the stress hormone known as cortisol. The hormone produces several harmful impacts of stress, like the release of inflammation-promoting chemicals known as cytokines. These impacts will disrupt sleep, promote anxiety and depression, escalates blood pressure, and contribute mainly to cloudy thinking and fatigue. Therefore, regular practices of meditation will reduce the inflammation response caused by stress. Hence, the daily practice of meditation will reduce stress and enhance symptoms of stress-related scenarios such as post-traumatic stress and irritable bowel syndrome.

Research thought about meditation

In a study done by Medical News Today has reported several benefits that are linked to meditation. From their study, they suggest that mindfulness meditation decreases pain and brain aging (Orme-Johnson, & Barnes, (2014). From the research led by Dr. Schneider, they found that transcendental meditation (TM) is linked to lower high blood pressure, stroke, and heart attack when regularly practiced.

According to the research done by Richard J. Davidson and William James, mediation practice causes rapid alterations in gene expression (Weber, 2013). The authors argued that the changes were seen in genes, which were the current targets of analgesic and anti-inflammatory drugs. More so, the author asserts that our genes are fairly dynamic in their appearance and these outcomes imply that the calmness or rest of our mind can have a capability to influence their expression. In a study conducted by JAMA Internal Medicine in 2014, they found that meditation improves health, both physical and mental health since it relieves pain, depression, and anxiety. Research says that meditation relieves depression most effectively as an antidepressant.

How meditation Work

According to Herbert Benson, meditation alleviates the condition that leads to stress and anxiety. The relaxation response in the body from meditation assists in reducing metabolism rate and lowers high plod pressure and also improves the heart rate, brain waves, and breathing (Benson, 2019). This function of meditation is the body clearly defines how meditation works. Scientific evidence illustrating how meditation works exists. For instance, for individuals who are meditating, MRI scans of the brain have depicted an increase in activity in areas that regulate heart rate and metabolism. Other studies from medical scholars have depicted that meditation yields long-lasting variation in brain activity in areas engaged in learning, attention, and conscious perception. Meditation practice is thought to work through its impacts on the sympathetic nervous system that raises breathing and blood pressure during a period of stress.

Use of Meditation as an Intervention with Other Treatment

Mindfulness meditation, which is also known as “insight meditation,” plays a large role in defining how meditation practice can contribute to therapeutic growth and personal growth. However, all meditation practice techniques cultivate the ability to manage and focus attention, but mindfulness meditation mainly cultivates the potential to bring a non-judgmental sustained awareness to the object of attention instead of cultivating focused awareness of a single object (Lehrer, 2007). Meditation intervention is used with other treatments to reduce stress and pain, lower high blood pressure, and improve the immune systems of individuals. Meditative practices, when used as an intervention for treatment, it combine both concentrative and mindfulness elements, but when used for therapeutic purposes, there are essential differences in technique and application used.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) intervention combines meditation techniques and cognitive-behavioral approaches to assist individuals to better understand and manage their emotions and thoughts effectively in order to attain relief from feelings of depression, anxiety, and distress (Kuyken et al., 2010). In this therapy technique, individuals can learn how to utilize the cognitive approach and mindfulness meditation to disturb the automatic processes, that often trigger depression. Meditation practice is mainly used to improve good health, and several researchers have associated meditation with the ability to reduce anxiety and depression. Therefore, most mental health scholars have incorporated meditation practice to promote activities in therapy sessions. The activities help in reducing the symptoms of depression and enhance emotional control. Meditation is mainly incorporated into other therapeutic modalities as an integrated technique for treatment. Mental and physical health professionals have realized that meditation is of great benefit since it enables individuals to become better able to distinguish themselves from negative emotions, thoughts, and bodily sensations, which may be overwhelming. Therefore, people who are able to attain this state of awareness will find it easier for them to implement other therapeutic interventions to address any possibly harmful cognitions to avert negative effects. Also, daily meditation practice helps in enhancing psychological insight and emotional healing. Mindfulness-based intervention is mainly used with the aim of reducing symptoms of mental health concerns, stress, and physical pain; also, the intervention can be used to treat a wide variety of symptoms and concerns.

Meditation-based intervention can be used in conjunction with other treatments to treat people with dementia and their caregivers. Dementia is a global health priority that disturbs 35.6 million people globally (Berk et al., 2019). People with dementia and caregivers need to practice meditation regularly since they are at risk of developing a depressive disorder. A joint practice intervention to promote dyadic well-being is an effective approach to reducing dementia. The dyadic technique is an intervention for chronic disease that is more effective as compared to only focusing on patients. Mindfulness-based intervention signifies a promising alternative to help people with dementia and caregivers. Meditation practice is a skill that is developed with training and is defined as an awareness of what increases through paying attention to purpose and non-judgmentally.

Conclusion

Based on the current healthcare system globally, meditation interventions should be implemented as both treatment and prevention programs since research has clearly shown that regular meditation practice has the potential to reduce stress, and anxiety, lower high blood pressure, and improve the immune system. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy is the best approach to meditation intervention to be used to improves the individual’s mental and physical health. Sitting meditation practices are an effective intervention in the treatment of psychosocial, physiologic, and behavioral conditions experienced by youths. Future research on the meditation intervention should be done in a manner that advances our understanding of sitting meditation practice and its future application as an effective treatment intervention modality among younger people.

References

Benson, H. (2019). The mind-body effect. Simon and Schuster.

Berk, L., Warmenhoven, F., Stiekema, A. P., Van Oorsouw, K., Van Os, J., de Vugt, M., & Van Boxtel, M. (2019). Mindfulness-based intervention for people with dementia and their partners: Results of a mixed-methods study. Frontiers in aging neuroscience, 11, 92.

Goldstein, C. M., Josephson, R., Xie, S., & Hughes, J. W. (2012). Current perspectives on the use of meditation to reduce blood pressure. International journal of hypertension, 2012.

Horowitz, S. (2010). Health benefits of meditation: What the newest research shows. Alternative and Complementary Therapies, 16(4), 223-228. https://doi.org/10.1a089/act.2010.16402

Kuyken, W., Watkins, E., Holden, E., White, K., Taylor, R. S., Byford, S., ... & Dalgleish, T. (2010). How does mindfulness-based cognitive therapy work? Behavior research and therapy, 48(11), 1105-1112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2010.08.003

Lehrer, P. M. (2007). Biofeedback training to increase heart rate variability. Principles and practice of stress management, 3, 227-248.

Orme-Johnson, D. W., & Barnes, V. A. (2014). Effects of the transcendental meditation technique on trait anxiety: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 20(5), 330-341.

Parati, G., & Steptoe, A. (2004). Stress reduction and blood pressure control in hypertension: a role for transcendental meditation?. Journal of hypertension, 22(11), 2057-2060.

Rutledge, T., Mills, P., & Schneider, R. (2014). Meditation intervention reviews. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(7), 1193-1193. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.1419

Weber, B. (2013). Meditation changes gene expression, study shows. Medical News Today, 12.