The Benefits of Meditation for Anxiety

Young or old, meditation is for everyone. It takes only a few minutes per day and you don’t have to be experienced practicing it for it to work for you. Fun Fact: Did you know, we have between 50,000 and 70,000 thoughts per day, that works out to be 35 to 46 thoughts per minute. This steady flow of thinking is a thick filter between our thoughts and feelings, our head and heart.

People with an anxiety disorder are always thinking. I recall lying in bed and literally yelling at my head to quiet down, the perpetual thinking that was going on scared me. The non-stop thoughts of what if this happens, or what if that happens, the thoughts would either prevent me from going to sleep or if I did fall asleep, I’d wake up so agitated and exhausted in the morning it felt as if I had not slept at all.

Imagine how happy I was to discover meditation. I had finally found a pause button for my brain. Meditation allows me to drift off into another part of me allowing me to feel like my old self, it relaxes my body, it centers me in my heart, I am able to experience my present moment without any fear and my mind is sharper. It’s like a trip to the spa for the brain.

There are so many wonderful benefits to meditation, here are just a few:

• Researchers from Johns Hopkins University sifted through over 18,000 meditation studies and concluded that its best use was for anxiety, depression and pain management.

• Its benefits extend to mental disorders of all kinds including generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, panic disorder, agoraphobia, depression and addictions.

• Repeated studies have determined that meditation can rewire how the brain responds to stress.

• Any habit is easy to get into but even harder to stop, that’s because you have created a strong neural pathway for that activity. The same holds true for your patterns of self-talk and the 50,000 or so thoughts you have every day.

• Your brain has an endless capacity to change, known as neuroplasticity.

• Regularly practicing meditation actually rewires your brain to be more focused.

• Meditation trains you to view your thoughts differently.

• You learn to recognize and stop “mental time travel” — worrying about the future and ruminating about the past.

• Instead of following a worrying thought down the path of all possible negative outcomes, you learn to recognize it for what it is — one thought — and then let it go.

• Meditation also elevates mood by increasing levels of serotonin, another neurotransmitter vital to happiness.

• At the same time, meditation reduces levels of the stress hormone cortisol which otherwise significantly contributes to anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, and memory loss.

This trains your brain to be less anxious