Health Benefits of Meditation Practice
Written by Karen O’Hara
During a challenging time in my life, it sometimes felt like there was an anvil sitting on my head. I slept fitfully and would wake up with a sick feeling of dread. My monkey mind would spin, or I would get lost in rumination.
As the holiday season approached, I became anxious about navigating social and family obligations that I had previously enjoyed. I knew I had to do something to relieve my ambiguous, debilitating symptoms in a healthy way.
I decided to try meditation to help relieve my suffering. I joined a sangha and took a series of classes to learn how to practice. Eventually, I enrolled in Mindful Heart Programs’ two-year meditation facilitator training program. After receiving my training certificate, I joined the Mindful Heart Programs (MHP) board to help promote MHP’s mission to make the benefits of meditation available to all. Why? Because it works for me and countless others.
What MHP Offers
The meditation practices available to us today are connected to ancient wisdom traditions and philosophies. To help meet the needs of our contemporary audience, MHP focuses on four types of practice: mindfulness, compassion (loving kindness/metta), awake awareness, and nature connection. There are multiple of other types of practice – both silent and guided – from various lineages with proven benefits to explore.
Each MHP teacher offers a unique perspective for new and experienced practitioners during our online meditation sessions, in-person/Zoom hybrid classes, and retreats. (Check our Calendar and Events webpages.) The distinctly individual, spiritual or sacred aspects of meditation practice are beyond the scope of this blog post, but they are often discussed at MHP retreats, in essays we publish, and in books written by our co-founders Radhule Weininger and Michael Kearney.
Meditation Health Benefits
Stress Response
One of meditation’s most well-established health benefits is its ability to reduce the potentially harmful effects of stress on our bodies and minds. Stress is part of daily life. “Good stress” (eustress) boost energy and motivation. However, the physical and mental health symptoms of the “bad” kind of stress that many of us are experiencing – such as fatigue, burnout, difficulty sleeping, loss of appetite, inattention, anxiety, and depression – as individuals, in community, and as citizens of the world – are increasing exponentially. It’s hard to balance the desire to stay engaged with wanting to pull the bed covers up over our heads.
When people experience stress, their sympathetic nervous system activates the body’s “fight-flight-freeze” response, which increases heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension. It also elevates the production of cortisol and other stress hormones. Although a stress response is essential in emergency situations, persistently recurring stress can cause physical and psychological harm.
When the American Heart Association mapped the mind-heart-body connection, it found that stress activation is linked to the development of cardiomyopathy and other heart conditions, including acute coronary syndrome. Conversely, meditation practices can have heart-healing properties.
Other Encouraging Findings
There is some other good news: Meditation and other mind-and-body interventions that have been subjected to rigorous scientific studies provide valid evidence of:
Measurable decreases in smoking initiation, physical inactivity, poor eating and overeating, weight gain, and medication noncompliance.
Improvements in beneficial attitudes such as equanimity, happiness, compassion, and optimism.
Studies show that these attributes help decrease systemic inflammation, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, and blood pressure. Here are a few more examples:
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a meditation therapy approach introduced by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979, has demonstrated benefits for individuals with chronic pain, cancer, arthritis, diabetes, skin and immune disorders, anxiety, depression, and other ailments.
A study of a group people doing Zen meditation revealed an increase in “slow alpha interhemispheric EEG coherence in the frontal region” of the brain, in other words, a relaxed mind.
Other studies have shown that meditation helps activate the parasympathetic nervous system, the body’s natural “rest-and-digest” response. As breathing slows and attention becomes more focused, physiological arousal decreases.
Sleep Quality
Sleep disorders affect millions of adults and contribute to numerous chronic health conditions. Meditation has consistently been associated with improvements in sleep quality, including shorter time to fall asleep, fewer nighttime awakenings, and greater overall sleep satisfaction. By reducing mental rumination and physiological arousal, meditation practice before sleep helps create conditions that support restorative rest. Quality sleep helps build immunity, regulate emotions, improve cognitive performance, and promote physical recovery.
Pain Relief
The way a person experiences pain intensity is influenced by physical injury, the brain’s interpretation of sensory information, and in some cases, past traumatic experiences. Meditation practice helps change the way individuals relate not just to physical pain but to emotional trauma. Rather than attempting to suppress pain, meditation helps practitioners observe discomfort with greater acceptance and less reactivity, improving daily functioning and quality of life, decreasing a need for addictive pain medication.
Anxiety and Depression
Similarly, people suffering from symptoms of anxiety or depression can learn how to be less reactive by observing their thoughts without judgment. One example of a proven intervention combines mindfulness meditation with principles of cognitive behavioral therapy, an approach that has been shown to reduce relapse risk.
Cognitive Function
Research also suggests consistent practice supports sustained attention, executive functioning, and cognitive flexibility. Brain scans have found that long-term meditation practice is associated with structural and functional changes in multiple brain regions involved in attention, emotional regulation, learning, memory, and self-awareness.
No Need for a Cost-Benefit Analysis
Although I still experience periods of doubt and angst (I’m human, after all), meditation practice – alone and in community – gives me the tools and daily reminders I need to be present, resilient, and grateful. While a multi-day retreat is helpful, a meditation practice need not put demands on one’s time. It can be adapted to fit virtually any kind of lifestyle in any location. It might be on a mountain top, in a classroom or retreat center, at home, in a garden, or while waiting in a long line at the grocery store or at a stop light
Meditation is also affordable. A cost-benefit analysis is not necessary to demonstrate its value. MHP does not charge for most of its classes; we gladly accept donations from those who feel moved to give something to support our mission. Occasionally a registration fee is required to cover expenses when we host a special event or a training course with multiple sessions.
If it works for me, it can work for you. All are welcome.
Karen O’Hara is a marketing and communications professional and member of the Mindful Heart Programs Board of Directors.
