Stress, constant workload, and the often-hectic daily routine make a person forgetful. While this is not always harmful, forgetting to send an important email or not meeting a deadline because you messed up the dates does cause you to lose financially and some of your credibility as a professional. One way to overcome this is meditation.
Research conducted by Michigan State University has proven that meditation effectively helps you be less forgetful and be more present in whatever you are doing with better focus.
How meditation helps
It is all about enhancing your mindfulness. When you meditate, you are constantly training your mind to focus on one task and not worry about what will happen in the future. In the research, open-monitoring meditation and its effects on neurocognitive skills have been studied. It has been found that with guided meditation, the participants have reported feelings of calmness from session one.
The technique of open-monitoring meditation requires meditators to be aware of their present and try not to think about other things. Trying to not let your mind wander is difficult but with guidance, meditators did feel that they could stay centered and focused on just being in the present moment without worrying.
This has been recorded by electroencephalography, or EEG. The recordings showed that the brain after just 20 minutes of meditating is more aware and people can detect mistakes within seconds. This is due to the activity of a certain brain signal that helps identify the errors.
Jeff Lin, one of the authors of the study and a doctoral candidate in psychology at MSU, has stated that meditating is often considered to be complementary medicine. While science has not yet “proven” the various benefits of meditation, the fact that people benefit from it cannot be ignored.
Being aware of oneself — also known as metacognition — is an innate skill and honing it will help you understand yourself better. This helps you deal with stress properly. In fact, you can actually alleviate any stressful feeling and convert it into positive energy.
What is meditation?
Meditation is not any cult practice as often depicted by many. You do not need to be overly spiritual or have any religious beliefs to benefit from meditating. Being around for thousands of years, meditation is simply a way to calm your mind and center your thoughts with simple breathing techniques. Many therapies often take the route of meditation to help people to reach a state of mind and body connection.
Often, meditating seems difficult because the technique that helps reach you to reach a state of tranquility requires you to focus on your thoughts. This means you have to open your subconsciousness to connect with all your thoughts — good and bad. Sitting in a still position, you focus on your breathing and let your thoughts flow. This will help you lose the stress of the day. Initially, this will be difficult, especially if you are doing it alone, because learning to focus on your thoughts will require daily practice.
But does this mean you have to just sit and meditate? Not necessarily. You can walk and meditate, or you can try taking up a hobby that helps you feel centered. There is certain martial arts form like Tai Chi that has been practiced in China as meditation.
At a higher level, Falun Dafa is an advanced self-cultivation practice. The practice teaches how to cultivate your heart toward Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance. Falun Dafa contains five meditative exercises that help to open your energy channels, cleanse your body, dismiss stress, and also give inner peace.
Whatever helps you feel centered and focused can become a way to meditate. The whole point of meditation is about learning to focus on your being and this takes practice.
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