Meditation
While meditation has been around for thousands of years, scientists have started looking closely at how meditation affects stress and our brains, and the news is good. Meditation was an effective tool for reducing stress, anxiety, and depression.
If you think you can’t meditate because it seems hard or “not your thing” or your brain is too busy, it’s worth another look. The research about how powerful it is for managing stress is hard to ignore.
How to get started
There are many ways to meditate. It’s worth trying the different types to find 1 that works for you. Here are a few that can help you get going:
Mindful meditation: With mindful meditation, you notice your thoughts without judgment. It helps to do guided meditations when you are first getting started, though many people start on their own without a guide. This type of meditation is a good choice if you want to ease into meditation with just a few minutes at a time. There are many popular apps and websites.
Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR): MBSR is an 8-week course that has been well-researched. It's been found to reduce symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression, as well as chronic pain. Offered as face-to-face and online courses.
Kirtan: An active meditation where you do repetitive chanting and often tap your fingers. In a study of stressed caregivers of people with dementia, this meditation was found to reverse damage to DNA from stress (yes, stress can damage your DNA!). Kirtan is a good option for people who find it easier to focus on words instead of their breath, and who enjoy sound over silence. Find a free video online and give it a try.
Yoga nidra: A type of guided meditation where you lie down (yes, that is a yoga pose!) and are guided to a deeply relaxed state that some call “yogic sleep.” Yoga nidra is a good choice if you like the idea of guided meditation and want to sleep better, as research has found it improves sleep. There are many apps and websites that offer guided yoga nidra sessions.
It can be helpful to find a class or even a meditation circle, so that you are practicing with other people. This can bring a sense of community and even just get it scheduled in your calendar so you do it. Many communities have free meditation circles that meet each week and meditate together.
There are also many free and paid apps. Some meditation experts recommend that beginners start with guided meditations and then work to be able to do it on their own.
Why it works
When we think about the past, we tend to go over things in our mind again and again. When we think about the future, we don’t know what will happen, so we often make guesses. Sometimes those guesses allow us to fall into thinking traps, or negative ways of thinking. When we focus on the past or future too much, we can activate the stress response. Most stressful thinking is about the past or the future!
Any kind of meditation lets you practice mindfulness or being in the moment. That gives you a thinking space that is not the past or the future but rather is in the “here and now.” A regular meditation practice can help your brain get better at reacting to stressful events. It makes your brain less likely to trigger a stress response and faster at turning that response off if you do get stressed.