Guest Post by personal trainer and strongman competitor Liam Siggers
What is meditation?
Meditation is hard to truly define as there are a great variety of practices, strategies and techniques. Meditation varies from a spiritual, religious practice for some, to a practice studied by neuroscientists and psychologists to ease stress, anxiety and depression. In short, It can mean different things to different people.
One common acceptance however, is that meditation can be a very beneficial practice for anyone.
Why I started?
I’ve always felt a desire to meditate even from an early age, but like so many of us, I didn’t act on this and continued to live stressed out, anxious and at a constant level of worry. I was working a job that I didn’t enjoy – stressing ALL THE TIME about things I didn’t even care about – and not taking care of my body or mind. It was only when everything boiled over and I started to have very extreme panic attacks that I stood up and committed to making a better life for myself. For me, I knew that meditation was meant to be the first step in being who I wanted to be.
What are the benefits of meditation?
There are so many beneficial reasons to adopt a meditation practice, however I will attempt to keep the list short and sweet. For the sake of this post, I will stick to the scientific benefits that have been researched (as opposed to spiritual or religious, of which there are also so many great reasons to meditate).
These are a selection of 7 proven benefits taken from an article at Science of People:
#1 Reduces Stress, Anxiety and Depression.
#2 Increases sense of wellbeing, connectedness and empathy
#3 Improves attention (decreases pointless screen time)
#4 Increases Creativity and Focus
#5 Improves ability to make positive decisions
#6 Helps overcome addictions
#7 Reduces physical and emotional pain (better than morphine)
Part 2 – A simple “How to” Guide…