“Meditation is to the mind as exercise is to the body.” 

What is meditation?  Meditation is a practice where an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on an object, thought or activity.  This helps to train attention and awareness, achieve mental clarity and reach an emotionally calm and stable state.  Beyond its original spiritual purpose, today’s stressful lifestyles have inspired a number of people to practice meditation for physical and mental health reasons.  A few benefits of meditation: better management of stress, anxiety, and depression.  Helps to lowers blood pressure, increase the quality of sleep, improve happiness and overall well being, lengthens attention span, and improves memory loss.  The practice of meditation requires focus and discipline, but the benefits of a healthier mind make it worth the time involved.

Meditation can be modified into 3 forms:

•  Concentrative- consciously focusing the mind on something specific.  Staring at the dance of a candle flame, continuously repeating a word to yourself, or following your breath.

• Movement- movement meditation including yoga, tai chi, and other martial arts.  All are ancient disciplines that blend controlling thought (primarily by focusing on breath) with movement (through postures or detailed choreographed routines) in order to achieve harmony between mind and body.
• Expressive- expressing gratitude for all that you have in your life, both the pleasant and the unpleasant.  Forces you to try to find the positive in the challenges you face.

Meditation is something everyone can do to improve their mental and emotional health.  You can do it anywhere and without special equipment or memberships.  Trying a style of mediation suited to your goals is a great way to improve your quality of life, even if you only have a few minutes to do it each day. https://global.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780195371109/pdf/00_Mullin_Appendix_10.pdf