Physical Benefits of Meditation

By: Rosana Sotile, Chopra Certified Well-Being Coach

The Effects of Stress

As many of us know, the impact of stress on the body and mind is far-reaching. When you feel stressed, your body reacts by provoking the fight-or-flight biological response. The fight-or-flight biological response is designed to help you deal with a (perceived) dangerous situation—either by fighting it off or running away. It also becomes activated when you perceive a psychological or emotional threat, such as a heated argument with someone or when you experience grief.

To prepare you for perceived threats, your nervous system floods certain hormones into your blood, including adrenaline and cortisol, which cause many essential body functions to increase. Your breathing quickens, your heart beats faster, your blood sugar increases to give you more energy, and your brain uses more oxygen as it moves into high alert. At the same time, certain body functions that aren’t needed for the fight-or-flight response stop working, like your digestive, immune, and reproductive systems.

Prolonged exposure to stress, including physical, mental and emotional stress, can increase your risk of heart disease, heart attack, chronic inflammation, stroke, and a long list of physical ailments. It can also “turn on” the genes that promote diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, autoimmune illnesses, and even cancer.

The good news is that meditation is one of the most effective practices to mitigate stress. It not only lowers the stress levels in your current lifestyle, but it also acts as a preventative measure for future illnesses and diseases that are caused by chronic stress.

Biological Responses

It does this by activating what we call the “restful awareness” biological response. When we meditate, we shift our brain activity to the prefrontal cortex, which induces a rest-and-digest state, which is the opposite of the fight-or-flight biological response. During restful awareness, our heart rate and blood pressure go down, our respiration and perspiration decrease, as well as stress hormones. And most importantly, we decrease inflammation throughout our entire mind-body system. (If you aren’t familiar with the determinants of chronic inflammation, I highly recommend further reading about it!)

This is actually the natural state for our bodies and brains to be in during everyday life. It returns our body’s signals back to standard activity levels after experiencing intense activity or stress. When we induce the restful awareness biological response, our bodily processes begin to slow down, as well as our brain activity. Our cells are then activated to begin releasing stored toxins and shift into self-healing mode. And over time, a regular meditation practice can help reduce your dependency for most prescription drugs. (*It is not recommended to stop taking your prescriptions without your doctor’s consent.)

Anti-Aging Effects

A consistent meditation practice also promotes anti-aging genetic expression. Modern science has identified specific DNA-protein structures called telomeres, which shorten as we age. It’s been discovered that meditation can help prevent them from shortening in order to promote longer life spans and even reverse physical signs of aging. So, meditation can make you not only feel younger, but look younger too! Whoo hoo!!

Hopefully this information gave you more insight on how a consistent meditation practice can help your physical body feel better and begin to heal itself, and also how it can prevent further illnesses. But consistency is KEY! The more you meditate, the more you’ll experience the benefits.

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Rosana Sotile is the founder of Sacred Space Health, LLC and holds certifications as a Well-Being Coach, Primordial Sound Meditation Instructor, and an Ayurveda Health Instructor from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and Chopra Education. She has a passion for helping people discover their inner sacred space and embrace the power of manifesting new realities. She also enjoys spending her free time in nature, especially at home in South Louisiana with her four children and one cat.

Rosana can be reached at info@rosanasotile.com, or direct message on LinkedIn