David Lennon
Informative essay
Meditation
As humans of society, especially in a stressed and crazy world we live in we often hear of people meditating and also hear the common line of “ meditation has just changed the way I live” or the more used phrase “I don’t know how I lived my life before meditating”. Sure you might brush off those peoples subtle advertisements/ brag of meditation but have you really taken a step back to think of the benefits? For most people the answer is no, they haven’t and they should really start looking into it because it’s not as bad as you’d think.
Meditation has been around for not only hundreds of years but thousands,its been around since about 1500 BCE. For some when they think of the term meditation a picture of a Buddha might be painted in their head and thats perfectly normal because back when Buddhism was starting off meditation was practiced. But as the world changes so has meditation. Meditation has been studied looking for its benefits and is now being used for people battling addiction. In a paper “Using Meditation in Addiction Counseling” written by Mark E Young talks about how through mindfulness their clients start to realize that thinking a negative thought does not make it true. For example people who are dealing with depression might look to use drugs to get away from all the bad things and times in their lives but if they just used meditation as their escape it would lead them to a much better and safer path. So meditation can help those who are battling the terrible disease of addiction but can it help do for the everyday stress on a “normal” human? The answer is definitely! In a study by Jon Kabat-Zinn in the book ” Complementary and Alternative Medicine for Health Professionals”, brain waves of stressed-out employees of a high-tech firm were recorded. The study found that the people that learned how to meditate were much more calm and happy than the ones who didn’t.
From a personal stand point I found that meditation was a easier way for me not to just feel less stressed but to prepare fall asleep and thats coming from a person who has an extremely hard time falling asleep. After learning a bit about some meditation techniques learned in class, I started taking them into play with my everyday life. I tried different techniques and different times and ultimately found a common pattern with them, they all made me extremely tired and sleepy. So I decided that if i just took five minutes at night to have some mindful meditation I could combat my sleeping problem pretty easily. And I can now proudly say I get eight hours of sleep because of meditation.
Sources:
Young, M. E., Delorenzi, L. D. A., & Cunningham, L. (2011). Using Meditation in Addiction Counseling. Journal of Addictions & Offender Counseling, 32(1-2), 58–71. doi: 10.1002/j.2161-1874.2011.tb00207.x
Synovitz, L. B., & Larson, K. L. (2013). Complementary and alternative medicine for health professionals: a holistic approach to consumer health. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
The History and Origin of Meditation. (2020, January 17). Retrieved from https://positivepsychology.com/history-of-meditation/
