In an age where anxiety and depression are at all time highs and only rising, it’s only natural that we desperately seek a way to combat it. Talk to any counsellor or therapist and they will likely bring up Meditation or “Mindfulness”, they are both quite similar with minor differences.
Mindfulness is about directing attention to things around you, where Meditation is more so about directing attention to a single point, like your breathing. Either way, they both involve breathing technique, so for the sake of this article, I will be using the term “Meditation”.
As the title suggests, I want to answer the question of whether Meditation is “Hippy-Dippy” or if it’s “Truly Life-Changing”. We’ll do this by exploring the benefits, myths, and scientific studies of Meditation and as always, I will speak on my personal experiences with Meditation.
Benefits of Meditation
If you look into Meditation, there are a lot of claims. While I don’t think the claims are necessarily false, I don’t know if I would say they are necessarily true. You could say that a benefit of drinking water is that drinking it makes you live longer, because if you don’t you’ll die, but that would be quite obvious, which is why these are the types of claims that I really want to question.
To be quite frank, it would be really easy to jot down these exact claims one after another, without thinking twice, but that would go against the purpose of this article.
I don’t claim to know better or to be a scientist, I just try to give me honest thoughts and feelings on what I read. This is how I will approach the individual claims that I do list, giving my personal thoughts and opinions.
I will be taking these “benefits” from Healthline, which is a large health focused blog that claims to be science based.
1) Reduce Stress: Reducing stress is one of the most obvious appeals of Meditation and I would say it’s the most scientifically backed. Scientists relate stress increases to increased cortisol levels and heart rate, which then can effect blood pressure and sleep.
These biological factors can be reduced through Meditation, therefore leading to stress reduction. Reduction in stress itself comes with many believed benefits like improving Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Fibromyalgia.
All of this can sound a little complicated, but it’s pretty common sense when you really think of it. When your body is under stress, it causes a lot of problems, when it’s not under stress, the problems go away.
This reminds me of what I mentioned earlier, where drinking water helps you live longer.
2) Controls Anxiety: Again, when you really think about it, controlling anxiety seems really obvious. Anxiety is essentially another form of stress or vice versa, so reducing one would naturally reduce the other.
Instead of putting together a whole topic for my personal experiences, I will just quickly inject it here. I have dealt with a lot of anxiety in my life and that anxiety lead me to counselling.
Counselling in itself is another topic, but part of what I was taught was Meditation or technically “Mindfulness”. This isn’t the first time I had heard of the method, as in high-school I had taken an interest in it myself.
But from my experience, Meditation can be really helpful, but it’s also very challenging. The act of Meditating is its own battle, but to actually convince myself to keep going was another.
It’s really easy to read the benefits, but at the end of the day, we want to experience it to believe it. And in a lot of ways, Meditation is like working out, where it can be difficult and you don’t see major changes right away.
I can attest to reduced stress in the moment and a sense of peace, but it can also be quite “painful” to get into that state. Given that we constantly are in a state of “go-go-go”.
3) Supports Emotional Health and Enhances Self-Awareness: I’ve decided to start combining some of the topics on the site as I see them as quite obvious. Perhaps this is because I’ve been interested in these topics for a long time and this isn’t as obvious to the average person.
The site using this as an example for how it Supports Emotional Health: “Some forms of Meditation can lead to improved self-image and a more positive outlook on life.” –Healthline
I’d argue that an improved self-image is only possible with an Enhanced Self-Awareness, no matter, as I said these two claims are quite obvious. Spending time alone with your self and thoughts will naturally cause an Enhanced Self-Awareness, while spending time in nature, taking in your surroundings on a nice day, could easily improve your Emotional Health, making you more optimistic.
4) Lengthens Attention Span and “May” Reduce Age-Related Memory Loss: Listen, I know we love our studies, but if you’ve actually sat down and properly meditated, you’ll know it increases your Attention Span. I would also argue that any moment not spent rotting your brain on TikTok or whatever else it may be, is in itself, increasing your attention span.
As for reducing Age Related Memory Loss, this makes a great deal of sense, it’s been scientifically proven that if you don’t use it, you lose it (your brain). I should have prefaced this post by stating that my goal isn’t to nitpick, but rather to encourage critical thinking instead of taking everything on face-value.
5) Everything and Anything: With anything, you could find some way to relate it to whatever topic you want. You could even make an argument that water is bad because Hitler drank it.
So let’s list the final 6 claims the site makes: Can Generate Kindness, May Help With Addiction, Improves Sleep, Helps Control Pain, Can Decrease Blood Pressure, and Accessible Anywhere.
“Can Generate Kindness” was kind of the last straw for me, this is when I said “Yep, I can summarize the rest, this is getting very general”. I don’t doubt that Meditation can make you happier, I mean who is happier when they are more stressed?
Helping with addiction is another thing I don’t doubt, sticking to Meditation takes great discipline, even I can’t seem to get consistent with it. So if a person battling addiction was able to do it, I would be greatly impressed, and very much believe they can beat their addiction.
Improved Sleep and Decreasing Blood Pressure is something that we’ve already discussed, look at me summarizing the summary. Helping to Control Pain is a interesting take.
Based off my own experience I would beg to differ, or at least question what kind of pain it is. When I’m sick, the last thing I want to do is be present in the moment. I prefer to turn into a degenerate, brain rotted, and numb Instagram Reels enjoyer.
Time really flies when you’re doing that and it definitely makes me unaware of my existence. Finally we have the benefit of being able to do it anywhere, which is true.
Now would I do it anywhere? No, I don’t see myself Meditating at the family meet-and-greet in the middle of the room, people might think I have a screw loose, or a few. But doing it anyone is definitely achievable, just maybe not in the middle of a nuclear detonation or something extreme.
Either way, you guys get the idea, there are a lot of benefits that are fairly legit and then there are those that are linked for the sake of filler (at least in my opinion). I didn’t want to go on and on about the benefits, but it’s too late, I already did.
Myths About Meditation
Alright, we covered the benefits and I even sneaked in some science, so that leaves us with the Myths. I won’t lie, this article has gone on longer than I wanted, but talking about the Myths is pretty fun, so let’s do it!
You Have to Sit in Lotus Position: You know the stereotypical image we get in our head of the monk siting with his legs crossed going “UMMM” or whatever. Yeah that’s not the only way to meditate, it has benefits like posture and making sure you don’t fall asleep.
And the whole noise thing has to do with vibrations, which I believe is more spiritual than scientific. Either way, I’ve tried it and it’s pretty fun, it’s just hard to find a room where no one will see me looking insane.
Meditation Takes Hours: Some people think Meditation needs to be really long to be effective, well it doesn’t. I know that a quick 5 minute Meditation can be a great way to chill out a little when overwhelmed. I also know that Meditating for longer can have more benefits, an easy one to visualize is improving your attention span.
There’s some other pretty crazy beliefs about having out of body experiences when reaching peak relaxation which I won’t get into in this article.
Meditation is Always Calm and Relaxing: No, just no, Meditation can be really difficult to get into or it might be easy for you. The average person though, I would say, is quite literally challenging their norm. You are sitting and not worrying about anything, does that sound like something that’s going to pay this months rent?
You will be confronted with stress and anxiety, but the goal is to practice putting those to the side for the time being. This is really difficult for me, but the feeling of achieving it is very satisfying.
Meditation is Only Religious People or Overly Anxious People: Again, no, just no, I understand why you might feel this way, because on the outside it can seem very eccentric, which is a shame and I hope that changes. But you do not need to be religious as non-religious people do it and guess what, they see benefits.
You don’t have to hit rock bottom to see the benefits we discussed, will this help Overly Anxious People? Yes, will this also help those with mild anxieties? Yes, a great lesson to learn from this is to never let what other people think about you change what you do.
Especially when it’s backed up by science and has tons of testimonies, give it a try, see if you like it. If you don’t, that’s fine, you don’t have to do it. I don’t think it’s a necessity to a good life, but I’d be lying if I didn’t think a large chunk of the world would greatly benefit from it.
Conclusion
Is Meditation Hippy-Dippy or is it Truly Life-Changing? I’d take the latter, is everyone the same? No, so the effect might differ from person to person. Would I suggest that you give it a try? Definitely, what do you have to lose?
Will you look Hippy-Dippy to some people? Yep, but should you care? Nope, it’s your life. Hopefully this can be a useful resource to somebody, if not, oh well, I tried.
Let me know your opinions on Meditation in the comment section and I would also greatly appreciate it if you share my posts with friends and family, even your weird uncle (hey, viewership is viewership).
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