Meditation and The Benefits It Can Offer Us

I have mentioned in some of my previous articles that I use meditation as a big part of my self-care routine but I haven’t actually touched upon what meditation is and how it can help us, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to share some of my insights with you.

Benefits of meditation

There are so many reasons why it can be good for us to meditate including the ability to quiet the mind and to help us deal with stress and anxiety. There are even some studies that have suggested that if you practice over a prolonged period of time it can actually have amazing health benefits such as lowering blood pressure and helping with chronic pain, to name but a few.

On a personal note, my main reason for wanting to start practicing was because my mind was always racing at a hundred miles an hour and I suffered from anxiety, which I believe had become much worse since getting lupus. I was yearning to find some peace and clarity in my life and from what I’d researched, it sounded like it could be just what I needed.

Internal reflection

In the short-term, the purpose of meditation is to still the mind. However, over the years, I have found that it offers so much more than that. I believe that it enables us to connect with who we really are and for us to experience the consciousness within.

I have always found it fascinating that for most of our lives we have been taught to look externally and we are constantly being bombarded by so many distractions in this busy world that we live in. We can often get caught up in the material side of life such as our wealth and what we own and how we look but meditation can create a beautiful inner peace and joy within us which in turn leaves us feeling more rejuvenated and much more balanced in our day to day lives.

Types of meditation

There are many different types of meditation that you can do, some of which I’ve listed below.

• Mindfulness
• Movement meditation
• Focused meditation
• Visualization
• Chanting

Tips on how to begin

When I first started on my meditation journey I used to get very annoyed with myself. These thoughts would keep popping up in my head and I’d be doing my best to stop them. It turns out that this is very common when beginning.

We tend to overthink it and we can give up too easily so we have to be kind to ourselves and observe those thoughts and then simply let them go.

If anyone is thinking of trying meditation for the first time, then it might be a good idea to set yourself a challenge where you simply do 5 minutes a day for 1 week and after that, just notice how you are feeling.

To start with, it might be a good idea to focus on breathing meditation. There are literally thousands of different ones available online these days for free to try out.

As a lupus sufferer, I believe that meditation has helped me in so many ways especially when I’m in a flare-up. I would urge any fellow lupies out there to simply give it a try.