How Meditation Benefits Your Mind and Body

 How Meditation Benefits Your Mind and Body

By Healthline

Posted on May 8, 2025

While meditation is well known as a technique to reduce stress and anxiety, it may also help enhance your mood, promote healthy sleep patterns, and boost cognitive skills.

Meditation is the habitual process of training your mind to focus and redirect your thoughts.

The popularity of meditation is increasing as more people discover its many health benefits.

You can use it to increase awareness of yourself and your surroundings. Many think of it as a way to reduce stress and develop concentration.

People also use the practice to develop other beneficial habits and feelings, such as a positive mood and outlook, self-discipline, healthy sleep patterns, and even increased pain tolerance.

This article reviews 12 health benefits of meditation.

1. Reduces stress

 

Stress reduction is one of the most common reasons people try meditation.

Over time, physiological markers of stress, like increased cortisol and heart rate, can have wide-ranging impacts on everything from sleep to blood pressure.

A 2017 reviewTrusted Source of 45 studies suggests various forms of mediation can help to decrease physiological markers of stress.

Other research suggests that meditation may also improve symptoms of certain conditions that are impacted by stress, including:

• irritable bowel syndrome
• post-traumatic stress disorder
• fibromyalgiaTrusted Source

2. Controls anxiety

Meditation can reduce stress levels, which translates to less anxiety.

An older 2014 meta-analysisTrusted Source including nearly 1,300 adults found that meditation may decrease anxiety. Notably, this effect was strongest in those with the highest levels of anxiety.

Another studyTrusted Source found that 8 weeks of mindfulness meditation helped reduce anxiety symptoms in people with generalized anxiety disorder, along with increasing positive self-statements and improving stress reactivity and coping.

Meditation may also help control job-related anxiety. One studyTrusted Source found that employees who used a mindfulness meditation app for 8 weeks experienced improved feelings of well-being and decreased distress and job strain, compared with those in a control group.

3. Supports emotional health

 

Some forms of meditation can lead to improved self-image and a more positive outlook on life.

For example, one reviewTrusted Source of treatments given to more than 3,500 adults found that mindfulness meditation improved symptoms of depression.

A 2015 studyTrusted Source found that people who completed a meditation exercise experienced fewer negative thoughts in response to viewing negative images than those in a control group).

4. Enhances self-awareness

 

Some forms of meditation may help you develop a stronger understanding of yourself, helping you grow into your best self.

For example, self-inquiry meditation aims to help you develop a greater understanding of yourself and how you relate to those around you.

Other forms teach you to recognize harmful or self-defeating thoughts. The idea is that as you gain greater awareness of your thought habits, you can steer them toward more constructive patterns.

In a 2019 studyTrusted Source, 153 adults who used a mindfulness meditation app for 2 weeks experienced reduced feelings of loneliness and increased social contact compared with those in a control group.

5. Lengthens attention span

 

Focused attention meditation is like weightlifting for your attention span. It helps increase your attention span’s strength and endurance.

For example, one studyTrusted Source found that people who listened to a meditation tape experienced improved attention and accuracy while completing a task, compared with those in a control group.

A different studyTrusted Source found that people who regularly practiced meditation performed better on a visual task and had a greater attention span than those without any meditation experience.

Even meditating for a short period each day may benefit you. One studyTrusted Source found that meditating for just 13 minutes daily enhanced attention and memory after 8 weeks.

6. May reduce age-related memory loss

 

Improvements in attention and clarity of thinking may help keep your mind young.

Kirtan Kriya is a method of meditation that combines a mantra or chant with repetitive finger motions to focus your thoughts. Older studiesTrusted Source in people with age-related memory loss have shown it improves performance on neuropsychological tests.

An older 2014 reviewTrusted Source found preliminary evidence that multiple meditation styles can increase attention, memory, and mental quickness in older volunteers.

7. Can generate kindness

 

Some types of meditation may particularly increase positive feelings and actions toward yourself and others.

Metta meditation, a type of meditation also known as loving-kindness meditation, begins with developing kind thoughts and feelings toward yourself.

Through practice, people learn to extend this kindness and forgiveness externally, first to friends, then acquaintances, and ultimately enemies.

A meta-analysisTrusted Source of 22 studies on this form of meditation demonstrated its ability to increase peoples’ compassion toward themselves and others.

These benefits appear to accumulateTrusted Source over time with the practice of loving-kindness meditation.

8. May help with addiction

 

The mental discipline you can develop through meditation may helpTrusted Source you break dependencies by increasing your self-control and awareness of triggers for addictive behaviors.

A 2018 studyTrusted Source involving 60 people receiving treatment for alcohol use disorder linked practicing transcendental meditation with lower levels of stress, psychological distress, alcohol cravings, and alcohol use after 3 months.

Meditation may also help you control food cravings. An older reviewTrusted Source of 14 studies found that mindfulness meditation helped participants reduce emotional stress and binge eating.

9. Improves sleep

 

An older 2014 study compared mindfulness-based meditation programs and found that people who meditated stayed asleep longer and had improved insomnia severity, compared with those who had an unmedicated control condition.

Becoming skilled in meditation may help you control or redirect the racing or runaway thoughts that often lead to insomnia.

Additionally, it can help relax your body, release tension, and ease you into a peaceful state in which you’re more likely to fall asleep.

10. Helps control pain

 

Some research suggests that incorporating meditation into your routine could be beneficial for controlling pain.

For example, a 2017 reviewTrusted Source of 38 studies concluded that mindfulness meditation could reduce pain, improve quality of life, and decrease symptoms of depression in people with chronic pain.

A large 2014 meta-analysisTrusted Source of studies enrolling nearly 3,500 participants linked meditation with decreased pain.

11. Can decrease blood pressure

 

Meditation can also improve physical health by reducing strain on the heart.

Over time, high blood pressure makes the heart work harder to pump blood, leading to poor heart function.

High blood pressure also contributes to atherosclerosis, or a narrowing of the arteries, which can lead to heart attack and stroke.

A 2015 meta-analysisTrusted Source of 12 studies enrolling nearly 1,000 participants found that meditation helped reduce blood pressure. This was more effective among older participants and those with higher blood pressure before the study (42Trusted Source).

In part, meditation appearsTrusted Source to control blood pressure by relaxing the nerve signals that coordinate heart function, blood vessel tension, and the “fight-or-flight” response that increases alertness in stressful situations.

12. Accessible anywhere

 

People practice many different forms of meditation, most of which don’t require specialized equipment or space. You can practice with just a few minutes daily.

If you want to start meditating, try choosing a form of meditation based on what you want to get out of it.

There are two major styles of meditation:

• Focused-attention meditation. This style concentrates attention on a single object, thought, sound, or visualization. It emphasizes ridding your mind of distractions. Meditation may focus on breathing, a mantra, or a calming sound.
• Open-monitoring meditation. This style encourages broadened awareness of all aspects of your environment, train of thought, and sense of self. It may include becoming aware of suppressed thoughts, feelings, or impulses.

If your regular work and home environments do not allow for consistent, quiet alone time, consider participating in a class. This can also improve your chances of success by providing a supportive community.

Alternatively, consider setting your alarm a few minutes early to take advantage of quiet time in the morning. This may help you develop a consistent habit and allow you to start the day positively.

The bottom line

Meditation is something everyone can do to improve their mental and emotional health without special equipment or costly memberships.

Trying out a style of meditation 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 daily.

Healthline

• https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/12-benefits-of-meditation#takeaway

A Vision for Healing from Addiction

A Vision for Healing from Addiction

The Vision Alignment Project

 

Image source

 

The Vision for today comes to us from Curtis Murphy, and like several other Visions our readers have sent in recently, this one speaks so beautifully for so many . . .  Thank You, Curtis! He says,

"Hello!

Thank you for your inspiring work; I've been receiving the visions for several weeks now and it's wonderful. I've seen that a few times you have sent out visions inspired by some of your readers, so I thought I'd share one of my own with you, with the hope that you would want to develop it and/or send it out. I call it "A Vision for the Healing of Addiction," and it goes something like this:" (a)

We see a world where our society responds to those suffering from addiction with compassion rather than condemnation. We envision that all our efforts in addressing addiction aim to heal rather than to punish. We no longer persecute others for their dependence on substances or behaviours, rather we look inward at ourselves, responding with love to what we find, and reflecting this love outward upon those who suffer.

We see addictions of all kinds disappearing in the light of acceptance, wisdom and love. Furthermore, we envision a world where no addiction needs to take root in the first place. All people receive the attention, nurturing and nourishment they need, and there is no emptiness to be filled with unhealthy substitutes. We see all people healthy and happy from the moment of birth until the moment of death, living together in harmony and blessed wholeness.

• visionalignmentproject.com

 

(a) Portugal in 2001 decriminalized the possession of small quantities of drugs and passed the law to consider drug addicts as patients in need of medical and humanitarian assistance, with excellent results.

Grief Trauma and Addiction

Grief Trauma and Addiction

By Jennifer Hoffman

Post on September 17, 2023

Things may get a bit wild this week with a new moon on September 14 that engages all of the planets. It reminds me of a pot luck dinner, where everyone contributes and works together to get the dinner ready. Then mercury goes direct the next day, completing its Virgo retrograde. New moons are great for new beginnings but this one has so much going on with it that it’s going to be a multi-dimensional process of moving back and forth, up and down, in and out as we align with different energetic frequencies and vibrations for a variety of different purposes. I will call this a ‘one size fits all’ new moon because it has something for everyone and every planet is engaged.

If it feels like everything is speeding up and you’re overwhelmed by the energy that’s because it is.  But it’s not moving ahead any faster, everything is converging – which is September’s energy theme. This is the energy coming together around a specific point and that can be our intention. Then it’s helping us to see both the cause and the solution, how we got somewhere and how we can leave. What makes everything more intense is that it’s all happening at the individual and collective level at the same time. So we’re getting a double and even triple dose of action with every energy movement.

It’s intense, overwhelming, and tiring, and it’s the energy of the times so all we can do is get used to it, take coma naps when necessary, and become more energy aware because everything is about energy right now and that includes our addictions, pain, trauma, and grief, the topic of this week’s newsletter.

Energy awareness is rising to the collective consciousness and hopefully it will lead to an understanding of how energy impacts our lives, choices, and physical and emotional realities. Now you hear terms like energy frequency, vibration, high vibes, resonance, and alignment all of the time but this is relatively new. For a long time those of us who talked about energy (me since 2003) would get an eye roll or a shoulder shrug. People didn’t want to think or talk about it because until we really reached a peak level of 5D integration, our primary energy movement and awareness was emotional. But with 5D we have a much larger energy spectrum to work with and we are operating at a level far above emotions although our emotions are how we process energy so they are involved too.

What happens when we cannot balance our emotional energy with our grief, trauma, and pain and our spiritual energy

 connection is out of whack? We turn to addictions to fill in the energy gaps and we can be addicted to anything – it is not an issue that only involves addictive substances like drugs or alcohol, we can be addicted to our own emotions too, as well as people, energies, things, outcomes, and our own guilt, shame, and grief.

Addictions describe anything that we have no control over, that we have surrendered our will to. If you have addictions you know that they are in control, they are in charge, and they dictate how you will live your life. We really are powerless in the face of our addictions when we do not understand or know how to manage this energy pattern and habit.

I once knew someone who was addicted to shopping. She spent thousands of dollars on clothes, shoes, and jewelry on her daily shopping trips and this was before the days of the internet. When she maxed out her credit cards, she got new ones under different names. She had a secret post office box where her mail was sent so her husband didn’t see the credit card bills.

Her closets were full of new, unworn clothes with tags, and she still bought more. She was driving her family to bankruptcy but she could not stop. Budgeting was not an option, she would buy expensive jewelry, designer clothes, and anything that caught her fancy. Once I went shopping with her and there was a sale on a new  brand of shapewear.

There were 10 packages in the bin and she bought all 10. I asked her why she didn’t buy one or two packages and she just looked at me, slightly embarrassed. She knew what I meant but she could not answer me. One or two wasn’t enough, she had to have them all. And the next day she would buy more because the grief void filled by today’s shopping spree would be empty tomorrow.

In those days she was called a ‘shopaholic’ someone who was addicted to shopping. What drove her behavior was a deep, driving need for attention, to feel special, loved, and valued. Shopping was the only thing that made her happy and buying herself things filled in the emotional black hole created by parents who did not pay attention to her, meet her needs, and who ignored her.

Any addiction is a powerful drive to engage in behaviors we do not understand or cannot control but it is the combination of an emotional need together with an energetic trauma that we are grieving which creates an opening for addictive behavior.

A good friend’s husband is from a rather wealthy family but he is the ‘black sheep’, the ‘different’ one. While the other family members are involved in the family business he decided to become a plumber. When they went to college he went to trade school – and he doesn’t regret it. But he carries a lot of painful memories of his childhood, how he always felt different, left out, ignored, and was not acknowledged in the same way by his parents. The parents played favorites with their children, and he was not a favorite. They did things like ignore his birthday or not celebrate it in the same over-the-top way that they did with some of his siblings.

They were openly critical of him in front of the family.  They did not recognize his achievements and downplayed his accomplishments. For some reason he became the family scapegoat and the parents led the effort. Now I think that is truly reprehensible and this is child abuse; why they did it I’m not sure but it has left its mark on him.

He is a kind, loving person who would do anything for you.  He is the person you can call at any time, for any reason, and he will show up. There is something endearing, even appealing about his energy, but his kind nature hides his secret trauma and grief. If you spend any time around him you know that he is addicted to drinking alcohol – a lot of it. He spends most of his day in a semi state of drunkenness which is not safe or advisable. He hides his grief behind the numbing effects of a few dozen beers and if you talk to him about it he gets angry.

This kind of addiction can be seen as a moral failure but it is much more than that. It is the action of someone who cannot process their grief, who cannot acknowledge or resolve the pain of their trauma so they find something to numb the terrible emotional burden they carry.

Here is another example.

A friend of mine is very hard working – very, very hard working. In fact, he gives new meaning to the word ‘workaholic’. He works all hours of the day or night, and on weekends. When he isn’t busy improving a process he’s coming up with new ideas and concepts for processes. He’s a software engineer and one of the smartest people I know but he’s hard to get to know because he works all of the time.

If you don’t know him well you would admire his commitment and work ethic. If you do know him and his history, you know that two things drive him – his fear of poverty and his desire to have so much money that no one can hurt him. He experienced extreme poverty as a child, the  kind of poverty that you read about in former Soviet eastern European countries, living in homes with no electricity and no heat in the coldest winter weather. And being in control of every situation arose from some childhood trauma he had at a young age that he was powerless to prevent, and no one believed him. Together they created a lethal combination that eventually created a massive heart attack as his body could not function without the proper nutrition, sleep, and joy that he was denying himself.

With this kind of addiction there was never enough, nothing was ever finished, there were always new avenues to explore and conquer, and he could always add a few more zeros to the balance in his bank account. When I asked him once what he thought ‘enough’ money was he smiled and replied, ‘how much is there?’

And when I joked and said that the level of obsessive focus he could give to his work was probably grounded in some kind of severe trauma he had experienced as a child, he got very teary eyed and had to look away. I didn’t know at the time that I had just spoken his truth out loud.  On the outside he’s a highly respected professional in his industry, he’s very successful and very wealthy but he doesn’t see his life that way because his grief is an ever present reminder of his trauma and his pain that he can never resolve.

I have always taught that Soul Wounds in the second energy center, the second chakra, create a potential for addictions and addictive behavior. This energy center controls our creativity and also determines how we value ourselves. When we have been marginalized, rejected, abandoned, or ignored by the people we count on to build our self esteem, such as parents and family members, an emotional black hole is created which we will use any means to fill. The emotional black hole is a result of energetic trauma and its grief imprint and trying to fill it becomes our life purpose and the purpose of everything we do.

And if that emotional black hole begins in early childhood, by the time we are adults we are desperate to create ways to feel that we have a right to exist, to feel valued and to be validated, by turning our creative energy inwards to fill our aching need for emotional wholeness. When we can’t find emotional wholeness within ourselves we will find something that can create it. We will bring in habits, behaviors, substances, and solutions that we use to try to numb the pain of that grief sourced energy gap and then whatever succeeds in that endeavor becomes a habit that quickly turns into an addiction. The rush of buying something nice, the warming effect of alcohol, the mindless space created by drugs, all of these things serve a purpose – they numb us to the pain of our never-ending grief, and the trauma of the past.

When our creative energy is hijacked to heal our own feelings of inferiority and to silence the voice of shame, guilt, and trauma, our grief becomes a magnet for anything that we hope will help us feel better. So we try to end the pain by feeding it something to make it better and that works for a little while. But if the grief goes away what do we do, so we create more pain and then need more of whatever makes it feel better. As you can guess, that quickly devolves into an addiction because the grief is a bottomless pit that won’t stop hurting until it gets another meal when what it really needs is an energetic reset.

Addicts are not only drug users, they are people who seek any kind of distraction from their pain and engage in a variety of behaviors like extreme sports, exercise, shopping, drinking, dieting, eating, work, pills, and more. The type of addiction doesn’t matter though because it is all directed towards the same goal – we want grief relief, to feel whole, complete, pain-free, and happy and we want the grief to stop. We are energetically incomplete and traumatized, we are grieving something that we have lost, was denied to us, something that happened, what someone did and did not do, and we cannot live with the memory and all of its energetic echoes. And we need to fix the problem any way we can. Because we cannot imagine happiness and wholeness happening in the long term, we satisfy ourselves with short term bursts of enhanced satisfaction, a quick burst of endorphins to make us feel better. Anything that fills the grief energy gap for us.

The problem with this is that we become just as addicted to our pain, trauma, and grief as we do to whatever we are using to temporarily cover it up. So the things that cause us grief have to exist to give us a reason to engage in the resolution. That’s why we tend to gravitate towards disempowering relationships, people, and life situations if that is what we have known in the past. It is our comfort zone; it promotes our belief that we deserve the worst because that is what we have always known or received from others. Or we engage in these relationships to try to heal and transform them, to prove to ourselves that we can change someone and that will vindicate us and validate our suffering.

It’s a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle that doesn’t end by itself and often ends badly.  Addictions are often addressed by trying to remove the connection to the substance, like drugs or alcohol, but that addresses the physical aspect and some of the emotional aspect. What will fully resolve the addiction is to resolve the energetic aspect – the grief and the energy causing it. Only then can addictions truly be healed and resolved because without the grief there is no emotional element and without the emotional element which creates the energy gap and black holes, there is no need for the addiction.

Now this may be over-simplifying things somewhat, especially for the physical aspects of addiction but if this in any way resonates with you, you know that this complex process has a fundamental source and that is grief associated with some kind of trauma. Don’t judge your trauma here, it can be any kind of trauma or anything that we perceived as traumatic. A judgment or criticism, a harsh word, being treated unfairly, a loss, or an unmet need, can all become sources of trauma and sources of grief.

Soul wounds result from the energetic trauma we experience in this and in other lifetimes. They are created when we experience challenging life circumstances, like abandonment, betrayal, persecution, death, feel abandoned by God, and from things that happen to us and to loved ones that make us feel helpless and powerless, out of control and ineffective.

They have a strong pain energy signature that can dominate our reality so that everything we do is focused on relieving the pain, even for a brief moment. The deep longing for wholeness can compel us to create ‘false congruence’, and here addictions become the perfect solution, where we try to fill in the joy gaps with anything that we think will relieve the pain right now. The problem with that is it doesn’t heal the pain in the long term so we need more of it to keep the gaps filled, this is what creates addictions.

Unless we understand that unresolved and unrecognized grief is the source of this pain and can address that source first, any intention we have to heal ourselves will not work. It’s like committing to a diet and eating healthy food during the day, then binging on twinkies, chips, and soda at night. The real source of healing is to acknowledge the grief and resolve the energy that causes it. Then we can heal the energy gaps and release the addictions because we no longer need them.

Each one of us is grieving something – it’s what I call our secret sorrows and silent tears. The song that makes you cry when you hear it, a memory that you try to avoid, thing which happened in the past that you are still angry about, the regrets you have, they are all part of your grief. There will be grief, but it doesn’t have to become the destructive, self-perpetuating, cycles of trauma and grief that become addictions which drive self-destructive behavior that we are powerless to stop.

Once we understand the energetic relationship between trauma, pain, grief, and addictions we can create a path to healing and wholeness and engage in an authentic healing journey whose outcome will create the healed, whole, joyful, and congruent life we have hoped would one day be ours and it can be, when we heal the grief.

Jennifer Hoffman

enlighteninglife.com

https://enlighteninglife.com/grief-addiction/

Copyright (c) 2023 by Jennifer Hoffman. All rights reserved. You may quote, translate, reprint or refer to this message if you mention the author name and include a working link to http://enlighteninglife.com

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