Did you know you can use your mind to heal your body? Meditation allows your body to experience spiritual awareness and love more consciously. Through the act of this one small habit you can receive amazing benefits! You may feel like you don’t have time to meditate or that you would be missing out on something better that is happening, but in fact the opposite is true. You will be enhancing the experiences in your life and improving your overall quality of life with just a little meditation. Try fitting meditation into your regular schedule if you want to experience all the benefits it has to offer. Here are some reasons why you should start meditating today!

1. Overall Improvement of Health

Studies have shown that meditation lowers blood pressure and decreases stress levels. Also, it can reduce the risk of heart disease, reduce chronic pain, reduce levels of stress in cancer patients and reduce the risk of stroke! It has even been proven to prevent major diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The most powerful tool against disease is free and readily available to you whenever you want to use it.

2. Get a Natural Energy Boost

Do you hit the mid-day hump where you just get tired at work, at home, or driving in the car? The answer for most people is usually Starbucks, Red Bull or 5 Hour Energy. Meditating for just a few minutes everyday can substantially increase your energy level. Instead of paying for a momentary boost in energy and then crashing all over again, you can get rid of those mid-day blues by taking a few minutes at work, or when you get home, to meditate. Calming and focusing the mind is a free and easy way to reboot your mind.

3. Sleep Better At Night

One of the most important things in life is sleep! Who doesn’t love sleep? In order to start the day off right, rejuvenated and refreshed, your body needs a good night’s sleep. Anxiety and stress before bed are common side effects of a busy and stressful life. In this current day and age, people are sleeping less, not more. Worrying before going to bed at night is a terrible feeling that can lead to sleepless nights. To be the best you and wake up renewed everyday you must sleep! Meditation naturally increases melatonin in your body. Although your body regularly produces melatonin naturally, stress can reduce the level of melatonin that your body produces. Increasing melatonin through meditation helps you sleep better at night, wake up feeling refreshed and provides you with more energy through out the day.

4. Decrease Depression

Meditating boosts your happiness! It’s true! Studies have shown that individuals who suffered from life long mood disorders, depression, anxiety, and other such disorders decreased ruminative thinking through meditation. Ruminating is when your brain thinks about something over and over again like a song lyric you can’t get out of your head. People usually obsess about things that have happened to them, events, life, or relationships. Mindfulness meditation helps to change cognitive processes. In other words it helps to change the way your mind thinks. Get happy and try meditating today!

5. Increases Your Connection to Others

Many people meditate alone, but you don’t have to. There are people that prefer to meditate in groups or plan to meditate at the same time of day as others in order to feel a greater connection. The group may choose to focus on one central idea to increase the effectiveness of the meditation. For example, business owners may choose to meditate at the same time of day and pray for the success of their company. Also, people in relationships may choose to meditate together to increase their connection, love for one another or compassion. Meditating in groups can increase social connections.

“Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh