6 Physical and Mental Benefits of Zen Meditation
Have you ever felt out of focus? Have you ever felt when you were eating that you didn’t realize that your food had suddenly run out, even though you thought you just ate it? There is a term called mindfulness. This is the benefit of Zen meditation. This meditation originates from Mahayana Buddism with the aim of gaining enlightenment through intuition, through meditation.
When you live it, you will get Zenmoment. Yes, when we eat, it’s better to just eat, do nothing else, taste every chew, taste the taste. Then how to get Zen moment? The trick is to practice meditation.
Correct meditation is not emptying your mind, but you should focus on breathing exercises. Calculate the breathing interval, when to inhale, when to hold your breath, and when to exhale. We will know it as Zen meditation.
What are the benefits of Zen meditation?
Following are the benefits of Zen meditation that are associated with mindfulness:
1. Reducing guilt
This feeling is formed in us since childhood, the purpose of which is to distance ourselves from behaviors that are considered bad. However, sometimes these feelings of guilt are very strong, so we often blame ourselves for upsetting others, or ourselves. Meditation practice can make you focus and live only in the present. Train to think, whatever your past mistakes are, it is becoming a part of who you were in the past. Meanwhile, the you in the present are not the you in the past.
2. Generate calm
Breathing exercises will certainly make us relax. Perhaps your mind is preoccupied with anxiety about future plans, fatigue from overcrowding, and worry about unnecessary things. The mind becomes busy, and out of control. Thinking excessively can cause you to become stressed. Breathing exercises are needed in order to get calm. It is true that the ‘wild’ thoughts will still be there, but with breathing exercises, you can control these thoughts to focus and fully concentrate on one thing. Try breathing exercises whenever your thoughts start to spiral out of control.
3. Help determine priorities
As explained above, the benefit of meditation is that it helps control the direction of your thoughts, making you focus. This is also confirmed by research published in Psychological Science in 2010. You will be clearer in making priorities. This is to avoid feeling anxious and worried when you don’t achieve something. Setting priorities can allow you to focus on achieving something every day.
4. Improve the quality of your sex life
Research published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine in 2011, quoted by LiveScience, found that women who practice meditation can improve their sexual experience. Often times women are not mentally intact during sex, a lot of anxiety comes to haunt them, such as how their partner responds, or worries about their body shape. Being fully aware during sex will be able to get these anxious thoughts out of the brain, so that the sexual experience can improve.
5. Know yourself
Meditation helps you to know yourself, why? Meditation brings awareness to being present in the moment. During this time you may have believed the assumptions that were circulating with you, trusting what other people say about you. With meditation, you look inside yourself, forgiving of the mistakes you made in the past. In addition, you will also do your work consciously, it is a sign of how valuable the work is, you are aware of the freedom you have. Sometimes when you become immersed in the work you are doing, you get carried away in the role, forgetting who you really are.
6. Avoid stress
Meditation will reduce your stress. According to Giuseppe Pagnoni, a neuroscientist at Emory University Atlanta, who was quoted by the LiveScience website, there is evidence that suggests that behavioral therapy by means of meditation that includes elements mindfulness can reduce depression. In addition, it was also found that research looked at the relationship between mindfulness, depressive symptoms, and nervous activity in adults. The nature of mindfulness inversely proportional to the activity of the amygdala (the part of the brain that detects fear) when the participants are at rest. Amygdala activity is associated with depressive symptoms. So, the research draws the conclusion that nature mindfulness can change the activity of the amygdala, this can prevent the risk of depression.
How to do Zen meditation?
The goal of Zen meditation is to make the mind free from distractions. Meditation is also recommended to help deal with the lack of focus on ADHD, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, and other disorders that distract our minds.
In recent decades, various studies have emerged discussing the benefits of meditation on improving brain-scanning techniques. Scientists, quoted by the site LiveScience, found that meditation practice for several months can train a person’s brain acuity to remember details that might have been forgotten. This also brings us into habit mindfulness, or full awareness.
The technique used when meditating is to focus on our breathing and posture, of course you can do this with your eyes open, or closed. It is important to do this in a quiet place to avoid distraction. The key to this meditation is to “think nothing”, just focus on that moment of meditation. You can sit cross-legged. Place your left hand on top of your right, with your palm facing the sky. Make an oval shape with your thumbs touching each other, you can see the position of the hands here.
- When you practice breathing, you close your mouth, only breathing in through your nose.
- You can do cues like; inhale, hold (counting 1 to 3), then exhale.
- Focus on counting and breathing. The key is not to fight your thoughts, let the ‘wild thoughts’ go unpredictably.
- When you find yourself thinking about something again, try to concentrate again.
- When you manage your thoughts successfully, not wandering around, you will avoid ‘unconscious when doing something’ behavior, as well as preconceived notions.
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