First, what exactly is guided meditation? In guided meditation, you are being “guided” by someone else. You listen to them guiding you into a state of relaxation through breaking exercises or mantras or using specific mental imagery. Whereas, meditation, is done by yourself. Just you, sitting and going into a meditative state.
There are many types of meditations out there, so finding one that really resonates with you shouldn’t be difficult. However, I am just going over guided meditation in this post.
“It’s estimated that over 200-500 million people meditate worldwide, according to disturbmenot.com meditation.
- “Meditation improves anxiety levels 60% of the time.”
- “Meditation can reduce the wake time of people with insomnia by 50%, according to mindfulness meditation stats.”
There are many benefits of practicing meditation, either guided or unguided. The benefits are largely the same, according to guidedmeditationframework.com. However, according to The Mayo Clinic, “Meditation can give you a sense of calm, peace and balance that can benefit both your emotional wellbeing and our overall health.” It also helps you to relax and to cope and manage stress.
Meditation allows you to help clear away all the clutter and baggage that we hold onto on a daily basis, that contributes to our stress. Meditation gives us this outlet to release all this pent-up ‘yuck!’
Here are some emotional and physical benefits, according to The Mayo Clinic:
- Gaining a new perspective on stressful situations.
- Building skills to manage your stress.
- Increasing self-awareness.
- Focusing on the present.
- Reducing negative emotions.
- Increasing imagination and creativity.
- Increasing patience and tolerance.
- Lowering resting heart rate.
- Lowering resting blood pressure.
- Improving sleep quality.
As you can see, those are all pretty intense benefits, making meditation definitely worth your while to start. Even if you start 10 minutes a day and build up, you will notice the difference in these areas above.
When we add meditation onto our self-care list of loving acts, we are showing ourselves self-love. All of these benefits decrease inflammation in our bodies, improving our health, improving our coping skills, allowing us to look at situations in a better light, with more unconditional love and patience.
With that being said, the Mayo Clinic states that “some research suggests that meditation may help people manage symptoms of conditions such as:”
- Anxiety
- Asthma
- Cancer
- Chronic pain
- Depression
- Heart disease
- High blood pressure
- Irritable bowel syndrome
- Sleep problems
- Tension headaches
I can speak for 3 of those. I used meditation (and continue to) during my cancer journey of finding out about the diagnosis, the fears, etc., along with the insomnia and tension headaches. It improved my sleep and decreased my headaches because it allowed me to let go of much of the fear I had about my cancer. It allowed me to be calmer, more relaxed and look at the whole situation in a different light. And, it still continues to. I was able to look into my heart and see what was really at the heart of my breast cancer and work to release the old thoughts, beliefs and patterns.
I wanted to add this audio guided meditation. To be honest, it is the first one that I have done for others. So, sit back or lie down and turn off your notifications, your phone, tv, etc. and give yourself this time…YOU ARE WORTH IT!