Meditation and Stress

While the topic of meditation and stress has been one of the most trite discussions within the realm of meditation today, I thought I would revisit it especially considering as a student, I've faced tons of stress, and I've used meditation to address it many, many times! Thus, I will address this from both an informational and a personal perspective.

Meditation, while dating back to ancient years, has recently emerged as an effective way to manage stress in an age where deadlines and performance are emphasized. Since at it's core, meditation involves relaxing the mind and creating a state of awareness, it is very effective for reducing stress. By causing relaxation and increasing awareness, people become more aware of the current sensations and emotions they are experiencing—and also become more aware of their causes. Thereafter, through its relaxative properties, meditation addresses such problems.

One of the primary ways meditation addresses stress is through managing stress hormones such as cortisol or adrenaline. While these hormones are useful in managing a stressful situation by engaging the body's "fight-or-flight" response, chronic activation can be detrimental to health. As such, in the modern age where such a response is superfluous—as there are no life-threatening sources of harm in deadlines—it is best to reduce such responses. Regular meditation counteracts this stress by inducing the relaxation response, reducing heart rate, blood pressure, as well as other physiological markers.

Beyond physical changes, meditation also helps in psychological ways. By practicing mindfulness meditation, for example, individuals learn to observe their thoughts without judgment, reducing anxiety and rumination. Since stress not only includes stress factors but also our responses to them, meditation is especially potent by allowing positive and healthy reactions to flow out instead of negative and unhealthy ones. Meditation helps individuals become more aware of their thoughts, emotions, and reactions, creating space between the experience of stress and how one responds to it. This space can be the key to managing stress more effectively—shifting from automatic reactions to deliberate, thoughtful responses.

Because of these vast benefits, to improve oneself through meditation does not require significant time commitment. Even five minutes a day can be effective in reducing tons of stress. What is important is establishing consistency—to build up the effects of meditation. As such, meditation can be a subtle but powerful form of management for stress.

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I have personal experience regarding this! During busy times, I often don't have enough time to fully devote longer practices to meditation. As such, I often only have small snippets of time. However, these small snippets are enough. In that short time and space, I am able to effectively address my stress by simply taking time to slow down and realize how I'm feeling.

It could be compared to exercise; sometimes all you need is a short breath before starting run again, and this provides much more stamina than if you had try to brute force it. And as time goes on, you may need less of these breaks as you build upon your skills.

Overall, meditation has been a wonderful help to me in managing and dealing with recent stressful times!