Meditation and stress

Maher Hamadeh

With the rise in modern day smart phone technology and other user-friendly devices, over stimulation has been very common. People are constantly distracted with work, school, meetings, communication, social media, Internet shopping, etc. Unlimited Access to all of this can make excessive multitasking all the more tempting, leading to mind overload. Just like the human physical body, the mind needs a break from constant external stimulation. The lack thereof may take its toll on overall mental health. This type of break or mindfulness meditation has been found to reduce overall stress.

Most research focuses on lengthy meditation program benefits, however research conducted in Carnegie Mellon University showed that brief mindfulness meditation practices-“25 minutes for three consecutive days"-alleviates psychological stress. The article, Just 25 minutes of mindfulness meditation alleviates stress presents a 3 day experiment done by Creswell and his research team, testing 66 healthy individuals aged 18-30. After 3 days of brief breathing meditations, individuals reported their stress levels in response to stressful speech and math performance stress tasks. Reduced stress perceptions to the speech and math tasks were found, indicating that the mindfulness meditation fostered psychological stress resilience

Grabowecky’s study, Attention regulation and monitoring in

Meditation, illustrates that she also believes multitasking and overstimulation is a big issue. She even refers to this phenomenon as the rise of “the Zombie Nation”. Mindfulness and controlled attention, according to her, is the gateway to awareness and happiness. Without the isolation and attention designated to concentrate attention, the mind’s autonomy can be compromised by the outside world. Her studies showed many positive correlations between mediation and health. The Amygdala response to negative distracting sounds decreases with years of meditation practice. Post-retreat telomerase activity was also significantly greater in the retreat group. The last I will mention is that long-term meditators have thicker cortices in the colored regions.

The cultivation of emotional and mental states is also another profound effect meditation has. This allows people to assess stress levels faced from day to day. Aside from stress, meditation can also sustain or treat more severe conditions such as Depression since it has been shown to have a direct relationship with stress. Eliminating the stressors may be an effective treatment for many types of Depression.

Carnegie Mellon University. (2014, July 2). Just 25 minutes of mindfulness meditation alleviates stress, study shows. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 12, 2014 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140702122535.htm

DOI: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2014.02.007