How it can improve mental health and bring calmness to the mind?
Evidence to show that Meditation Helps
How does Meditation Improve Mental Health and Emotions?
Anger Regulation
Meditation helps to regulate negative emotions. It is seen through research that practicing meditation can help individuals to manage emotions such as anger and fear. In the research published by Fennell et al (2016), it was shown that a single session of meditation was able to reduce anger in both novice and experienced mediators. When this study was performed, it was seen that the individuals who had never practiced meditation, experienced higher levels of anger which resulted in a high heart rate, breathing rate and blood pressure. The persons who meditated were able to reduce anger-inducing physical changes such as increase in breathing rates etc.
Recovery from Disturbing Scenes
In yet another study to understand the emotion regulations, it was found that participants who practiced meditation helped to manage the negative emotions which came to mind. Thus, the group of people who meditated were able to remain emotionally calm even when disturbing photos and videos of a bloody corpse was seen.
Fear Regulation
It was seen that meditation was able to improve fear levels of cancer patients as they were constantly under the fear that the disease would return. The American Cancer Society in a survey found that 60% of cancer survivors had the fear that the disease would return. This led to high levels of fear which negatively impacted on the mood and quality of life of people. Meditation thus helped to decrease this fear factor. It was seen that cancer survivors who had been taught strategies on how to control their worry was able to improve their quality of life.