Are you struggling to keep yourself focused on the task at hand? Are you disappointed in your short attention span and looking for a way to stretch it out? Try meditation, a habit that can help you stay focused for longer while improving your mental health in the process. What is it and what does it do for your body? Let’s find out with illme-emag.
What is meditation?
Meditation can redirect your thoughts from wherever they were wandering off by using breathing as an ancho or focusing on the breathing itself. For example, you are in meditation with your eyes closed. Random thoughts pop up in your head, but instead of stopping or suppressing them, you notice them, without judgment, and gently let them go with exhaling. Repeat this as many times as you like.
There are many forms of meditation, but there are two main types:
Concentrative meditation means focusing all attention on a specific thing while tuning out everything around you. Its purpose is to let you experience whatever you are focusing on in order to reach a higher state of mind.
Mindfulness meditation involves the state of being aware of and involved in the present moment, and making yourself open, aware, and accepting. However, mindfulness meditation can target different issues, so its focus may be different from practice to practice.
Practicing meditation can have many benefits. Here are some:
- Strengthening the attention span
When you practice redirecting your thoughts many times through meditation, gradually, the time between the redirections stretches, which means you stay focused for longer.
- Enhancing self-awareness
A variety of forms of meditation can help you develop a greater understanding of yourself. For instance, one practice helps you to recognize negative thoughts and steer them to more positive ones.
- Reducing stress.
Meditation can be practiced anywhere and in a short time. You only need one minute to calm your mind and come up with a solution to the problem you are facing. Doing this will quickly cut down on the stress from building up, thus the anxiety as well.
- Increasing self-control.
Through meditation, you can develop your mental discipline or self-control. Whether you are about to have a craving or an emotional outbreak, stop for a second and breathe. Try to focus on your breathing. After calming down, think of the consequences, then act on what you want or don’t want to do.
- Improving sleep.
Many people struggle to sleep at night sometimes. It’s usually because the anxiety or stream of non-stop thoughts runs over their heads. You could use concentrative meditation in this case. Just relax your whole body and focus only on your breathing. It takes practice to get used to it at first, but when you get it, you will fall asleep in two minutes.