Over the years mental health has become a common topic of conversation within our society. We’ve managed to slowly break down the taboos associated with it and have organisations such as Mind and Rethink at the forefront of encouraging awareness and building meaningful services for those experiencing it or those who are in contact with someone who suffers with it.
A great way to help keep calm and reduce anxiety is through practicing meditation. It doesn’t have to be about burning incense, chanting or staying in one place for great lengths of time. Meditation is about focusing on training the mind to observe thoughts, focus and redirect attention in a positive way. It offers many incredible health benefits and is often used by models or talent before a big shoot or filming project…here are some of the ways it can help your mind, body and soul…
1. Reduces stress and anxiety
Research reveals that meditation can lower the stress hormone otherwise known as cortisol. This helps ease stress and anxiety helping you feel more positive and confident and, to be honest, who wouldn’t want that?
2. Improves your sleep
Meditation can help to regulate sleep patterns which is important to your mental health as well as your physical. Improving the quality of your sleep will in turn help improve the quality of your life too. Getting a good night’s sleep in will help heal and repair your heart and blood vessels and can reduce major health ailments such as high blood pressure and diabetes.
3. It can make you smarter
Yes, really! Studies have shown the positive effects that meditating has on the brain and yes, improving memory is one of them.
4. Acts as a natural painkiller
Forget over the counter medication to treat your headaches. Meditating brings it’s own natural approach to combatting them helping you get pain relief through effective management techniques. What’s not to love?
5. Slows down the ageing process
We know that this point will most certainly get your attention! Meditation has been found to have positive effects on the ageing brain helping to slow down age-related memory decline.
How to get started
This technique doesn’t have to be time-consuming nor do you require skill, experience or equipment. All you need is:
· A couple of minutes of me-time
· Concentration
· Some deep breaths
To kick-start your meditation journey, follow our oh-so-simple two-step guide. You can thank us later!
Step 1: Choose a space for meditation
The choice is entirely yours as to where you’d like to meditate. Any area in your home setting that you deem as being calm and peaceful is a good idea to retreat and begin your meditation journey. A quiet setting that helps you to zone out the eternal noises (be it, traffic outside or your creaking floorboards) will help you block out distractions so that you can concentrate better on your inner self.
Accessorise your journey
To help elevate your experience, you can add in fragrance to your atmosphere using candle and reed diffusers to help give your experience an all-round relaxing vibe.
Adding soothing music to the mix can also help you to further your relaxation as music tends to evoke different emotions in you. Listening to the sound of waves or the breeze can help you connect with nature and feel at peace with your surroundings helping to further your meditation journey.
Step 2: Begin meditating
A great way to start is to sit down (grab a cushion to get comfier if you need to) and close your eyes. Take in slow breaths through your nose, hold for a few seconds and then release slowly through your mouth. Aim to fill your lungs with as much oxygen to help circulate your blood flow more efficiently. If it feels like a struggle to do, take baby steps and do shorter inhaling and exhaling. It’s a really simple method but very effective once you get the hang of it.
Try it out and let Models Direct know how you get on our social media pages!
