With your eyes closed, your jaw relaxed, and your shoulders relaxed, you quietly follow the air as it enters and exits your nose to fill your lungs. Your rib cage starts to feel more cosy. There's a smile. And that's it! You take a bath in the meditative mood, which promotes health and tranquilly.
Well-being? According to French publisher, author, journalist, and expert in global wisdom and meditation techniques Marc de Smedt, "more than a thousand American studies have demonstrated the benefits of meditation on the body."
It gives you a deeper slumber than you would get from sleep. Associated breathing increases lung oxygenation while consuming less air. Moreover, the body generates less waste! It influences the musculoskeletal, circulatory, and hormonal systems; it also boosts immunity and modifies pain threshold.
Continually republished by Jouvence, the author of the best-selling Little Daily Meditation Workbook expresses gratitude for "the proven effectiveness in hospitals and the development of a secular meditation movement on a global scale."
All forms of meditation are beneficial, but Elodie Garamond, the founder of the wildly popular Yoga Tigre Club&Spa, asserts that the so-called "mindfulness" technique has undergone more thorough scientific investigation than its sisters. "Secular meditation (its other name) emancipates itself from all religion to focus on the therapeutic side," the yoga instructor says.
Since the work of American Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is credited with founding this new technique, neuroscience has extensively investigated its benefits on metabolism.
In the 1970s, a molecular biology doctorate from the most esteemed American university, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), created "mindfulness-based stress reduction" (MBSR) therapy. Script?
Practicing mindfulness for 30 minutes a day for eight weeks. Results included a reduction in hypertensive participants' blood pressure and evident improvements in conditions including depression and generalised anxiety disorder, as well as improvements in chronic pain and skin conditions, including psoriasis.
Currently, about 700 facilities globally and 550 centres, hospitals, or clinics in the US use MBSR. The effects are now so compelling that they are covered by British Social Security.
What precisely is going on a physiological level? Breathing is an essential task. Elodie Garamond says, "We connect to it through a simple awareness of inhaling and exhaling; it is a tool accessible to everyone, including children." A greater ability to breathe and move is essential for this breath awareness. The body and brain in particular benefit from improved oxygen diffusion, which explains the nearly instantaneous feeling of clarity.
Research on medical imaging, namely electroencephalograms (EECs), has demonstrated that meditation practice increases the formation of new neural connections. Additionally, it enhances prefrontal cortex function. Committed to emotional regulation, it enables us to pause, cultivate creativity, and intuition. It reduces the negative impacts of stress as well as unpleasant feelings like fear and rage.
"The two cerebral hemispheres' varying levels of stimulation are balanced by meditation. Harmony between the body and the mind is facilitated by this point of balance between intelligence and senses. It takes the person into a heightened state of awareness that encourages integration in psychotherapy.