Meditation Can Reduce Stress And Enhance Sleep Quality

                   If you want to learn more about meditation and Zen practice, it is recommended that you read the book “There are No Suffering,”

                         which provides detailed information on the methods of meditation and Zen practice, effectively eliminating the pain and troubles in our lives.

In truth, sleep is so important that without it we aren’t able to function as well as we normally could, physically or mentally. We know how meditation has proved itself to be a very effective way to fight stress and get better quality slumber, because it calms the mind, lowers anxiety levels and activates our bodies’ relaxation response system – a system that indirectly affects how well we rest at night. This week our focus will be on how meditation, stress reduction and additional restful slumber can work in conjunction with each other and how to incorporate it into your bedtime rituals for greater restful slumber.

The Effect of Stress on Sleep – While chronic stress can make sleep hard or impossible, the cause of the inability to sleep is somewhat delayed at least in hindsight. When under stress our bodies produce cortisol and adrenaline hormones that get our minds and bodies alert and minds active while our bodies stay tense, thus not the best of sleep.

Stress Can Affect Sleep Abruptions: Common Issues to Consider:

Difficulty Sleeping: And yet, some distractions like racing thoughts or worries may keep people from unwinding their minds so they can get to restful slumber. Interrupted Sleep: The stress may keep people awake all night long.

Poor Quality Sleep: It’s rare for sleep to come even if sometimes only temporary restfulness. This is something meditation can help out with by soothing nerves, relieving anxiety, and creating an environment where you can get a good night’s rest. Reducing Stress with Meditation is an ancient tradition that trains the mind to focus and eliminate worry and tension, so that you can step out of active, and frequently chaotic states into calmer states more easily and gradually. Meditation reduces stress through various physiological and psychological mechanisms:

Meditation Aims at Stimulating Parasympathetic Nervous System: Meditation activates the parasympathetic nervous system and allows you to get out of “stress mode” (increased heart rate and blood pressure, cortisol decreased).

Mindfulness Meditation Strengthens Present-Moment Awareness: A form of mindfulness meditation can be used to enhance present moment awareness as thoughts and emotions are objectively observed without cognizing judgment, and so prevent overthinking while lessening anxiety and helping relax the mind more fully.

Encourage Emotional Regulation: Practicing meditation helps people effectively manage stress and reduce its disabling stress on mental and physical health while minimizing stress triggers. Meditation makes people more aware of when the build up of stress may affect their sleep, so they can take action to reduce it before it does.

How Does Meditation Affect Sleep Quality

Reducing stress through meditation can certainly enhance sleep quality; but more than this, meditation directly improves restful rest through various means:

• Meditation could increase your deep sleep and REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep over time — both of which are key to restorative rest and memory consolidation, according to studies.
• Meditation Practices May Help Reduce Insomnia Symptoms: Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) practices in particular may help those who don’t sleep at night by helping them release intrusive thoughts from restful sleep, multiple studies suggest.
• Meditation Promotes Consistent Sleep Cycles: And regular meditation practice sets the scene for an easy night’s rest and an easier falling and staying asleep. Numerous studies are proving that regular meditation has profound effects on your ability to sleep well at night.
• Stress Reducing and Better Sleep Meditation Techniques

There are various meditation practices you can incorporate into your nightly routine in order to reduce stress and improve sleep quality; five stand out as particularly effective:

Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness meditation allows you to stay present, but cut off thoughts that come to your head, it’ll help you to reduce over thinking, making relaxation a little bit easier, and making bedtime preparation much easier! Plus it also makes both preparations easier!

How to Practice: Close your eyes and sit or lie comfortably, breathing for five to ten minutes — until your mind wanders off track. Until then, gently bring it back when necessary until it is in the right state – repeat this as long as it is necessary until that occurs.

Body Scan Meditation

Body scan meditation is great for those who experience physical strain that keeps them up during sleep by paying attention to every portion of your body, to release the tension.

How to Practice: I recommend starting at your toes and just relaxing each of the muscles as you go up to each body part, noting any tension as you go.

Guided Meditation for Sleep

An audio recording containing soothing sounds is used in guided meditation, which guides the practitioner through relaxation steps, prior to bedtime. For those who need structure to get them calming before sleep, this may be especially helpful.

How to Practice: A guided sleep meditation audio file gives you the opportunity to listen to an instructor help you through deep breathing exercises, body relaxation exercises and visualization methods.

Visualization Meditation

Visualization meditation involves imagining an oasis or, best of all, a peaceful scene to reduce stress and elicit feelings of calm and serenity—so it’s ideal for processing people who might not be so drawn to the more abstract.

How to Practice: Picture yourself in an environment like a beach or forest, and allow yourself to be immediately transported to its sights, sounds, your senses of sight, sound, touch … all that helps to evoke a feeling of relaxation. There can be comfort or solace in what ever silence it may be present in.

Breath-Focused Meditation

Breath focused meditation involves breathing in focus and slowly in order to soothe the nervous system. Breathwork reduces heart rate and blood pressure as well as telling your body to become calm.

How to Practice: For some relaxation purposes, try practicing 4-7-8 breathing: breathe in for four seconds, hold them for seven seconds and exhale eight times and repeat until you feel at peace.

Make Rituals

To fully benefit from your meditation practice and get the most out of it, think consistency! Here are a few suggestions to incorporate it into your evening ritual:

• Select an Appropriate Location: Dim the lights, get rid of distractions and add in the lavender scent for an extra soothing trick of reducing stress.
• Set a Regular Meditation Practice Schedule: The association of meditation with bedtime gives your body the cue to relax. Another approach is to hence set an alarm reminder which allow you to practice.
• Beginning Meditation: Starting small with meditation can mitigate your first experience with a feeling of being overwhelmed and forced to do 40 minutes of meditation each time you sit. If this is your first meditation practice, start slowly and try a first session of about five to ten minutes. Build up in time as you settle into your practice.
• Utilize Meditation Apps: Guided meditations are popular apps such as Headspace, Calm, and Insight Timer that hopefully help you feel less stressed and sleep more restfully.
• Be Patient: Meditation takes time, and a long time, to master, but meditators who meditate regularly will become better relaxed and sleep better for regular meditators.
• Meditation Can Benefit Your Sleep and Your Health over Time Meditation has its long term benefits and allows for long term improvements in our sleeping and our overall health with regular practice.
• Meditation Can Reduce Stress: Meditation is known to reduce tension and ensuing emotional resilience, to make the approach to the life problems be easier and more optimistic, but with calmer times.
• Reducing Dependence on Sleep Aids: The natural way to help improve quality of restful sleep, and eliminate or even reduce dependence on medication or supplement to get quality restful sleep is meditation.
• Improved Overall Health: From reduced blood pressure, elevated immune levels and emotional balance, to deeper restorative sleep, meditation has so much goodness behind it throughout, that’s why I can say there are many health benefits in meditating!

Conclusion: Meditation is a way of life for a more relaxed, healthier life.

There’s no doubt that meditation can be helpful in reducing stress and improving sleep in that it gets the mind to relax and the body to relax. Meditation, with its relaxation of mind body connection, offers an effective way to achieve restful nights, resilience against stress level and overall balanced better well being – mindfulness meditation, body scan or breath focused technique might be handy tools helping to create peaceful environment for restful slumber – embrace them as part of my nightly routine and enjoy the benefits of a better restful night sleep and better resilience to stress levels and so on.