These acts help to create a good atmosphere for productivity or a workout, calming you down or pumping you up as needed. Both meditation and music can also have positive effects on your mental and physical health.
Reduce Stress
The act of meditation involves engaging your mind and body in relaxing, simple tasks. This makes it easier to focus your thoughts and remove distractions. Developing this ability allows you to take a step back from the stressors in your life and simply relax. It also allows you to take time to organize your thoughts so you can better focus on the most important tasks, further reducing stress. Music, especially a peaceful or calming tune, works in a similar fashion; helping our brains and bodies to take a break from the daily stress of our busy world.
Lower Blood Pressure
A major physical benefit of music and meditation is their ability to lower blood pressure. The act of calming your body and the deep breathing often practiced in meditation sends messages to your heart that it doesn’t need to work as hard. Relaxing music also sends these messages to your body, controlling your breathing and settling your heart rate. There are many benefits to regulated blood pressure including a reduced risk of heart attack and increased health of your cardiovascular system.
Improve Your Mood
Listening to music you enjoy causes your brain to release endorphins, the happy hormones. This not only improves your mood in the moment, but helps improve your overall outlook on life. Similarly, meditation allows your brain to relax, reducing the weights and burdens, as well as promoting the creation of endorphins. With a clear mind, you can embrace your life with a fresh, positive perspective.
Help Reduce Cravings
While it may sound strange, both music and meditation have an effect on cravings both for food and drugs. This works by occupying your focus and impacting your short term memory, so your body finds it easier to forget its craving. The best form of meditation to help with this is mindfulness meditation, or increased awareness of your body and thoughts, without judgment of either. This allows you to acknowledge and see your cravings without indulging them, creating an easier way for you to move past them to other, more beneficial actions.
Boost Your Memory
The focus and clear mind promoted by both meditation and listening to music also increase your memory function. By regularly practicing meditation or actively listening to music, you stretch your mind and clear unnecessary information from your memory. This makes it easier for your brain to retain new, more important information until you need to reference it again. This not only makes your life easier, but helps you keep track of what information stored in your mind is useful and what can be forgotten in order to make room for more.
Meditation and listening to music are enjoyable pastimes, but also have many health benefits. So, if you feel stressed or overwhelmed by your life, break out your favourite tunes or practice some meditation. Neither require a specific location or environment, so pop on your headphones and take a break whenever you need a recharge.
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