Meditation and Its Effects on Emotional and Mental Well-Being - Essay Example

Meditation has been used as an age-old practice in the rehabilitation and management of mental illnesses and conditions among individuals. The practice has been linked to the management of certain mental conditions, such as anxiety. Individuals learn how to stay engaged with the environment around them without necessarily having to react to each event. This art has been indigenous amongst Asian communities from the conception of Indian Yoga and Buddhism. Nonetheless, various forms of meditation equally have different or similar effects on the well-being of an individual. Recent studies on this practice have been majorly on determining the effects of all forms of meditation on the different cognitive abilities in individuals. Unlike indigenous meditation practices, modern-day practices are not based on religious beliefs. Therefore they remain to be solely secular and focused entirely on the general well-being of an individual. Mindfulness and Sahaja Yoga are some of the most researched meditation practices and their general effects on an individual's cognitive abilities. This paper aims to enlist the positive impacts associated with the practice of meditation and what this could mean to the emotional well-being of an individual. The current lifestyles experienced globally are prone to subjecting individuals to continuous mental and physical agony. Therefore, meditation could be the most suitable outlet an individual may have to stay positive and maintain a healthy mental state.

Stressful events may be triggered by a different situation in daily life. This could be moving to a new town, getting a new job, moving to a different school, or even trying out for the new basketball team. However, these events can only be managed through effective coping mechanisms. Mindfulness has been described as one of the best mental training that could be used in the management and coping of stressful events (Gotick et al., 2016. Mindfulness is described as the secular practice of attention to internal and external actions happening to present events (Gotick et al., 2016). This practice has also been associated with the idea of openness. An individual is welcoming to most ideas and actions that happen around them without basing them on any negative experiences. Mindfulness has been commonly used as a stress-reduction technique for individuals by improving their cognitive perceptions of the world around them. This meditation practice is associated with enabling an individual to determine and identify all of their possible reactions to certain triggers around them. The individual is then advised to let go of all of the dysfunctional traits they had to cope with stressful events. This meditation practice also empowers an individual with a new coping mechanism to reduce stress and management. Mindfulness is often taught whereby individuals may be trained for a certain duration on ways of engaging their minds with different realities in their lives and learning when it is necessary to let go of an event or emotion associated with it. This practice has also been associated with the alteration of the neurological structure of individuals. In a previous study, all of the participants that took part in an 8-week long mindfulness practice developed structural and functional differences in the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, insula, and cingulate cortex. These neural structures are often associated with perspective taking, attention regulation, and self-referential practices.

Moreover, the prefrontal cortex is associated with the amygdala response to stressful situations through either flight or fright. However, mindfulness practice has been associated with the lowering of the amygdala response, which is often the trigger of stressful events. A different study on the effects of Sahaja yoga indicated an increase in grey matter density and changes in the coherence of intrinsic brain activity in individuals (Dodich et al., 2018). An increase in grey matter density results in improved learning abilities and performance in individuals. In contrast, changes in intrinsic brain activity's coherence result in improved levels of alertness and attention to evens. Each of these aspects is aimed at improving the overall functionality of an individual through meditation. Therefore, this could be translated as Sahaja yoga impacts an individual's levels of attention where they become more aware and attentive to events happening around them. Sahaja Yoga also improves an individual's productivity, where they can interact with different events and situations around them throughout the day and perform optimally. Improved attention and performance may essentially result in lower stress levels in individuals expected to perform highly at all times.

Nonetheless, the attention areas are one of the most affected regions of the brain by meditation. This region is responsible for how individuals may perceive different events in the environment, and it serves as the working memory. Meditation alters the functional connectivity of the brain, where a different study suggested the same (Wendy & Lawrence, 2012). Individuals that were most likely to maintain a meditation regime had an altered functional connectivity in comparison to the other ones that did not have any form of training. This alteration meant that meditators were also more likely to have better attention allocation, therefore, improved performance in different tasks around them. It is also presumed that meditators have little or no attention paid to irrelevant events during visual processing such as when the eyes are closed (Wendy & Lawrence, 2012). The act of limiting the amount of attention that is paid to events or situations equally contributes to the slower or altered response of the amygdala to stressful events.

As stated before, mindfulness is associated with several positive impacts on the general well-being of an individual. This practice has often been related to attention control, emotional regulation, self-awareness, and enhanced self-regulation (Tang et al., 2015). The neural imaging of an individual that practices mindfulness has several telltale signs of how the practice may impact emotional regulation. For instance according to Tang et al., (2015) an individual may depict increased fronto-limbic connectivity as a result of continuous and prolonged mindfulness practices. This results in regulated emotional responses to events around individuals where they are more likely to perceive different stressful events differently. Additionally, being more self-aware enables an individual to be more accepting of themselves and the situations they may be in at all times.

Self-awareness enables an individual to understand their limits and not to over-expect outcomes or events from different people and environments around them. Moreover, an individual that is self-aware is able to control their emotions rather than letting their emotions and feelings control them. The act of being controlled by feelings and how individuals may perceive other people’s perceptions about them is what breeds stressful responses. An individual should be able to identify their limits in what they can or cannot achieve. This creates an accepting attitude that would instead propel an individual into pursuing what they could not achieve before. In the long run, this new coping mechanism allows for an easier transition into new environments and situations without the pressure to be successful or fulfilling within the first attempt.

Stressful events are inevitable in the daily lives of humans. Therefore, relevant coping mechanisms are required for easier transitioning through events that could subject an individual to constant mental agony. It is important for an individual to be aware of the self and how different scenarios may trigger and disturb their emotional well-being. This is possible through meditation practices that have been used, since time immemorial in the management and control of stressful events around individuals. Coping mechanisms are reliant on the individual’s ability to internalize and express events around them. Mediation practices such as mindfulness have often been described as perfect coping mechanisms used in the management of stress. Mindfulness allows an individual to pay full attention to events occurring both externally and internally. Through this process, an individual should be able to determine the most efficient response to the events through a non-judgmental manner. This essentially enables an individual to regulate their emotional responses, by allowing them to understand that not all actions require a reaction in response to them. Meditation also alters the neurological structure of individuals that continuously take part in the practice. Individuals develop greater gray matter density that is associated with improved performance and cognitive abilities, and lowered amygdala response to stressful events. Therefore, meditation should be considered as an outlet that could be used by individuals in coping with stressful events.