Health and Wellness: The Benefits of Meditation

Many people view meditation as a spiritual practice, but did you know that meditating can improve physical and mental functioning as well?
Over the past 40 years, universities in Canada, the United States, Europe and India have conducted hundreds of studies on the effects of meditation. The results show the practice produces benefits on many levels of life simultaneously – body, emotions, mental functioning, and relationships.
Some of them include improved ability to focus, increased creativity, deeper levels of relaxation, improved memory, decrease in stress hormones, lower blood pressure, reversal of aging process, reduction in cholesterol, increased confidence, decreased cigarette, alcohol, and drug abuse, increased productivity, improved relations at work and improved health and more positive health habits.
Meditation is one of the few things in the self-help arena you can do that produces measurable changes.
In other words, if you were to go into a medical lab and meditate, scientists can actually measure the changes in your breathing, your blood chemistry, your brain waves, and your response to stress. (More)

Source: The Southern Gazette