Meditation significantly improves sleep quality and help manage pain by activating the body’s relaxation response, which offsets stress, lowers blood pressure, and calms the nervous system.
Research indicates that observing thoughts in meditation can improve sleep quality to a level similar to exercise or cognitive behavioural therapy(CBT), in addition to helping individuals manage chronic pain by changing pain perception and lessening emotional reactivity to discomfort.
Sleep Improvement Functions
- Reduced Excessive stimulation and Fight-or-flight response: Meditation lowers stress hormones and physiological tension, making it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep.
- Cognitive Changes: Observing thoughts in meditation reduces intrusive, racing, or repetitive mental activities that occur at bedtime, allowing for deeper, more restorative sleep cycles—primarily deep sleep (slow-wave sleep) and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep.
- Physiological Changes: Observing thoughts in meditation promotes rest and digest mode, conserving energy and promoting recovery from a "fight or flight" with slowed brain waves and heart rate to enter a state of rest and deep recovery.
Improvements in quality of life, physical function, and emotional well-being
- Changed Perception: Meditation does not necessarily remove physical pain but alters how the brain processes pain signals, making pain more endurable.
- Reduced Stress: By reducing anxiety and stress associated with chronic pain, meditation helps break the cycle of tension that intensifies pain.
- Alleviation through a holistic state: Regular meditation practice improves emotional, physical, social, and purposeful aspects of a fulfilling life.
Healing Meditation by Eva Müller
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