If you have insomnia or having trouble sleeping at night, then you might want to try doing meditation for better sleep,
The one thing you may have realized is not sleeping enough affects your productivity in your daily works. You may feel lazy and not motivated at all to work.
Yes, not sleeping enough has much more side effects than you can imagine/
Meditation For Better Sleep: The Problems
For some of us, sleeping at night is challenging. I mean, what we all want is a good sleep, but we end up thinking of something else while lying on the bed.
For us, focusing on sleeping gets very difficult because we have so many thoughts in mind. There are around 40 to 50% of adults who can’t sleep at nights.
Based on studies, there are some conclusions that meditation reduces anxiety, depression, and pain relief.
What is meditation?
Meditation is a practice or training that uses mindfulness or focusing your mind on something (whether it is an object, any thought, or any activity) to achieve a calm and stable or focused mind.
Meditation is widely used to alleviate stress, anxiety, fight depression and pain and more.
The history of meditation
Meditation was originated in India a long time ago, which dates around 5,000 to 3,500 BCE. It was depicted on the wall arts, showing people seated in meditative postures.
There are so many ancient Indian stories that tell us about how meditation was used in Gurukuls (schools) for the students who used to learn it from their teachers.
Types of meditation
There are six types of standard meditation practices that can help you sleep better:
Loving-kindness meditation
Loving-Kindness meditation or Maitri (Sanskrit) is all about self-care, self-love and self-kindness. It is a technique that can be used to reduce stress. It helps in anger management and helps to change your perspective on someone.
It may even help build a better relationship with other people, even reducing social anxieties.
Transcendental meditation
Transcendental meditation is a form of mantra meditation or silent meditation. It involves using a silently-used sound called a mantra, and generally, it is practised for around 15 to 20 minutes twice per day.
Mindfulness meditation
Mindfulness is a process or the ability to be fully present at the moment, with all your mind focused and not thinking about other things.
This is something we naturally possess. Still, we can practice it by doing meditation daily to enhance it further.
Zen meditation
Zen meditation is a traditional Zen Buddhist tradition that means insight into the nature of existence. It provides insight into how our mind works.
The aim of Zen is just sitting and removing all the thoughts from your mind, ignoring all the thoughts, words, memories that come by and focusing on nothing at all.
Kundalini yoga
Kundalini yoga is defined in Vadantic culture. It is dealing with the transformation and expansion of consciousness, the awakening and raising of Kundalini Energy (an incredibly powerful storehouse of psychic energy),
It involves using the energy that lies at the base of the spine (by the practice of yoga) and channelling it upward through the chakras in the process of spiritual perfection.
Spiritual meditation
Spiritual meditation is connecting to something greater, vaster and more profound than the individual self.
It is usually practised in Hinduism, Daoism or Taoism and Christian faith.
Vipassana meditation
Vipassana meditation involves concentration on the body and its sensations.
The purpose of Vipassana meditation is to create awareness of deep mind or consciousness through meditation and practice.
Benefits of Meditation
Here is a list of some of the common benefits of doing meditation daily. For at least 20 minutes, you should practice doing it for 2 minutes, then gradually increase it. Doing so will help you enjoy the following benefits:
Improves concentration
Meditation might help you in concentration. This is a practice in which you have to focus on only one thing and divert your mind from everything else.
Indeed, it takes some time and practice to perfect your meditation skills, but it’s beneficial in improving your concentration.
Promotes relief from anxiety attacks and depression
Meditation can help in relieving anxiety and depression. Some studies suggest doing meditation may help to reduce stress and depression.
Doing at least 10 minutes of meditation every day may help you reduce anxiety and help you from depression.
Reduces stress
Most people do meditation to reduce stress,
Stress is one of the reasons people start doing meditation.
Feeling stress for a long time (long term stress) can impact your overall health (physically and mentally).
To overcome stress, you must start doing meditation. Yes, you can do it even if you are not stressed about anything because it is just a type of exercise that anyone can perform, and the results are beneficial.
Meditation for better sleep can be done with mindfulness meditation which is very effective and focuses on calming your mind and diverting it from other thoughts. An effective way for meditation for better sleep
Relaxes your mind
Doing meditation may divert all your focus from different things to a single thought, and it helps to attain a calm and relaxed disposition.
Yes, it does last longer than just the meditation session. It can be beneficial throughout the day, which is very helpful in today’s lifestyle.
Helps avoid your addictions
In some studies, Doctors found that meditation makes us “naturally high” and stimulates the brain’s happiness centre, which we get from alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, etc.
Also, it has been found that meditation increases your dopamine (a feel-good neurotransmitter) level naturally, which we look for in other things. It can be increased naturally with meditation.
Helps in sleeping problems
Meditation has been proven beneficial to reduce the use of sleeping pills. Meditation is a free way to treat insomnia.
It also helps in calming your mind, which in turn helps in better sleep.
Try doing meditation after waking up in the morning and before sleeping at night for better results.
