Have you been reading lately about how meditation can actually help people cope with health issues? Supposedly, it’s a breathing process, but how can breathing get rid of pain? Come to think of it, meditation is what kids did in the 70s while they were getting high, right? They couldn’t feel anything, anyway.
In a recent WebMD Health News article, Meditation May Reduce Pain Brain Imaging Shows Impact of Brief Mindfulness Meditation Training, the author, Salynn Boyles, says, “After just four, 20-minute instructional sessions in mindfulness meditation, most participants in the small study experienced big reductions in pain intensity and unpleasantness when subjected to painful stimuli.”
If you think about it, 20 minutes is not that long to spend meditating to improve your health. It’s best done in the morning, but can be done at any quiet down time.
Don’t have any quiet time? Me neither. Here’s 10 more reasons you should not bother to meditate:
1. You take 5 pills to maintain your blood pressure levels. A reading of 150 over 90 is not so bad.
2. The anxiety attacks you have every Tuesday morning is normal. Everybody gets chest pains when they have to meet with their boss.
3. You have chronic migraines, but it’s a lot quicker to pop a couple pills than to sit down and meditate for 20 minutes.
4. Depression runs in your family. Meditation can’t stop genetics.
5. You love the adrenaline rush you get every time your mother-in-law stops in unannounced to inspect your home. You have anti-anxiety medication just for those occasions.
6. Sleeping is highly overrated. You do your best problem-solving at 3:00 AM.
7. You’ve heard meditation can help Adult ADD, but all your coworkers know you have a short attention span. They help you out when you screw up.
8. You’ve heard that meditation can help the effects on chemo therapy, but a lot people get sick after treatments. You'll get through it.
9. You've been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and your doctor put you on anti-seizure medications. The side effects are terrible, but what else can you do?
10. You've heard that meditation is a weird type of religion. You don't go for any of that new age, hippy stuff.
If you think meditation can't help you cope with health issues, check out the sources below for more information.
If you truly believe these are 10 good reasons not to meditate, you are probably right. Meditation is probably bad for your health.
Sources:
http://www.webmd.com/balance/news/20110406/meditation-may-reduce-pain
http://www.health.com/health/condition-article/0,,20189602,00.html
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/how-meditation-may-change-the-brain/
Reviewed August 1, 2011
by Michele Blackberg R.N.
Edited by Shannon Koehle