Vedic Meditation has has beautiful healing properties. A lot of research has been done on Vedic meditation in the last twenty years, and results have shown that this kind of meditation provides many health benefits. This practice impacts our mental health, inflammation, chronic disease, pain, insomnia, and our lifespan in general.
Vedic meditation has origins in the ancient body of knowledge, in Sanskrit known as Vedas. This 6 000-year-old technique was passed on between priests in a form of oral narrative. What differs this ancient practice from other forms of meditation is mantra. It is a mind-vehicle which helps people who practice Vedic meditation to self transcend to a deeper level of consciousness. This allows our body to have deep rest.
Vedic meditation instructors teach students how to use mantra in a gentle, innocent way without effort. This makes Vedic meditation unique in comparison to other techniques. This practice is meant for people who are not monks, and is suitable for our modern lifestyle, technique is effortless and natural to practice. Other forms of meditation are more for monks. These people are devoting their lives to meditation. For us, who have work to do, to take care of our kids and pay a mortgage, it is necessary to have a meditation practice which will suit our working schedule. That’s the difference between Vedic meditation and other meditation techniques like open monitoring practice or focus meditation
There are dozens of meditation categories, but all can be splitted in these three disciplines:
- Self-transcendent style of meditation/Vedic meditation or Nishkam Karma Yoga/Transcendental meditation
- Open monitoring practice/Mindfulness
- Focus meditation/Vipassana
A lot of research has been done on Vedic meditation in the last twenty years, and results have shown that this kind of meditation provides many health benefits. We meditate to calm our minds and to provide deep rest to our bodies. This practice impacts our mental health, inflammation, chronic disease, pain, insomnia, and our lifespan in general.
There are few people who can say that they don’t feel worried in some way. Anxiety, depression, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases are on the rise. Besides covid, 80% of hospital visits are related to stress. If we can manage our stress levels, we will have the opportunity to live a healthier and happier life.
1. Reduced Anxiety
Vedic meditation is a stress relief tool. New studies report a significant reduction of stress chemicals in people who practice this ancient technique.
Brain imaging shows certain changes in brain structure after only three months of practicing meditation. It is noticed an increased amount of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. The prefrontal cortex is the center of cognitive function and has a crucial role in decision making. At the same time, brain imaging shows a shrinking of our amygdala, the fear center. This can explain the reported anxiety reduction in people who practice Vedic meditation.
Meditation allows deep rest. When we meditate our breathing and heart rate are slower, which provides body regeneration and regulation of blood pressure. As a consequence, we have better blood flow to the brain. With time and practice, neuroplasticity occurs and we become more resilient to stress. So, if you practice Vedic meditation, you are not only providing immediate relief in a form of peace and blissful chemicals, but you are becoming more resilient to stress in the future.
2. Increased cognitive function
Most of the meditators reported increased productivity. Meditation practice provides rest as a base for our further action. When you are rested, you feel refreshed, energized, and ready to act whether it’s your job, other work, playing with your children or having some fun with your partner and friends.
Meditation improves working memory and hippocampus. This can explain why meditators are good at multitasking. Neuroscientists reported that doing this particular practice, we simultaneously activate left and right brain hemispheres, and as a consequence we have a thicker corpus callosum. This corpus callosum represents the communication bridge between the left and right parts of the brain.
The left part of the brain is in charge of the past and the future and represents our critical mind, while the right brain is more responsible for creative thinking and being in the present moment. Researchers think that thicker corpus callosum can be a consequence of neuroplasticity which occurs with long-time meditation practice.
When we are stressed we are using more critical than creative thinking. That’s why many artists, world-leading innovators, and entrepreneurs practice Vedic meditation. It helps them to balance critical and creative thinking. Meditation makes it easier for us to recognize our authentic needs, to hear our inner voice and intuition. When we are stressed, we are in a fight or flight, and the brain is looking for dangers in our environment. With regular practice, we are lowering our stress chemicals, which helps us to increase our creativity, intuition and compassion.
3. Prevents Insomnia
Insomnia is a common problem these days; almost 40% of the US population suffers from sleep problems and 70% are sleep-deprived. One of the main reasons for insomnia is chronic stress. When we go to bed at night, our mind starts thinking backward and forward, running to the past or future. In meditation, this is known as monkey mind.
With Vedic meditation, our stress chemicals can be lower by 30 to 40%. This is a significant drop that impacts not just the amygdala in our brain, but our sleeping hormone as well. When we have a regular meditation practice, our body is at rest, and that allows our central nervous system to regenerate. As a consequence of that, we can fall asleep faster. This is why Vedic meditation has beautiful healing properties providing our body not only with regeneration during meditation practice but makes our sleeping time more restorative with more deep sleep and fewer awakenings during the night. As the Dalai Lama said :“Sleep is the best meditation”.
Many meditators report better sleep quality but shorter sleeping time. For example, instead of eight or more hours of sleep, people who have regular meditation practice sleep around six to seven hours at night. This breaks the general opinion that we don’t have time to meditate. Opposite to that, meditation provides more productive time for us.
Also Read: 10 Point Recommendation for a Healthy Sleep
4. Chronic pain and inflammation
Chronic pain can have different causes, from muscle weakness, vitamin D deficiency, unnatural body postures, and stress. Vedic meditation not only controls your stress levels but significantly reduces inflammation. Studies show lower inflammation markers after regular meditation practice. In this way, we don’t just treat symptoms of disease but its causes.
Some studies suggest that long time meditators have the same sensitivity to pain as non-meditators, but they are less distracted by pain. That provides them the ability to do their regular activity more effectively despite the pain.
5. Longer lifespan
According to the Nobel Prize winner Ph.D. Elizabeth Blackburn, meditation can regulate our heart rate variability and maintain the length of our telomeres that are the protective ends of our chromosomes. It is shown that people with chronic stress have shorter telomeres, which can lead to chronic illness, inflammation, cancer, and a poor quality of life. Chromosomes keep our genetic material under control. This helps proteins that read our genes to decode genes and give genetic information to our cells. New research shows that if our cells don’t get necessary information from a specific gene, they lose their function and that is the cause of aging.
In one study, women who had children with chronic disorders had shorter telomeres than others. Professor Blackburn noticed that one particular community of mothers with ill children didn’t have these accelerated shortening of telomeres. The reason for these long healthy telomeres was a different view of the problem, more as a challenge and not as an inevitable destiny.
The Nobel Prize winner did research on meditation and stress. She reported that mindfulness and Vedic meditation lowers our stress levels and regulates heart rate variability. Study suggested that meditation can make us resilient to stress and it can have a great impact on telomere length.
With meditation which could increase our feel-good chemicals our telomeres can be well preserved and our body protected from premature aging.
Mantra
Vedic meditation has Beeja mantras or seed mantras. When a teacher gives you a sound or a mantra and teaches you how to use it easily and effortlessly, the mantra will subtly become more natural to you. Mantra doesn’t have meaning, it is a primordial sound. Simple sounds of nature like water waves, wind, or some natural noise transformed into two-syllable Sanskrit words. This sound will be given to a student by a Vedic meditation teacher in a private ceremony. This tradition is old for thousands of years.
If the mantra has meaning, that would be more intellectual practice, which wouldn’t allow our body to have deep rest. That is because our mind is always in the process of thinking, and as you can’t command your nails to stop growing you can’t command your mind to stop thinking too. That’s why we use meaningless primordial sounds, which are relaxing and without active stimulation for our brains.
Vladimir Radovic
health and science writer/blogger
