Exploring the Cultural and Health Benefits of Meditation Practices

This essay explores the multifaceted benefits of meditation, examining its impact on both health and culture. The author defines meditation and its cultural perceptions, then delves into its numerous health advantages. These include slowing age-related brain loss, relieving pain, improving concentration, controlling mind-wandering, enhancing sleep quality, and aiding in addiction control. The essay references several studies and sources to support its claims, highlighting how meditation achieves these benefits by focusing attention and thoughts. Ultimately, the essay concludes that meditation is a powerful tool for improving overall health and well-being, emphasizing its potential to enhance various aspects of life through focused mental practices.

Running head: CULTURE AND HEALTH
CULTURE AND HEALTH
[Author Name(s), First M. Last, Omit Titles and Degrees]
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Meditation is where a person trains the mind or introduces a mode of consciousness as an
end or to achieve some benefits or to allow the mind to recognize what it contains without it
being identified with that content (Weiten, 2016). It involves turning one’s attention and mind
inward and concentrating on one thought, idea, feeling or thing. In most cases, meditation has
been culturally perceived as a way of obtaining inner peace and moving closer to God.
Meditation has a number of health benefits:
Slows brain loss related to age: Studies have shown that those who engage in longtime
meditation experience less age-related loss of brain tissue in comparison to those who do not
meditate. The study which deployed a functional magnetic resonance imaging examined 100
women and men’s brains who had been meditating for about 20 years (Emet, 2013). The two
groups indicated a reduction in gray matter with age but the longtime meditators had
significantly smaller losses in the gray matter of their brains. In as much as meditation cannot
eliminate age-related declines in diseases or thinking, the research proves that meditation
protects the brain (Rakel, 2012).
Helps to relieve pain: Examinations on meditation effects reveal that longtime meditators
experience less pain compared to non-meditators even though they showed higher levels of
activity in the areas of the brain that are associated with the pain. With meditation, the
pleasantness of stimulation of pain is highly reduced. This is not achieved by inhibiting an
experience of pain but avoiding the brain from indulging in thinking processes that facilitate pain
(Snowball, 2012). As for the case of chronic pain, there is normally a tendency of pain hyper-
vigilance that in turn creates a stronger emotional reaction to the noticed pain. Meditation helps
to reverse this situation.

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Improves concentration: Meditation enhances attention and thus improves the
concentration of an individual. Increased concentration increases the efficiency of an individual
when multitasking (Rakel, 2012). Mindfulness enhances the better working of the human
memory. Meditation among students has been linked to improved performance as students who
engage in meditation have recorded higher scores in their tests. Meditation is important in
building the concentration of an individual at a physical level as it aids in enhancing the
communication of attention networks and limiting the level of interruptions that one would
experience.
Helps in stopping the shifting of the mind: Through meditation, the brain region that is
responsible for continuous shifts from one topic to another is controlled. This habit has been
linked with poor mental health especially in cases where it is not controlled. Meditation lowers
the level of activity in this part of the brain (Weiten, 2016). Wondering of the mind has been
related to reduced levels of happiness as most of the thoughts in most cases tend to stress or
rumination.
Meditation reduces the activity in the brain region that is connected with wondering
thoughts referred to as the default mode network. This is the partial reason for the use of
mindfulness as an important therapy for depression and anxiety for a very long time now. It
could be for this reason as well, that meditation is a tool in the prevention and management of
some physical health conditions (Emet, 2013).
Improves the quality of sleep: Research indicates that people who adopt meditation as
sleep improvement strategy recorded greater improvements in the quality of their sleep as
compared to those who deployed more structured plans (Alexander, 2011). Structured programs

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such as bedtime routines and alteration of poor sleeping habits yield significantly low results.
This indicates that mediation is an effective strategy that can top up the list of appealing options
that are required in fixing health risks and problems associated with low quality sleep.
Helps control addiction: Meditation is a fundamental tool in helping an individual in
dealing with the various addictions including alcohol, cigarettes or any other drugs. It works by
strengthening the self-control of the individual hence enabling him to have control over his
senses and body desires. Meditation also helps in disconnecting an addict from craving
sensations of the substances to which he is an addict. Through meditation, a person becomes less
stressed of the problem he is undergoing and gives him an opportunity to focus his mind on the
best mechanisms of helping himself out of the situation (Rakel, 2012).
In conclusion, meditation serves as one of the most powerful tools that if effectively used
can help to a great extent in improving the quality of the health of an individual. From improving
concentration, improving the quality of sleep, controlling addiction, slowing age-related brain
loss to stopping unnecessary mind shift, meditation improves the quality of health. These it
achieves by concentrating the sensations and thoughts of the various parts of the body towards a
specific attention of the present.

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References
Alexander, S. (2011). The Best Meditations on the Planet: 100 Techniques to Beat Stress,
Improve Health, and Create Happiness-In Just Minutes A Day. Manchester: Fair Winds
Press.
Benson, H. (2013). The Relaxation Response. Oxford: HarperCollins.
Emet, J. (2013). Buddha's Book of Sleep: Sleep Better in Seven Weeks with Mindfulness
Meditation. New York: Hay House, Inc.
Rakel, D. (2012). Integrative Medicine. New York: Elsevier Health Sciences.
Snowball, K. (2012). The Detox Cookbook: Cleansing for food lovers. New Delhi: Allen &
Unwin.
Weiten, W. (2016). Psychology: Themes and Variations. Washington: Cengage Learning.