Meditation: Its Benefits and Whatnot

Disclaimer: If you clicked on this article thinking that it’s one of those “help/tutorial” articles then you’ll be disappointed. This article is just my personal thoughts on the subject of meditation. If you’re an ardent believer of the benefits of meditation then you might find my article offensive. After reading this disclaimer and yet still chooses to continue then by all means keep reading. Anyway, you’ve been warned.

Meditation

Sometimes I would have the urge to go lock my room sit in the bed cross-legged, and then close my eyes as I try to empty my mind of any thoughts positive and negative. Or at least I tried to…

I think it’s quite obvious from my description but to those who’re unaware, I’m meditating. I also practice yoga (yoga has meditation too) but that’s for another story.

Anyhow, I usually go into meditation before a study session to increase my concentration level. Only after ridding the mind of (most) unnecessary thoughts would I study. I learned that doing so would help me study better.

Before I continue though, I would just like to clarify that meditation doesn’t make me smarter or anything like that. It simply clears my mind and raises my level of concentration, nothing else.

Now, as I said meditation allow me study more effectively by helping me concentrate on the subject I’m trying to learn. Without the unnecessary thoughts and distraction, I find that the effectiveness of my study session had increased.

Meditating before a study session wasn’t exactly new or ground-breaking. You could find topics about it online. A simple Google search would reveal thousands of websites offering tips and tricks how to effectively meditate before studying.

The Effect, A.K.A the “Benefits” of Meditation

For me, the benefit of meditation was mostly mental rather than physical or spiritual. You might have heard some people claiming that meditation helped their body grow stronger, heal diseases, or even developed spiritual powers through meditation like gaining the ability to shoot out ki or chi or whatever from your hands. Okay, the last one was just added for laughs but there was indeed a group that claimed to be able to do that. You can Google or search it up on YouTube if you’re interested.

Although I believed that meditation could help me become better at studying, I’m fully aware that what I’m feeling was most likely just a placebo effect and nothing more. Some of you might argue that I’m just being critical, and yes, you’re right. But what’s wrong with thinking that the benefits of meditation were nothing but placebo effect? Even if the benefits were just placebo effect, I would still do it since I find it very helpful.

And as for the physical benefits that some people were claiming; I strongly believed that those too were just placebo effects. Again, I’m iterating that it’s not a bad thing. The mind is very powerful, and a psychiatrist worth his or her salt would tell you not to underestimate the power of the mind.

I think many of you have heard the story of women who strongly believed that they’re pregnant to the point that their body actually accommodate to their desires making them “pregnant”. Well, sort of…

Those cases of fake pregnancy, although not really common were also not rare. What happened to them was just the brain telling the body to be “pregnant” to accommodate the desires of those women. These women would show symptoms and signs found commonly on pregnant women but in reality there’s no life inside their womb, just air.

The scenario above was a good example of the power of the mind. No, it’s not supernatural power or anything like that. It’s just brain power and the chemicals inside our body doing their things. Now back to the main topic…

What I’m trying to say was that the meditation was not the magical “method” that some touted it to be. Meditation is just a concept, a method that we humans invented in order to cope whenever we’re feeling stressed.

Now, as for the benefits of meditation, like clearing the mind of unnecessary thoughts, our body becoming healthy, diseases being healed, people shooting ki or chi from their hands, those things (especially the last one) were all just in our heads. In other words, it’s nothing but placebo effects.

And the thing about reaching a higher realm of thinking through meditation as some self-proclaimed guru claimed? It’s not real. It’s just people telling you to tap on the inherent power of the brain to reach Zen or whatever. Of course I’m not telling you not to do it. As long as it doesn’t cause any harm then you can just go along with it if you wanted to.

My Thoughts about Meditation

If you read till this point without getting offended, then congratulation, you’re a cool and open-minded person.

You guys probably noticed that although my personal view on meditation was rather critical, I’m actually a big fan of meditation and even often practice it myself. Despite thinking that all of the benefits of meditation were nothing but placebo effect, there’s no doubt in my mind that meditation is a very effective and helpful method when coping with stress.

In my eyes, there’s not that much difference between the touted benefits of meditation and placebo effect. As long as the method work I would still happily meditate in hope of getting the effect that I desired.

  Thank you for reading. I’ll see you all again next time.

Image Source:

https://pixabay.com/illustrations/meditation-spiritual-yoga-1384758/

https://pixabay.com/photos/meditate-meditation-peaceful-1851165/