Stress Management Through Mindful Meditation

Welcome to Joyce University's Community Health and Wellness blog that has been brought about to help those in a difficult day and age, find ways to decompress and find peace during stressful times. Stress is one of those things in life that although we may try to rid our lives of it, it is one of those rites of passage that all people will eventually encounter. So how do we manage it all when life comes around and throws us a curve ball and all of a sudden, we are left with so much stress, that we don't even know where to begin or what to do with it all? This blog will go over how management of stress through mindful meditation, may be an option to help relieve some of that heavy stress that comes with the territory of simply being a human being.

According to Mayo Clinic's article Meditation: A simple, fast way to reduce stress, meditation has been commonly used as a simple tool in mere minutes to help restore peace and balance to your life regardless of where you are, what you are doing or who you are with. Mayo Clinic continues on by saying that "During meditation, you focus your attention and eliminate the stream of jumbled thoughts that may be crowding your mind and causing you stress." When mediation occurs, it is important to have essential elements to relaxation such as, focused attention, a quiet place, and an open mind. With these key components in place and through exploration of meditation, it has been proven that this is a technique that can help reduce feelings of stress and anxiety by reducing negative emotions and helping increase self-awareness. As the feelings of stress and anxiety are reduced, this then gives the open time and space for thinking to be spent on other things that may be more oppressing and may need more time and attention. It is important to focus on what you need mentally, just as much as it is to focus on every other aspect such as physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. As the body operates as one, you must be unified as one, mediation is a great tool to use to be able to feel like one with yourself.

When it comes to meditation, there are several different ways that it can be done, such as mindful meditation, music meditation and mantra meditation, note that each individual may require a different type of meditation to feel more at peace or feel less stress. It may be of great benefit to the individual seeking stress relief, to test out multiple different methods of meditation, to find the one that best suits the individual. In further review Elizabeth Scott (PhD) talks about "When you're focused on the here-and-now you won't be able to ruminate about something that already happened." in the article Effective Stress Relievers for Your Life, she then goes on to talk about how although it may take practice to get down the right meditation that works for you, it could be a technique that overall can make a huge difference in relieving stress as well as helping you feel more present. 

Resources

• Meditation: A simple, fast way to reduce stress
• Effective Stress Relievers for Your Life

Disclaimer: This is class assignment and not a real blog.