Life as a student is exciting and memorable but it isn’t a bed of roses either. Examinations, career choices, and peer pressure can take a toll on your mental peace as a student. A College student’s stress levels rise because he is tense about interviews, and choosing a suitable job profile. A school student is often at the crossroads of doing better than his classmates and standing out. One of the numerous challenges faced by college students is stress.
Both enjoyable and fascinating, school or university may also be stressful at times. Entering a new university, exams, academic deadlines, relocating with roommates you don’t get along with, or simply thinking about the future may cause you to worry. The regular fast pace of life is one of the reasons why the importance of meditation for students is getting increased awareness every day.
Meditation is an essential gift by our ancestors
Meditation: Need of the Hour
Parents are now realizing the importance of meditation in school and its curriculum. Earlier subjects like yoga education & meditation sessions in schools were taken lightly by parents. Now parents have realized the importance of meditation in schools and also demand it.
This is the reason why the benefits of meditation for students and what you mean by meditation are highlighted in the curriculum as well. Daily guided meditation practice is considered to be a saviour for students.
What do you mean by meditation? Is it a form of yoga? Is it a deep breathing exercise? All your questions will be answered further.
One of the reasons why the importance of meditation for students is getting popular is because it helps relieve stress. Stress is a normal emotion that exists to assist every student dealing with difficult circumstances. It can be beneficial in moderation because it motivates you to study hard and perform at your best, especially during exams. However, excessive stress or the impression that you can’t handle stress can result in mental health issues like despair and anxiety.
This is where meditation and its benefits for students come in handy. There are uncountable benefits of meditation for students across all levels.
What is Meditation?
Meditation is the practice of increasing self-awareness and heightening concentration levels. It is a technique to change an individual’s consciousness and improve physical and mental health.
Meditation for study concentration used to be a go-to strategy for schools in earlier days.
Where does meditation come from?
- People have been meditating in cultures all across the world for thousands of years,
- Meditation has a long history in almost all major world religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
- Many people meditate without regard to their religious or spiritual beliefs or practices, despite the fact that it is frequently used for religious purposes
- Another application for meditation is in psychotherapy
- Throughout Asia, meditation was practised, but it wasn’t until the 20th century that it started to spread to other areas of the world. It became well-known in the West during the 1960s and 1970s and was frequently connected to the hippie movement.
- Meditation has also been included in several therapeutic approaches over the past few decades, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction, which uses both mindfulness and meditation to aid sufferers of stress, depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues.
Even after the proof of meditation being practised since ancient times, a lot of ‘civilized’ people didn’t realize the importance of meditation. Now that the rat race and stress have taken over people’s lives, the importance of mediation is now getting due awareness.
Types of Meditation Practices
As a student, you have a different personality and you may prefer different types of meditation practice. The benefits of meditation for students will truly reap fruitful results if the right type of practice is adopted by the student.
A common question regarding meditation has always been how to do meditation for students. Are there different types of meditation suitable for students?
Following are the different types of meditation you can choose from:
1. Mindfulness Meditation
The most well-known and extensively studied type of meditation practised is mindfulness meditation, which has its roots in Buddhist teachings.
Mindfulness Meditation helps to boost concentration
During a mindfulness meditation session, you focus on your thoughts as they come and go. You simply keep an eye out and note any patterns.
This exercise combines:
- Awareness
- Concentration
While observing any physiological sensations, thoughts, or feelings, you might find it useful to concentrate on anything or your breathing.
Due to its simplicity, this style of meditation is suitable for students without an instructor to act as their guide.
2. Focused Meditation
Any of the five senses can be used to concentrate during focused meditation.
You may, for instance, concentrate on your breathing, or you could bring in outside factors to assist you concentrate.
How to meditate for students under focused meditation? A few of the ways can be:
- numbering the malas
- Counting your breaths while watching a candle flame
- moon watching
Although this exercise may seem straightforward in theory, it might initially be challenging for beginners to maintain their attention for more than a few minutes.
If your thoughts do stray, just return to the exercise and refocus.
This exercise is perfect for anyone who wishes to improve their focus and attention, as the name implies.
3. Movement Meditation
Although most people associate movement meditation with yoga, this technique can also involve: Walking, gardening, and other moderate exercises.
This is a type of active meditation where the movement helps you connect more deeply to your body and the moment.
Movement People who find calm in action and wish to increase bodily awareness can consider meditation.
4. Mantra Meditation
Numerous teachings, including those of the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, heavily emphasize mantra meditation.
How to meditate for students using mantra meditation? To help you focus during this sort of meditation, play a rhythmic sound. It can be a word, phrase, or sound, with “om” being one of the most popular.
- You can say your mantra softly or out loud
- You’ll become more aware of your surroundings and alert after repeating the phrase for some time
- You can achieve deeper states of awareness as a result
Because it’s simpler to concentrate on a word than on your breath, some individuals find mantra meditation to be enjoyable. Some people appreciate how the sound makes their bodies vibrate.
For students who prefer repetition and dislike silence, mantra meditation for students is considered to be a useful exercise.
After reading the different types of meditation, you will now have an answer to your question- how to do meditation for students?
Benefits of Meditation
Meditation can result in both physiological and psychological consequences. Positive physiological effects include reduced levels of physical arousal, slowed heart rate and respiration, altered brain wave patterns, and reduced stress. The advantages of meditation are numerous.
The benefits of meditation for students and their both physical and psychological health have been amply documented by studies.
In reality, the tradition predates time by thousands of years. Religious traditions, particularly Buddhism, have been linked to the practice.
Your sensation of quiet, peace, and balance that meditation can bring you can help your physical and emotional health. By concentrating your attention on something peaceful, you can also utilize it to unwind and manage stress. You can learn to keep your focus and maintain inner serenity by practising meditation.
With everyday practice you will realize that once your meditation session is over, these advantages continue to exist. You can go about your day more tranquil if you practice meditation. Additionally, meditation may aid in the management of a lot of health issues.
Let’s now look at the many advantages of meditation. Given below are the top 20 benefits of meditation for students in 2024.
1. Reduces Stress
Practising mindfulness meditation reduces the stress hormone cortisol levels. Cortisol levels can be reduced to lessen overall stress, anxiety, and depression.
2. Stress Management
Improves your stress management skills. Meditation creates a state of calmness in the body and mind that can lower stress.
Everyday meditation practices aid the nervous system and adrenaline to occasionally unplug, recycle, and revitalize.
3. Boosts your Mood
You’ll feel happier. You get happy and feel better after practising meditation because it helps you manage stress, anxiety, and challenging circumstances. You’ll be able to handle challenging situations without having them affect your moods.
4. Retrain your brain
One of the supreme benefits of meditation for students is that it holds the power to retrain your brain. Yes, your brain is trainable. As the brain is used, it tends to grow. Meditation can help the brain learn to manage its own system. Consider it as car-servicing.
Meditation redirects our minds back to think more calmly and clearly focus when presented with a stressor when we are not meditating, rather than letting our impulsive impulses drive us.
5. Good for your Heart
It benefits your heart. Meditation can lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. Blood pressure, heart muscle efficiency, and overall cardiovascular mortality are all positively impacted by meditation.
6. Lowers Blood Pressure
High blood pressure, is regarded as a global epidemic and raises the risk of heart attack and stroke. Even doctors suggest meditation can lower blood pressure naturally and without medication. The benefits of meditation for students are diverse in physical and mental health.
7. Break Bad Habits
As a student, there are potential risks of falling into bad company and adopting a few bad practices. It can vary from the habit of procrastination to intoxication. Meditation practice helps you to get rid of bad behaviour. Meditation can help you break the cycle of a negative habit, whether it be excessive buying or smoking.
Having bad habits is not a big flaw. Most habits are formed subconsciously. Over time, meditation brings consciousness to what you’re doing. The habit is interrupted by mindfulness.
ALSO READ: 50 Good Habits for Students
8. Improves Relationships
In the age of social media that highlights fake friendships, one of the benefits of meditation for students is having positive relationships.
You’ll improve connections. Strong relationships are characterized by effective communication, empathy, and respect, all of which meditation can improve.
Relationships become simpler and more satisfying when you have a stronger connection with yourself, according to Washam.
9. Boosts Concentration
Meditation improves mental focus.
It can be challenging to focus on responsibilities at work or even hobbies like reading a book when so many things are running through our minds at once as students.
Meditation for study concentration and boosting productivity is a widely trusted fact.
You can focus on what has to be done since meditation centres your thoughts.
10. Builds Inner Strength
It fosters fortitude. We’ve all waited impatiently to leave a long, dull class or the examination phase.
Meditation develops the capacity to be present in any situation. We’re just able to handle challenging situations without breaking down or allowing them to impact us.
11. Learn to be Present
Meditation can help you to stay in the now by reducing brain activity in the area of the brain that wanders, worries, and overthinks!
Meditation is like a gym for the brain. It strengthens the brain like a muscle, it encourages mindfulness and helps us focus our thoughts. Everyday practice can help you to be into the present more quickly.
Meditation teaches us to live in the Present
12. Become Comfortable in Stillness
There’s a lot happening nowadays. Social media alone is enough to cloud your mind with anxiety, stress, and jealousy.
In today’s day and age practising meditation is considered to be one of the top benefits of meditation for students. You’ll grow accustomed to being still. Meditation can help you feel at ease in solitude.
13. Mental Fog
Meditation helps alleviate mental fog. Do you have trouble remembering things?
- You may experience brain fog if you have trouble concentrating, forget things easily, or have trouble focusing.
- It’s frequently brought on by stress, and meditation can help you feel more in the now by calming your mind and allowing you to pay attention to your breath.
14. Handle Anger
When interacting with challenging individuals or circumstances, anger is a normal emotion. However, if you behave rashly, you can make matters worse.
Meditation helps you to learn to manage and process your emotions in the present by practising meditation, which teaches your brain to concentrate on the here and now.
15. Helps you Cope with Pain
It aids with pain management. Meditation engages parts of the brain connected with processing pain, making it possible for patients to manage chronic pain through mindful breathing. Everyone, a student or a professional goes through a rough patch in life.
Even a little period of meditation can increase pain tolerance, and lower anxiety caused by pain.
16. Helps you Relax
You can unwind by meditating. Meditation has enormous positive effects on one’s mental and physical health by teaching one to unwind and maintain composure under duress.
You’ll feel more at ease if you practice mindfulness because it can drop your blood pressure and lessen stress.
17. Become your Cheerleader
You’ll start supporting yourself. You can use meditation as a support system to get you through a difficult period. You’ll come to appreciate how important it is to focus on your accomplishments and strengths rather than flaws or missteps.
18. Adds Balance to your Life
It makes your life more balanced. Finding balance is essential for our mental health and well-being, whether it be balancing work and home life or managing stress and finding time to relax.
You’ll get there through developing awareness and learning to centre your thoughts.
19. Increase Productivity
You will notice that you have started to accomplish more after a few weeks of meditation practice. It Increases your daily awareness & helps you focus on the topic at hand rather than switching between other projects.
20. Burnout
Prevention of burnout is one of the superlative benefits of meditation for students. Nowadays, students are not only managing academics but the extra courses online to develop skill sets.
It can be avoided by meditating. It’s simple to burn out as we put in long hours and keep piling on more obligations.
According to a study, engaging in mindfulness-based stress reduction may reduce the size of the brain region responsible for worry and fear while enhancing the prefrontal cortex, which is in charge of personality development.
So, consider using meditation to combat work-related stress.
How to Meditate effectively?
Here is a quick guide for you to meditate effectively:
- Find a comfortable place to sit
- Set a time limit (as a beginner)
- Pay attention to your body
- Notice your breath movements
- Keep a calm mind
A lot of students have wandering minds and that is why they find it difficult to meditate effectively.
Remember, a wandering mind is normal, it is the consistency that matters. Go easy on yourself and give yourself time to develop deep meditation practice in your life.
ALSO READ: 30 Tips on How to Study Smart in 2024
